From the cream in our Monday morning coffee to the roast chicken at Sunday night dinner, we accrue an incalculable debt to food animals. We depend on them for nourishment. We gather festively around the cooking of a turkey or ham during holidays. Yet many people do not realize that most of the animals that grace our tables are the victims of harsh suffering long before slaughter.
Consider the modern turkey. It is far removed from the wild, native bird that the pilgrims roasted for those original Thanksgiving gatherings. Today's conventional turkey, the Broad Breasted White, is an entirely industrial creature. It is bred to grow freakishly quickly and raised on grain inside massive buildings. Most male turkeys, or Toms, become so breast heavy, they can barely stand up -- and certainly can't reproduce. Artificial insemination is the only way this man-made species survives.
Such mass-production meat factories -- called "concentrated animal feeding operations," or CAFOs -- exist for most of the animal food products Americans buy: cows, pigs and chickens. At least 90 percent of food animals in the U.S. are raised this way, and other countries are rapidly adopting the CAFO model as well. These enterprises are a perverse inversion of our idea of family farms with pigs rolling in the mud, cows grazing in pastures, roosters crowing from fence posts, and farmers interacting with the animals. At CAFOs, vast numbers of animals--100,000 cows on a feedlot, 30,000 chickens in a broiler shed, 1,000 hogs in a windowless warehouse--are confined in pens or cages, often kept alive with regular doses of antibiotics.
As CAFOs take over the food system, it is clear that there is already plenty of animal protein in our diets. Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese each year, for example, largely because of the flood of cheap milk coming from dairy CAFOs. This is three times the per capita consumption of the 1970s. Cheese is the largest source of saturated fats in our diets, which tend to raise cholesterol levels and are linked to heart disease. Dairy products, meat, poultry, and eggs don't have to be nearly so cheap or abundant -- and yet we are raising 10 billion food animals in the United States every year.
The high costs of factory-farmed foods are being paid for by the animals, rural communities, taxpayers, and the environment. Large-scale animal operations generate the sewage output comparable to a small metropolis. The waste oozing from these highly concentrated production systems fouls the air, land, and water. Sadly, if you purchase animal products from fast food restaurants, supermarkets, big box stores, or other mainstream outlets, there is a strong chance that you are eating at the expense of someone else's community well-being.
You don't have to become a vegan or vegetarian to opt out of this system that might best be described as "organized irresponsibility." (Those are certainly viable options, however.) Some of the country's best small farmers are demonstrating that traditional methods of livestock production are practical and economically viable. They are raising locally adapted breeds of livestock on pastures where the animals eat a more natural diet, grow more slowly, and naturally socialize. These animals are also raised without routine doses of antibiotics and growth hormones, essential tools in industrial CAFO production. Third-party certification organizations such as Animal Welfare Approved have established standards combined with regular audits to encourage such humane production practices.
Still, labels can be confusing, and some like "natural" and "healthy" are misleading. The best way to know where your food comes from and how it was produced is to know your farmer.
The other way to reduce the role of CAFOs is to scale back the amount of meat we consume. Many individuals are simply orienting their meals around more grains and vegetables with smaller portions of higher quality, sustainably sourced meats, dairy, and eggs. Another groundswell is the Meatless Monday campaign, which has already been embraced by chefs, restaurants, food services, k-12 schools, and college campuses.
Attending to the conditions under which your food is raised is a profound way of giving thanks to the animals that nourish you daily. It can also lead to some of the most satisfying meals you've ever shared or tasted.
Resources:
CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories
Grass Pastured Meats: eatwild.com, americangrassfed.org
Daniel Imhoff is an author, independent publisher, and homestead farmer and the editor of CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories (Earth Aware Press, 2010). His other books include Food Fight: The Citizen's Guide to a Food and Farm Bill (2007) and Farming with the Wild: Enhancing Biodiversity on Farms and Ranches (2003).
