This video pretty much sums it up - please watch it:
One thing the video leaves out is how we've even turned something as simple as feeding the cows into an act of abuse and cruelty. For more on what we feed our cows and how it makes them sick, see my posts Feeding Our Food (Part 1) and Feeding Our Food (Part 2).
The unimaginable treatment of these animals is enough to make me quit meat, but on top of that, I am flat out disguted by the fact that the beef we buy comes from sick, diseased, unhealthy animals that are raised in manure up to their ankles. I mean, that's just gross.
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Breakfast: English Muffin with spray butter, which blatently violates my advice to Eat Food
Lunch: Microwavable brown rice & veggie bowl
Dinner: Pasta with zucchini, tomato, garlic, fresh parsley, pine nuts, and olive oil
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
What's Really In Your Hamburger
In the early 1900's hamburgers had a reputation similar to hot dogs: tainted, unsafe to eat, food for the poor, sold only at carnivals (not in restaurants), made from old meat, laced with preservatives. In the 1920's, White Castle, the nation's first hamburger chain, worked extremely hard to reverse this image, even naming their chain something that sounded pure. The 1950's and the rise of drive-ins and fast food restaurants is when the hamburger's image really turned. The fast food industry marketed hamburgers as an ideal meal for children - convenient, inexpensive, hand-held, easy to chew. By the early 1990's, the average American ate 3 hamburgers per week, more than 2/3 of these were from fast food restaurants. Thanks to some excellent marketing tactics, the hamburger had become America's national meal.
Although the reputation surrounding hamburgers has changed, their actual content has not. So, here's the truth about what's really in ground beef.
First, lose that image of a huge, brown, beef steer because the majority of ground beef comes from dairy cows that can no longer milk. Dairy cattle can live as long as 40 years, but most are slaughtered at the age of 4, when their milk output starts to decline. The stresses of industrial milk production makes these cows even more unhealthy than cattle from large feedlots and they are more likely to be diseased and riddled with antibiotic residues.
Secondly, ground beef is largely responsible for the roughly 200,000 people that are sickened every year by foodborne diseases. The nontheraputic use of antibiotics in livestock feedlots has fueled pathogen mutation and the huge feedlots, slaughterhouses, and meat packing plants have proven to be an extremely efficient way to spread diseases.
The literature on the causes of food poising is full of scientific terms (colifom levels, aerobic plate counts, sorbitol, etc), but the bottom line behind why eating a hamburger can make you sick is: There is shit in the meat.
Escherichia coli O157:H7 (E. coli) is a mutation of a bacterium found abundantly in the human digestive system, but this mutated version attacks the lining of the intestine, causing diarrhea, abdominal cramps, possibly vomiting and fever. In 4% of E. coli cases, the toxins enter the bloodstream causing kidney failure, anemia, internal bleeding, seizures, neurological damage, or strokes, leading to permanent disabilities (like blindness or brain damage), or death. E. coli is now the leading cause of kidney failure among children in the US. (Children ages 7-13 eat more hamburgers than any other age group.)
E. coli was first isolated in 1982 and has received a large amount of public attention in the past 2 decades because of the significant number of cases. Efforts to eradicate E. coli have failed because of its resistance to acid, salt, and chlorine, its ability to live in fresh water or seawater, its ability to live on kitchen countertops for days, or in moist environments for weeks, its ability to withstand freezing and withstand temperatures up to 160 degrees, and its ability to spread easily - through stool.
People have been infected by drinking contaminated water, swimming in contaminated water (even at water parks), crawling on a contaminated carpet, and most commonly by eating contaminated ground beef. Outbreaks have also been caused by contaminated vegetables, fruits, and milk - all of which most likely came in contact with cattle manure, although the pathogen can also be spread by feces of deer, dogs, horses, flies, and humans (person to person transmission accounts for a significant portion of E. coli cases).
The way our meat is processed has created an ideal way for pathogens like E. coli to spread. The feedlots are essentially manure recirculation plants. Not only do the animals live amid pools of manure, but they are also fed manure. In Arkansas alone, nearly 3 million pounds of chicken manure are fed to cattle per year. (See also Feeding Our Food.)
