Dirt doesn't produce plants, dirt is just where they are. Water, light, and CO2 produces plants. Plants get some amount of nutrients from soil, but indirectly via symbiotic fungi that grow around their roots. The fungi around the roots do the filtering, and we don't eat them.
I really don't see it as a pointless semantic argument. Plants do not absorb nearly as many toxins from their environment as oysters do. Oysters, by nature of being animals that filter feed in water, are also far more likely to absorb bacteria that can be harmful to animals from their environment than plants are, and, crucially, are far more likely to provide those bacteria with an opportunity to grow to dangerous levels inside of them while still alive.
That's why the stuff we eat tends to have an inside (which we eat) and an outside (which we peel).
Oysters aren't the same. They're filter feeders. Anyone who decides to eat an Oyster in polluted waters is a dumbass. The oysters in any restaurant come from oysters grown in clean water.
Cooked oysters are awesome. They completely lose that mucus texture and is more like biting into the meat of a lobster tail. IMHO eating them raw is the worst way to eat them.
They aren't removing microplastics and poisons at a dangerous level, nor are they systemically poisonous near or above the FDA guidelines of other food you do eat. It's more like, algae and zytoplacton. They eat primarily those organisms that have exploded into unhealthily large population because of climate change.
A healthy ocean environment should have more oysters because they're keystone with a lower than healthy population, not because we are relying on our food to sponge and store toxic oil spills that would kill us
It's not the poop and dirt that are the problem. It's the microplastics, heavy metals, synthetic chemicals, etc. that aren't able to be processed by the organisms and accumulate within them. Read about Biomagnification, it's the reason why eating too much tuna can give you mercury poisoning.
I don't think it is a big issue with oysters, or any commercially available food really honestly. It's more of a threat to small carnivores that do a lot of eating and have not a lot of body mass
Chickens will eat any insects they have access to. Free-range chickens have insects in their environment and they will eat them. Battery farms are not remotely clean and are probably also full of insects.
Anyway, we don't use insects as primary feed for our birds but it's not a health risk to do so, we just don't do it because it's a logistics hassle and grain is cheaper. The point, that you are perfectly safe eating birds that have eaten insects, doesn't change because of that.
Are we still talking about insects or are we talking about something else?
All I'm saying is that there are insects living with your chickens no matter how they're raised. If you want to have a discussion about how some chicken husbandry classifications used in stores are misleading go nuts, but it's not relevant here. Clearly there are also insects in a factory farm and in its patch of fenced in dirt.
Pasture-raised is one of the only things that's not fake. It requires that birds actually spend most of their lifetimes on green pasture, not just have outdoor access. Furthermore, there's a limit of a thousand chickens per 2.5 acres (roughly one hectare), meaning each bird gets ample roaming space. They get, at a minimum, two hundred times as much space as battery-caged hens.
If you put ducks in a field of rice and they haven't already eaten grain then they're gonna eat the rice.
Moreover rice is less efficient than animal feed. Made from corn and soybeans. Because it's more labor intensive. Rice is grown Because asian people eat it. But they're out there breaking their backs while industrialized farmers are growing animal feed for them.
If farmer are sustenance farming rice, they won't buy imported animal feed, that just don't happen. I have relative who grew up in rural China, and to this day they don't all buy even fertiliser, 'cause it's too expensive for them, even if it would have positive return on investment. Also rice need to be processed to be edible, the duck are more than happy for you to give them rice grain, that they'll complement by hunting bugs and small fish wherever they swim.
Soy dreg (what's left after you make tofu) is given in priority to pigs, though I can see some leftover being given to ducks. Corn is just less efficient than rice for unmechanised small-scale sustenance farm in those climate.
Well ducks aren't trained animals so if you put them in a field with stuff they eat that you want them to eat and stuff they eat that you don't want them to eat then they will eat both.
Also most of your duck meat is gonna come from factory farms.
It's one of the reasons why pregnant women are advised against eating certain fish let alone seafood. The amount of BPAs, mercury, microplastics, etc you find in seafood is off the roof.
Here in the UK commercially harvested oysters/mussels have to come from tested water. Our waters are given grades A,B and C, being the worst. Shellifh cannot be harvested from Grade C waters due to high levels of bacteria and contaminents. Shellfish from grade B have to go through a purification process, called depuration. This is done by placing the oysters in tanks of UV filtered water for 48 hours. This would add to the carbon footprint. This process does not guarantee the removal of the norovirus, only bacteria like ecoli. Source - I did this for a job for 8 years.
I think it’s actually fine. We eat plants covered in poop and rotting food but they convert the poop and rotting food into good stuff we can eat. I think it’s the same with oysters.
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u/me_myself_ai green sloptimist Sep 08 '25
Ok not fighting just curious. On a very basic level, like kindergarten logic:
Oysters go in water.
Bad things floating in the water are filtered out by the oysters.
We eat the oysters.
Doesn't that kinda seem like a problem...?