Follow Dan Imhoff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/watershedmedia
Kathy Freston: The Steps to Becoming a Veganist
The ridiculous and unneeded amount of food produced in this country is a real problem. Especially since most of it is produced without at thought to the livestock or health of the people who eat it. And then waste because not all of it can possibly be consumed before it goes bad. The meat industry is the worst offender. Unfortunately, one of the problems is cost. As long as they can produce it for cheap, it will sell since most of the people who eat the food that comes out of these places are the people who can't get to or afford meats and veggies from a local farm/farmers market or even the organic stuff from the grocery store. As long as these industries have a strangle hold on the less fortunate and the government allows them to get away with it, any real change will be hard to implement.
This is a wonderful article! We must always respect the lives (both animal and plant) that grace out plates and allow us to live.
Percy Schmeiser is a Canadian farmer, whose Canola fields were contaminated with Monsanto's genetically engineered Round-Up Ready Canola by pollen from a nearby farm. Monsanto says it doesn't matter how the contamination took place, and is therefore demanding Schmeiser pay their Technology Fee...
Rodney Nelson's family farm is being forced into a similar lawsuit by Monsanto.
Schmeiser, Nelson and hundreds of other farmers are being forced to pay Monsanto ! http://organicconsumers.org/monsanto/crime.cfm
Watch this short video !, What's "Wrong With Our Food System" Learning this from an 11 year old may shock you ! http://www.aliveraw.com/Articles/Whats-Wrong-With-Our-Food-System.aspx
The Future of Food Documentary Film: http://www.thefutureoffood.com/
Canadians Take Action ! Bill C-474 Voted Down. The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network http://www.cban.ca/
Demand President Obama Stop Monsanto's Takeover at the USDA! The USDA approved Monsanto's genetically engineered sugar beets just a week after it approved GE alfalfa. http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5810
Tell President Obama not to cave to Monsanto!
http://thefutureoffoodfilm.wordpress.com/
I don't GMO's in my diet. But now all crops are at risk of being contaiminated from GMO sugar beets and alfalfa, Thanks to Obama & Harper. That is why I posted this, I ment no offence to anyone, just trying to spred the word...
Also your family & friends might enjoy The Greenpeace GMO list, espeically if they have children.
This new Greenpeace GMO list is our weapon, our sword !http://gmoguide.greenpeace.ca/shoppers_guide.pdf
True Food Shoppers Guide mobile application for iPhone and Android! http://itunes.apple.com/app/true-food/id379459607?mt=8
Complete List U.S Non-GMO http://truefoodnow.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/web_new-ge-booklet.pdf, Update: http://www.nongmoshoppingguide.com/Non-GMO-Shopping-Guide.pdf
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8335986/Eat-less-red-meat-Government-scientists-warn.html
I generally let them do my thinking for me.
"Our current knowledge does not provide us with the means to predict the ecological long-term effects of releasing organisms into the environment. So it is beyond the competence of the scientific system to answer such a question...
The number of possibilities how the release of Genetically Engineered organisms into the environment may upset the ecology is very large. The possible complications are extremely difficult to evaluate. With few exceptions, governments all over the world are allowing the release of GE organisms into nature without requiring careful scientific investigation of the environmental consequences.
This is nothing less than blind experimentation with the environment with unknown and unpredictable consequences, especially as the released genes cannot be recalled.
"... some GMOs can possess genuinely new characteristics that may require greater scrutiny than organisms produced by traditional techniques of plant and animal breeding. Since long-term ecological impacts of GMOs may be extremely difficult to predict or study prior to commercialization, ESA strongly recommends a cautious approach to releasing GMOs into the environment."
For more info goto: http://www.psrast.org/ctenvir.htm
Please See: 10 reasons why we don’t need GM foods. http://www.gmwatch.org/10-reasons-why-we-dont-need-gm-foods
“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.” ~Thomas Jefferson, 1781
Regardless of what you eat, GMO crops are a danger to the environment.