The slaughterhouses and meat grinders only spread the contaminations further. As the hide is pulled off the animal by machine, if the hide was not cleaned properly, chunks of dirt and manure will fall from it onto the meat. When the stomach & intestines are removed, if it is not done properly, the contents will spill out onto the meat and the table. With the quick assembly line and the unskilled workers, manure spillage occurs in about 1 in 5 carcasses. A single gut splatter can quickly spread as hundreds of carcasses quickly move down the line. A contaminated knife will spread germs to everything it touches and the overworked, often illiterate slaughterhouse workers do not always practice stellar hygiene. Meat that falls onto the ground (where, by the way, factory workers are known to urinate - after all, there are large drains for the blood) is picked up and placed back on the conveyor belt.
The odds of contamination grow exponentially in ground beef because beef from many animals is mixed together, increasing the chance of an infected animal being part of each hamburger. A single hamburger contains meat from dozens or even hundreds of different animals. A single cow infected with E. coli can contaminate 32,000 pounds of ground beef. A USDA study found that 78.6% of the tested ground beef contained microbes that are spread primarily by fecal matter.
Anyone bringing raw ground beef into their home should consider it a biohazard. A study by Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona, found that due to beef and poultry contamination, the average American sink contains more fecal matter than the average American toilet. According to Gerba, "you'd be better off eating a carrot stick that fell in your toilet than one that fell in your sink."
____________________
Breakfast: Cereal with soy milk
Lunch: Bean burrito at Anita's Mexican restaurant
Dinner: Avocado sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and Italian dressing, french fries on the side
Although the reputation surrounding hamburgers has changed, their actual content has not. So, here's the truth about what's really in ground beef.
First, lose that image of a huge, brown, beef steer because the majority of ground beef comes from dairy cows that can no longer milk. Dairy cattle can live as long as 40 years, but most are slaughtered at the age of 4, when their milk output starts to decline. The stresses of industrial milk production makes these cows even more unhealthy than cattle from large feedlots and they are more likely to be diseased and riddled with antibiotic residues.
Secondly, ground beef is largely responsible for the roughly 200,000 people that are sickened every year by foodborne diseases. The nontheraputic use of antibiotics in livestock feedlots has fueled pathogen mutation and the huge feedlots, slaughterhouses, and meat packing plants have proven to be an extremely efficient way to spread diseases.The literature on the causes of food poising is full of scientific terms (colifom levels, aerobic plate counts, sorbitol, etc), but the bottom line behind why eating a hamburger can make you sick is: There is shit in the meat.
Escherichia coli O157:H7 (E. coli) is a mutation of a bacterium found abundantly in the human digestive system, but this mutated version attacks the lining of the intestine, causing diarrhea, abdominal cramps, possibly vomiting and fever. In 4% of E. coli cases, the toxins enter the bloodstream causing kidney failure, anemia, internal bleeding, seizures, neurological damage, or strokes, leading to permanent disabilities (like blindness or brain damage), or death. E. coli is now the leading cause of kidney failure among children in the US. (Children ages 7-13 eat more hamburgers than any other age group.)
E. coli was first isolated in 1982 and has received a large amount of public attention in the past 2 decades because of the significant number of cases. Efforts to eradicate E. coli have failed because of its resistance to acid, salt, and chlorine, its ability to live in fresh water or seawater, its ability to live on kitchen countertops for days, or in moist environments for weeks, its ability to withstand freezing and withstand temperatures up to 160 degrees, and its ability to spread easily - through stool.
People have been infected by drinking contaminated water, swimming in contaminated water (even at water parks), crawling on a contaminated carpet, and most commonly by eating contaminated ground beef. Outbreaks have also been caused by contaminated vegetables, fruits, and milk - all of which most likely came in contact with cattle manure, although the pathogen can also be spread by feces of deer, dogs, horses, flies, and humans (person to person transmission accounts for a significant portion of E. coli cases).
The way our meat is processed has created an ideal way for pathogens like E. coli to spread. The feedlots are essentially manure recirculation plants. Not only do the animals live amid pools of manure, but they are also fed manure. In Arkansas alone, nearly 3 million pounds of chicken manure are fed to cattle per year. (See also Feeding Our Food.)
