Comment by themafia
18 hours ago
Our city just had a compost program. Throwing away compostable material into the provided bin was free. They put it into the city managed compost yards and then every weekend you could go down there and pick up bags of the finished product to use at home in your garden.
It's also the case that many states already have a "garbage feeding" program that allows food waste to be diverted into feed for commercial animal lots. The food has to meet certain criteria and be fully cooked and ready for human consumption before being discarded.
Cooking does not destroy prions to any significant extent. They’re even resistant to autoclaving. It’s one of the big reasons that prion diseases are so pernicious. The garbage feeding you describe could absolutely spread prion diseases for the same reason that use of animal byproducts in feeds spread BSE in Europe.
Wouldn't the worse problem be that humans are consuming it first? These aren't "animal byproducts" it's food meant to be served to humans in restaurants who ended up discarding it.
In any case, it truly is part of several state laws, including where I grew up, in Minnesota. You wouldn't believe what they feed pigs back there. All kinds of expired foods, pastries, candies, and other convenience store fare. That's what the law is meant to cover, including, "discarded or unused restaurant food."
Humans consuming it would be bad, but the animal cannibalism is what allows the prion diseases to proliferate in the first place. There never would have been a BSE outbreak in the first place if it weren’t for that.
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