No more gut strings?

[Dave W]

Thanks to moronic overzealous European regulators you will now be safe from mad cow disease transmitted by gut strings - even though no one has gotten it through strings and you would need to eat several meters of infected cello strings to get it.

Some commentary here.

[patman]

I used to use gut strings on my upright many many years ago...they used to be cheap ($26), and then overnight they jumped to $ 125 a set. Guess I'm doomed.

[uwe]

With all due respect, if Bach was composing today, he wouldn't be using gut strings to hear his work played. This is a storm in an elitist tea cup.

[Dave W]

With all due respect, if Bach was composing today, he wouldn't be using gut strings to hear his work played. This is a storm in an elitist tea cup.

Maybe, maybe not, but beside the point.

It's the worst sort of nannyism, taking away a person's choice in order to protect him from a non-existent threat.

[patman]

Never really could play orchestral music worth a shit...guts slap better, and have a nice woody sound for jazz

[Spiritbass]

Maybe, maybe not, but beside the point.

It's the worst sort of nannyism, taking away a person's choice in order to protect him from a non-existent threat.

AMEN to that!!!!  The absolute worst kind of pests pester you for what they think is your own good. I agree that this is the absolute lowest form because the threat doesn't even exist!!!!!

[fur85]

I respectfully beg to differ with your interpretation of what this is. This is not an issue of the "nanny state". CJD was and is a serious threat to public health. The gut strings got caught up in the bureaucracy that regulates CJD. However, the Italian government has a few more important things to worry about right now than granting exceptions to regulations so this company can continue to produce gut strings. Nothing in the article says or implies that anyone deliberately took away anyone's choice about strings to "protect" them. It would seem that this media campaign is an effort to bring the issue to their attention. Until now, Italian legislators probably hadn't even thought about the issue. From the article:

"Regulations which tightly control the use of certain types of animal tissue are unwittingly threatening the centuries-old technique of making musical instrument strings out of beef gut."

"The company says the Italian government has not yet brought into legislation the latest EU diktats on the issue and that this means the bureaucratic burden of seeking a renewal is now too great."

"Other companies involved in the business have previously given up, complaining that they found could not operate under the red tape system."

[Dave W]

Mark, when bureaucratic red tape makes it impossible or too burdensome to make the product, causing manufacturers to give up, then in my book that's the same as banning it, regardless of intention.

Of course CJD is a threat to public health, but there's no way to eliminate risk entirely. When you effectively ban gut strings when there's (a) no evidence of infected strings existing and (b) you'd have to eat several yards of those non-existent infected strings to get it, then IMHO the intention is to ban the product in order to protect people from a threat that doesn't even exist in the real world.

[fur85]

Dave, I see your point. My wife and I have the exact same disagreement about intention all the time.

I looked up "nanny state" on the wiki and it is:

"A nanny state is the perception of a situation characterised by governmental policies of over-protectionism, economic interventionism, or heavy regulation of economic, social or other nature."

By that definition, you're right, it is heavy regulation.

[Freuds_Cat]

I have a close friend who's wife died from CJD and to this day in my country I'm banned from donating blood due to the fact that I lived in the UK in the early 90's. This causes a bit of bias in my thinking on this subject. However, in this case I would suggest blanket laws that affect such a marginal industry like this smacks of Nanny state -ism (*new word  )

[uwe]

I wish we would have had a lot more "Nanny State" before Lehman's shit hit the fan. And the non-nanny then had to clean up the mess all the same.

If the past Italian administration had been on their feet - too much bunga bunga? - this wouldn't have happened. By today's EU dairy product regulations half of the French cheese types could not be sold as edible food today, yet the French managed exceptions for them all. You just have to do your homework, which is what good governments are for.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

I wish we would have had a lot more "Nanny State" before Lehman's shit hit the fan. And the non-nanny then had to clean up the mess all the same.
...
 You just have to do your homework, which is what good governments are for.

Government is just like any other business: you get what you pay for.

[rahock]

I agree that government is just like any other business but I believe you only get a fraction of what you pay for . Again, like any other business,
Rick

[Dave W]

Lehman's? The term nanny state has nothing to do with financial regulation. Now, if Lehman's had a company cafeteria that came under dictator Mayor Bloomberg's order banning trans-fats in restaurants, that would be an example of a nanny state regulation. Protecting people from their own personal choices under the guise of "it's for your own good." Often based on junk science (remember when trans-fats were good for you?).

OTOH protecting against the spread of a deadly disease is reasonable, but when the regulations are such that they kill off businesses that aren't a real threat, that's unreasonable.

[Pilgrim]

Quick!!

Stockpile all the gut strings you can get your hands on, wait a year, then sell via Ebay at 4X the original cost.

Any time people can't get something, a few of them will immediately be willing to spend stupid money to get it.