The slaughterhouses and meat grinders only spread the contaminations further. As the hide is pulled off the animal by machine, if the hide was not cleaned properly, chunks of dirt and manure will fall from it onto the meat. When the stomach & intestines are removed, if it is not done properly, the contents will spill out onto the meat and the table. With the quick assembly line and the unskilled workers, manure spillage occurs in about 1 in 5 carcasses. A single gut splatter can quickly spread as hundreds of carcasses quickly move down the line. A contaminated knife will spread germs to everything it touches and the overworked, often illiterate slaughterhouse workers do not always practice stellar hygiene. Meat that falls onto the ground (where, by the way, factory workers are known to urinate - after all, there are large drains for the blood) is picked up and placed back on the conveyor belt.
The odds of contamination grow exponentially in ground beef because beef from many animals is mixed together, increasing the chance of an infected animal being part of each hamburger. A single hamburger contains meat from dozens or even hundreds of different animals. A single cow infected with E. coli can contaminate 32,000 pounds of ground beef. A USDA study found that 78.6% of the tested ground beef contained microbes that are spread primarily by fecal matter.
Anyone bringing raw ground beef into their home should consider it a biohazard. A study by Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona, found that due to beef and poultry contamination, the average American sink contains more fecal matter than the average American toilet. According to Gerba, "you'd be better off eating a carrot stick that fell in your toilet than one that fell in your sink."
____________________
Breakfast: Cereal with soy milk
Lunch: Bean burrito at Anita's Mexican restaurant
Dinner: Avocado sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and Italian dressing, french fries on the side
Monday, June 8, 2009
Who's Hogging Our Antibiotics?
A new ad campaign in DC's metro trains informs the public about the nontheraputic use of antibiotics in our CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations). The ads say that 70% of human antibiotics are fed to livestock, promoting antibiotic-resistant bacterial mutations that can be dangerous to humans. Antibiotic-resistant infections cost the U.S. health care system at least $4 to $5 billion per year and they are harder to treat, require multiple treatments, longer hospital stays, and other interventions before finally being eliminated.
How nontheraputic feeding of antibiotics to livestock threatens our health
I found this on the US Food Policy Blog.
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Breakfast: Bagel with jelly
Lunch: Veggie sandwich from Harris Teeter, added tofurkey
Dinner: Pasta with spaghetti sauce and mushroom turnovers (frozen from Trader Joe's)
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Home On The Range
Cowboys, ranchers, and farmers are American icons, symbols of freedom, independence, self-reliance, and hard work. But, the American rancher is a disappearing breed. In the past 20 years, over 500,000 ranchers sold off their livestock and quit the business. The remaining 800,000 are struggling to survive. The hard-working ranchers idealized in cowboy legends are likely to go broke today.
We live in a new era, where ranchers and farmers are more often portrayed as ignorant, racist, economic parasites, and despoilers of the land. In 1959, eight of our nation's top ten TV shows were westerns. The networks ran 35 westerns in prime time every week. That American ideal is now a distant past.
Many factors have contributed to the downfall of the American rancher, including the rise of the fast food industry, the lack of government regulations on agribusiness, unethical practices by agribusiness firms, and increasing urban development.
The growth of the fast food industry changed the face of the meat packing industry by encouraging consolidation. In 1968, McDonald's (the nation's largest purchaser of beef) bought its beef from 175 local suppliers. By 1970, seeking to achieve product uniformity, McDonald's reduced its suppliers down to five. In 1970, the top four meat packing firms slaughtered 21% of our cattle, but in the 1980's the Reagan administration allowed the meat packing firms to merge without any antitrust enforcement, and today the top four meat packers (ConAgra, IBP, Excel, and National Beef) slaughter 84% of our cattle. (Farmers are not allowed to slaughter their own cattle, per USDA regulations. Cattle are raised by independent ranchers, then auctioned off to slaughterhouses for processing.)
The four major meat packers control about 20% of the live cattle in the US. When the prices of cattle start to rise, the meat packers can flood the market with their own supplies to drive prices back down. Over the last 20 years, the rancher's share of every retail dollar spent on beef has fallen from $0.63 to $0.46.
Cattle ranchers worry that beef industry is deliberately being restructured along the lines of the poultry industry and they do not want to end up like chicken farmers who are virtually powerless, trapped by debt and unfair contracts to large processors. The poultry industry was also transformed in 1980's by a series of mergers. Only eight chicken processors control about 2/3 of US market.