Greenpeace GMO list. http://gmoguide.greenpeace.ca/shoppers_guide.pdf
True Food Shoppers Guide mobile application for iPhone and Android! http://itunes.apple.com/app/true-food/id379459607?mt=8
Complete List U.S Non-GMO http://truefoodnow.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/web_new-ge-booklet.pdf, Update: http://www.nongmoshoppingguide.com/Non-GMO-Shopping-Guide.pdf
ShopNoGMO, http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shopnogmo/id393454798?mt=8
Scientists warn of link between dangerous new pathogen and Monsanto’s Roundup, February 20th, 2011 http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2011/02/20/scientists-warn-of-link-between-dangerou
Monsanto's Roundup triggers over 40 plant diseases and endangers human and animal health, January 14, 2011 http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12806:monsanto-s-roundup-triggers-over-40-plant-diseases-and-endangers-human-and-animal-health
I apologize if I offend you, not my intention. But the links I posted are not harmful to anyone...
Central park won't grow enough soy for all of them.
Ware your hat and hang out with your combination of crystals, also eat lots of meat.
You might overdose on "vital solar life force energy" found in veggies.
I don't know about you, but I have some other things to do with my time.
Plants are autotrophs(producers), they take in the sunlight(photosynthesis), soil and water to produce(plants are natures chemical engineering factories) complex molecule's, in the form of carbohydrates, proteins, vitamin's and minerals etc... This is the beginning of the food chain(Trophic level 1).
Vegan's and herbivores eat from trophic level 1(pure sunlight, soil and water), plants. Also plants, in there manufacturing of complex molecule's, release a by-product, "vital solar life force energy",which we will discus in a moment. Carnivores(trophic level 3) eat from trophic level 2, herbivores.
This(trophic level 2) is a recycled food, as the solar energy and nutrition from the sun, has already been absorbed by a herbivore. Meat is totally devoid of the "vital solar life force energy" of the sun(trophic level 1). The moment an animal dies, the life force leaves it's body rapidly. To a vegan, this herbivore meat/food has "already been chewed", a secondary by-product of trophic level 1, not fit for consumption.
We want to be the first to eat a food(trophic level 1, "vital solar life force energy"), eating meat is like someone chewing food, taking most of the vital nutrition out of it, and then spitting it in my mouth, Yuk, it's already been chewed.
Where do you suppose organic fertilizers come from? For the most part, it's chicken litter and cow dung from chickens and cows raised for food. Blood meal and bone meal are also common organic fertilizers furnished courtesy of the animal-based food industry.
Without raising herbivores for food, there would be little if any organic agriculture, particularly the annual crops that make up most of the typical vegan diet.
In the history of the human species, herding preceded farming by several thousands of years as a widespread method of food production. Animal husbandry was in many ways a developmental prerequisite for agriculture, from beasts of burden for working the fields to ruminant livestock for producing fertilizer from inedible grasses.
Domesticated animals are an integral part of sustainable agriculture. This fact cannot be explained away with some new-age spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Plants cannot thrive in a vacuum without a supporting ecosystem, and our managed agricultural practices must conform to this biological imperative.
Excessive animal waste kills the soil and water ways, rendering them useless.
Acupuncture is based Chi, or what you call pseudo-religion mumbo-jumbo. We call it Chi(Qi) or life force and it emanates from everything and flows through everything. Acupuncture meridians and Chakras, to those like you maybe nonsense, But to those like me, there is nothing that can withstand it's force. We absorb it from the five elements. We channel it at will ! With practice it can be enhanced, with the arts of Chi Gong, Tai Chi or Ba Gua Kung Fu...
An autotroph, or producer, is an organism that produces complex organic compounds (such as carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) from simple inorganic molecules using energy from light (by photosynthesis) or inorganic chemical reactions (chemosynthesis). They are the producers in a food chain, such as plants on land or algae in water. They are able to make their own food and can fix carbon. Therefore, they do not utilize organic compounds as an energy source or a carbon source. Autotrophs can reduce carbon dioxide (add hydrogen to it) to make organic compounds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotroph
http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/
That's the key to all of it (at least in the US).
What's your 5k time?
How many bodyweight dead-hang pullups can you do?
http://www.earthsave.org/lifestyle/carllewis.htm