Factory Farming
The large names in American agriculture would like you to think that your strip steak, salmon filet, scrambled eggs and bacon came from healthy, happy animals raised on great, old-fashioned family members farms. But, as much more Americans are coming to understand, behind those perfectly cellophane-wrapped meats, bright white eggs and plastic milk gallons are tales so gruesome and downright shocking that it is a surprise Hollywood has yet to create it a movie about it.”It” is agribusiness, the term given to describe the mass production of meats, poultry, fish, eggs and milk in America these days, and it is the subject of Ken Midkiff’s new book, The Meat You Eat: How Corporate Farming Has Endangered America’s Food Supply — a book that completely each and every American who values their well being, eats meat, believes in humanity, and/or values our environment ought to read!If you have by no means heard about the unethical conditions and extreme environmental toll of factory farms or the numerous unsavory and hazardous additives to mass-produced meats and animal goods, then be ready for a massive wakeup call whenever you read this essential book. And for those that have, this book will open your eyes to the real issue at hand-large and incredibly potent corporations who are in control of the food supply-and provide you a answer that you are able to truly use.Unsavory Mass Farming Statistics … Did You Know?* About 70 percent of all antibiotics and comparable drugs produced within the United States are given to livestock and poultry?* Arsenic and selenium are occasionally added to livestock feed to stimulate appetite?* Sanderson Farms, a chicken plant that’s ranked 24th on the EPA’s list of the largest polluters within the country, and whose Internet website says, “100% Chicken. Naturally,” released 2,195,343 pounds of toxic wastes into neighboring waterways?* 3% of U.S. farms generate 62% of all agricultural production?* An average farmed salmon steak contains almost 10 times much more toxic PCBs than a wild salmon steak?The message of “The Meat You Eat” comes via loud and clear: Big corporations have taken over the production of food in America and, unless we get control back to the little farmers who take pride in producing healthy food from happy animals, our food supplies, our environment and our own bodies will suffer.It’s very apparent that Ken Midkiff has carried out extensive homework on the subject (and, as he is the Sierra Club’s Clean Water Campaign Director, has access to some “insider” facts), as this book isn’t a “rant” but instead is supported throughout by researched insights. Here are just a couple of of the examples that Midkiff cites:* In McDonald County, Mississippi, where 13 million broiler chickens and hundreds of thousands of turkeys are produced, each and every stream is on a government “impaired water body” list.* The smells coming from 1 hog farm, with some 80,000 hogs, in Missouri forced numerous residents to purchase air conditioners simply because they could no longer open their windows for fresh air.* School officials in an Ohio-town that is house to a chicken plant with 15 million chickens struggled just to maintain flies away from students.Clearly the environment can’t take too a lot more of this abuse prior to permanent damage sets in, but if this is the damage becoming carried out to the environment, envision the damage becoming carried out to our bodies. Animals on factory farms — this consists of cows, pigs and fish — aren’t raised to offer healthy food sources … they’re raised to create the maximum quantity of cash feasible.Maximum profit is why they’re fed sub-par foods like grains, pumped full of antibiotics and hormones to fend of the diseases that fester within the big warehouses and make them grow rapidly. Maximum profit is why they’re raised in toxic environments full of animal wastes and chemicals, and then occasionally, as within the case of milk and some eggs, are pasteurized or heat treated to kill off hazardous pathogens (which are there within the initial location simply because the conditions are so toxic).Within the end, as Midkiff makes clear in “The Meat You Eat,” the animals suffer, the environment suffers, and also the well being of you and your loved ones suffers.Let’s Give Our Children a ChanceAt this rate, it appears that factory farms will soon make family members farms a factor of the past, and our kids and generations to come won’t have access to the clean sources of food that numerous of us took for granted.FarmlandOne of the very best parts of “The Meat You Eat” is really a resource section within the back to discover little, sustainable farmers inside your region. These are the kinds of farmers that the large corporations draw photos of on their item labels; the real “family” farms that our society is forcing into extinction. There’s a listing for each and every state.Aside from becoming totally free of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides along with other chemicals, animals which are raised on pasture, or on little, sustainable farms are happier and healthier:* Factory-farmed cattle fed grains are much more susceptible to E. Coli along with other bacterial infections* Meat from pasture-raised animals is lower in calories and “bad” omega-6 fats and greater in “good” omega-3 and CLA fats* Eggs from poultry raised on pasture have 10% much less fat, 40% much more vitamin A and 400% much more omega-3* Factory-farmed animals live in extremely stressful and inhumane conditions, generating them predisposed to illness and food-borne pathogensNo matter what your personal political affiliation, SixWise.com urges everybody to take the time to read The Meat You Eat — it is a fast read (the chapters are even broken down into effortlessly manageable sections titled Large Pig, Large Chicken and Large Egg, Large Milk, Large Beef and Large Fish), an essential read, and 1 that will assist result in a positive transformation in both a big-picture and personal sense.”We have given up to the agribusiness corporations a essential component of our responsibility as human beings and we should now believe of methods to take it back.”- Wendell Berry, from the Foreword