The idea that agribusiness executives secretly talk on the phone with their competitors to set prices and divide up the market, is not just a conspiracy theory. Three executives from Archer Daniels Midland, a supplier of livestock feed additives, were sent to federal prison in 1999 for precisely this. Over a 3.5 year period, Archer Daniels Midland & their conspirators overcharged farmers as much as $180 million for feed additives through a massive price-fixing scheme.
Unfortunately, ranchers are afraid to testify against large companies for fear of retaliation & economic ruin. In 1996, Mike Callicrate, a cattleman from Kansas, testified before the USDA against the large meat packers, who promptly stopped buying his cattle. Callicrate is now an activist for ranchers, speaking at congressional hearings, and joining class action lawsuits against the large meat packers. Callicrate says that he refuses to "make the transition to slavery quietly."
Ranchers have also fallen victim to the advice of agribusiness firms to give their cattle growth hormones. Cattle are much bigger today, so fewer are sold, and most can not be exported to the European Union where bovine growth hormones have been banned.
In some areas, like Colorado, ranchers face threats unrelated to cattle prices. In the last 20 yrs, Colorado has lost 1.5 million acres of land to development. Between population growth and the growing number of vacation homes, land costs have skyrocketed, making it impossible for ranchers to expand their operations. Plus, inheritance taxes can claim more than half of a cattle ranch's land value. Even if a family manages to operate its ranch profitably, handing it down to the next generation may require selling off large chunks of land, diminishing its productive capacity. The median age of Colorado ranchers is 55. Ranchland in Colorado is now diminishing at the rate of 90,000 acres per year.
As our ranchers' traditional way of life is destroyed, so is their livelihood. The suicide rate among ranchers in the US is three times higher than the national average. Osha Gray Davidson states in his book Broken Heartland, "To fail several generations of relatives... to see yourself as the one weak link in a strong chain... is a terrible, and for some, an unbearable burden."
Our current industrialized food system is not only a nightmare for our animals, our health, and our environment, but it is also destroying our hard-working farmers and the ideals of the American west.
____________________
Brunch: Sopes without cheese or sour cream (or meat, obviously)
Dinner: Veggie spring rolls, tofu lettuce wraps, veggie pad thai
We live in a new era, where ranchers and farmers are more often portrayed as ignorant, racist, economic parasites, and despoilers of the land. In 1959, eight of our nation's top ten TV shows were westerns. The networks ran 35 westerns in prime time every week. That American ideal is now a distant past.
Many factors have contributed to the downfall of the American rancher, including the rise of the fast food industry, the lack of government regulations on agribusiness, unethical practices by agribusiness firms, and increasing urban development.
The growth of the fast food industry changed the face of the meat packing industry by encouraging consolidation. In 1968, McDonald's (the nation's largest purchaser of beef) bought its beef from 175 local suppliers. By 1970, seeking to achieve product uniformity, McDonald's reduced its suppliers down to five. In 1970, the top four meat packing firms slaughtered 21% of our cattle, but in the 1980's the Reagan administration allowed the meat packing firms to merge without any antitrust enforcement, and today the top four meat packers (ConAgra, IBP, Excel, and National Beef) slaughter 84% of our cattle. (Farmers are not allowed to slaughter their own cattle, per USDA regulations. Cattle are raised by independent ranchers, then auctioned off to slaughterhouses for processing.)
The four major meat packers control about 20% of the live cattle in the US. When the prices of cattle start to rise, the meat packers can flood the market with their own supplies to drive prices back down. Over the last 20 years, the rancher's share of every retail dollar spent on beef has fallen from $0.63 to $0.46.
Cattle ranchers worry that beef industry is deliberately being restructured along the lines of the poultry industry and they do not want to end up like chicken farmers who are virtually powerless, trapped by debt and unfair contracts to large processors. The poultry industry was also transformed in 1980's by a series of mergers. Only eight chicken processors control about 2/3 of US market.
The idea that agribusiness executives secretly talk on the phone with their competitors to set prices and divide up the market, is not just a conspiracy theory. Three executives from Archer Daniels Midland, a supplier of livestock feed additives, were sent to federal prison in 1999 for precisely this. Over a 3.5 year period, Archer Daniels Midland & their conspirators overcharged farmers as much as $180 million for feed additives through a massive price-fixing scheme.
