Food Horror

Animal Factory starts readers off: “While human sewage is treated to kill pathogens, animal waste is not. Hog manure has ten to one hundred times more concentrated pathogens than human waste, yet the law would never permit untreated human waste to be kept in vast ‘lagoons’ or sprayed onto fields, as is the case with manure.”

“Manure can contain pathogens, antibiotics, drug-resistant bacteria, hormones, heavy metals, and other compounds that can seriously impact human health, aquatic life, and wildlife when introduced into the environment, according to the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).”

“The eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay produces one million tons of manure a year, enough to fill a football stadium to the top row, including all the concourse, locker rooms, and concession areas.”

“Feedlot odors contain some 170 separate chemicals, many of them known to cause respiratory ailments, diarrhea, depression, violent behavior, and other health problems.”

“Animal factory proponents say that confined animal feeding operations (CAFO’s) are the most cost-effective method in the world of producing meat, milk, and eggs.”

“Consumers demand cheap, lean, uniform cuts of meat, and using CAFO’s is the only way possible to deliver that.”

I have written in the past that the three biggest buildings in many small towns and cities are the big box food store and drug store and the hospital. One leads inexorably to the other. Mass-market consumers shop for CAFO-raised beef, pork, chicken, milk and eggs, as well as noxious farm-raised fish, from the big box food chains. Such CAFO raised “foods” with high fructose corn syrup, polyunsaturated oils and additive packed packaged foods that form the basis of the American diet are piled high in shopping carts. Sickness and disease, naturally follow, leading to a stop at the big box drug store for ill-advised prescription medicines followed by the not-unexpected-stay at a hospital. Your health is in large measure determined by what you eat!

The key to better health is to stay out of the big box “food horror” traps and CAFO-raised foods and limit your shopping to local farmers market or natural food stores. The two small cities Debbie and I live in offer ample options on both fronts. It has been many years since we have purchased CAFO-raised food or shopped at the big box food market. And neither one of us takes prescription drugs or has been to a hospital since we had our tonsils out in the 1950s. And for that matter, neither of us has a doctor, and I will be 75 years old this year. Hard as it is for me to believe!

To get off on the right foot to a healthier life style check, out Eatwild.com, order a copy of Animal Factory, and Shane Ellison’s Over the Counter Natural Cures and watch the DVD Food Inc. Good luck.