Unfortunately, ranchers are afraid to testify against large companies for fear of retaliation & economic ruin. In 1996, Mike Callicrate, a cattleman from Kansas, testified before the USDA against the large meat packers, who promptly stopped buying his cattle. Callicrate is now an activist for ranchers, speaking at congressional hearings, and joining class action lawsuits against the large meat packers. Callicrate says that he refuses to "make the transition to slavery quietly."
Ranchers have also fallen victim to the advice of agribusiness firms to give their cattle growth hormones. Cattle are much bigger today, so fewer are sold, and most can not be exported to the European Union where bovine growth hormones have been banned.
In some areas, like Colorado, ranchers face threats unrelated to cattle prices. In the last 20 yrs, Colorado has lost 1.5 million acres of land to development. Between population growth and the growing number of vacation homes, land costs have skyrocketed, making it impossible for ranchers to expand their operations. Plus, inheritance taxes can claim more than half of a cattle ranch's land value. Even if a family manages to operate its ranch profitably, handing it down to the next generation may require selling off large chunks of land, diminishing its productive capacity. The median age of Colorado ranchers is 55. Ranchland in Colorado is now diminishing at the rate of 90,000 acres per year.
As our ranchers' traditional way of life is destroyed, so is their livelihood. The suicide rate among ranchers in the US is three times higher than the national average. Osha Gray Davidson states in his book Broken Heartland, "To fail several generations of relatives... to see yourself as the one weak link in a strong chain... is a terrible, and for some, an unbearable burden."
Our current industrialized food system is not only a nightmare for our animals, our health, and our environment, but it is also destroying our hard-working farmers and the ideals of the American west.
____________________
Brunch: Sopes without cheese or sour cream (or meat, obviously)
Dinner: Veggie spring rolls, tofu lettuce wraps, veggie pad thai
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Meet Your Meat: Chickens and Turkeys
Chickens and turkeys are by far the most abused animals on the planet. They are crammed into dark, windowless, overcrowded sheds with as many as 40,000 birds per shed. These sheds are filthy with excrement and reek of ammonia.
A writer for The New Yorker visited a chicken shed and wrote, “I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe…. There must have been 30,000 chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me... living in nearly total darkness, and they would spend every minute of their lives that way.”
These conditions cause the chickens and turkeys to develop chronic respiratory diseases, bronchitis, weakened immune systems, "ammonia burn" a painful eye infection, and open, untreated, infected sores and wounds.
(Yes, turkeys and chickens like this are processed for slaughter... mmm.)
A writer for The New Yorker visited a chicken shed and wrote, “I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe…. There must have been 30,000 chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me... living in nearly total darkness, and they would spend every minute of their lives that way.”These conditions cause the chickens and turkeys to develop chronic respiratory diseases, bronchitis, weakened immune systems, "ammonia burn" a painful eye infection, and open, untreated, infected sores and wounds.
(Yes, turkeys and chickens like this are processed for slaughter... mmm.) Not only is the floor of the shed covered in excrement, but it is also littered with dead bird corpses. The birds that don't die from diseases cause by filth, or heart attacks caused by the gross weight gain, can die from starvation. Because chickens and turkeys are genetically manipulated and fed huge quantities of antibiotics to promote abnormally fast and large growth, often their legs cripple under their immense weight. The crippled animals can not stand or walk to get food or water. By the age of 6 weeks, 90% of broiler chickens are so obese they can not walk.
Chickens and turkeys are handled very violently. They are roughly grabbed by their legs, necks, wings, and slung into crates, or slammed onto the ground. They are kicked, and stomped on, then left to suffer with broken legs or wings.
Plus, birds are exempt from the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, so they have no federal legal protections. At slaughter, chickens and turkeys are shackled upside down by their fragile legs. Their throats are slit while they are still fully conscious, they are then immersed into a pot of scalding water to remove the feathers. Many are still alive when they are scalded to death. Every year, 9 billion (with a 'b') chickens and 300 million turkeys are killed for food in the US.
If you eat chicken and turkey, you can watch this:
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Breakfast: Fruit leather and string cheese.
Lunch: Veggie Delight sub from Subway.
Dinner: Stir Fry. Just toss in ANY veggies you like (squash, zucchini, broccoli, bell peppers, onion, tomoato, water chestnuts, spinach, those little corn things, even pineapple, just to name a few) and add soy sauce, or teriyaki sauce, or any type of marinade, it doesn't even have to be Asian, just something you like!
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