Vegetarian For Life

Guess Who's a Vegan?

2010-02-07T15:56:00.000-08:00

The Kucinich Surprise

Athletes Eat Plant-Based Diet for Health, Longevity and Environmental Concerns

2010-01-30T13:30:00.000-08:00

http://www.NaturalNews.com/z028056_plant-based_diet_athletes.html

January 30 2010
by M.Thornley, citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) Vegan athletes are finding plant foods a source for renewed energy and achievement, and are proving, against the traditional wisdom favoring meat consumption, that a vegan diet will support competitive athletic performance. Three vegan star performers are Tony Gonzalez, a tight-end football player, Mac Danzig, a martial arts fighter and Brendan Brazier, a tri-athlete. Reasons these athletes gave for switching to a vegan diet were health and ethical issues related to meat consumption, long term health maintenance, and concern for the environment.

In an article titled "The 127 Lb Vegan," January 25, 2008, writer Reed Albergotti chronicles the odyssey of Tony Gonzalez of the Kansas City Chiefs, who switched to eating vegan after suffering a bout with Bell's palsy. Many doctors advise a vegetarian diet to combat this disorder. Gonzalez at age 31 was also concerned about shortened life span among athletes.

Prior to his brush with disease, Gonzalez had subscribed to the conventional wisdom about athletic performance. He ate steak, drank a gallon of milk a day, and loved macaroni and cheese. In ten seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs, Gonzalez established himself as the best tight end in the league. When he decided to become vegan, he worried that a vegan diet would not sustain his athletic performance. Under advice from a vegan strength coach, Gonzalez learned to prepare protein drinks, select fish oils and eat breads dense with whole grains, nuts and seeds to maintain his weight and strength. In his 11th season Gonzalez made 99 catches, and a nagging foot condition cleared up. He found renewed energy and stamina.

Like Gonzalez, Mac Danzig, a martial arts fighter, had encountered problems such as vertigo and ear infections. He discontinued milk and milk products, then gave up eating mammals and then poultry and fish in 2004, and eventually became vegan. Danzig says his diet improved his recovery from workouts while retaining his competitive edge. When questioned about his motives, Danzig, who is a nature enthusiast, cites environmental concerns.

Brendan Brazier is a vegan triathlete from Vancouver, Canada, who describes himself as 80% raw. He became vegetarian in 1990, and in 1998, a strict vegan. Since information on how to become a successful vegan athlete is not widely available, Brazier used trial and error. He noted that when he consumed highly processed protein isolate powders, he experienced muscle stiffness and joint pain. When he began to eat all raw, natural, alkalizing foods his recovery time improved, and his stiffness and pain faded.

Brazier is the author of "The Thrive Diet," and is a world recognized authority on plant-based nutrition. In 2006, Brazier won the National 50km Ultramarathon Championship, setting a new record. Brazier holds an impressive record of other triumphs. He credits his vegan diet to improved sleep and endurance. Brazier is a sought-after speaker who promotes environmental awareness, an interest also shared by Gonzalez and Danzig.

How Factory Farms Are Pumping Americans Full of Deadly Bacteria and Pathogens

2010-01-15T14:43:00.001-08:00

By Kathy Freston, AlterNet
Posted on January 13, 2010, Printed on January 15, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145068/

After reading www.BirdFluBook.org, by Dr. Michael Greger, I was stunned to realize the extent to which we have endangered our health by allowing factory farms to flourish and produce 99 percent of the meat, dairy and eggs we eat. Not only are dangerous flu viruses mutating because of these concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), but we are also being exposed to some other very serious bacteria and pathogens. Things have gotten out of hand in our food production, especially in the livestock sector.

In Part I of my interview with Dr. Greger, he explained the growing potential of deadly flu viruses. In Part 2 of the interview, we discuss E. coli, salmonella and other worrisome pathogens.

Kathy Freston: Where does E. coli come from and how does it get into food? Why is it often found on vegetables?

Michael Greger: E. coli is an intestinal pathogen. It only gets in the food if fecal matter gets in the food. Since plants don’t have intestines, all E. coli infections—in fact all food poisoning—comes from animals. When’s the last time you heard of a person getting Dutch elm disease or a really bad case of aphids? People don’t get plant diseases; they get animal diseases. The problem is that because of the number of animals raised today, a billion tons of manure are produced every year in the United States—the weight of 10,000 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. Dairy cow and pig factories often dump millions of gallons of putrefying waste into massive open-air cesspits, which can leak and contaminate water used to irrigate our crops. That’s how a deadly fecal pathogen like E. coli O157:H7 can end up contaminating our spinach. So regardless of what we eat, we all need to fight against the expansion of factory farming in our communities, our nation and around the world.

KF: What percentage of the population gets hit by the bacteria? How many of them die? Could that number increase?

MG: While E. coli O157:H7 remains the leading cause of acute kidney failure in U.S. children, fewer than 100,000 Americans get infected every year, and fewer than 100 die. But millions get infected with other types of E. coli that can cause urinary tract infections (UTIs) that can invade the bloodstream and cause an estimated 36,000 deaths annually in the United States.

KF: We only occasionally hear of the very few fatal E. coli cases; is it really a widespread problem?

MG: When medical researchers at the University of Minnesota took more than 1,000 food samples from multiple retail markets, they found evidence of fecal contamination in 69 percent of the pork and beef and 92 percent of the poultry samples. Nine out of 10 chicken carcasses in the store may be contaminated with fecal matter. And half of the poultry samples were contaminated with the UTI-causing E. coli bacteria.

Scientists now suspect that by eating chicken, women infect their lower intestinal tract with these meat-borne bacteria, which can then creep up into their bladders. Hygiene measures to prevent UTIs have traditionally included wiping from front to back after bowel movements and urinating after intercourse to flush out any invaders, but now women can add poultry avoidance as a way to help prevent urinary tract infections.

KF: Are there any long-term problems for people who ingest E. coli and have a bad day or two with diarrhea, or is the problem over once out of the system?

MG: Last month the Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention released a report on the long-term consequences of common causes of food poisoning. Life-long complications of E. coli O157:H7 infection include end-stage kidney disease, permanent brain damage and insulin-dependent diabetes.

KF: Is E. coli a problem if the meat is cooked?

MG: With the exception of prions, the infectious agents responsible for mad cow disease and the human equivalent—which can survive even incineration at temperatures hot enough to melt lead—all viral, fungal and bacterial pathogens in our food supply can be killed by proper cooking. Why then do tens of millions of Americans come down with food poisoning every year? Cross-contamination is thought to account for the bulk of infections. For example, chicken carcasses are so covered in bacteria that researchers at the University of Arizona found more fecal bacteria in the kitchen—on sponges and dish towels, and in the sink drain—than they found swabbing the toilet. In a meat-eater’s house it may be safer to lick the rim of the toilet seat than the kitchen countertop, because people aren’t preparing chickens in their toilets. Chicken "juice" is essentially raw fecal soup.

KF: What goes on inside the body when a human ingests E. coli?

MG: Depending on the strain, the number of bacteria ingested, and the immune status of the victim it can fail to cause any disease at all, or in the worst cases, cause multi-system organ failure. Here’s how one mother described what E. coli O157:H7 did to her 3-year-old daughter Brianna:

The pain during the first 80 hours was horrific, with intense abdominal cramping every 10 to 12 minutes. Her intestines swelled to three times their normal size and she was placed on a ventilator. Emergency surgery became essential and her colon was removed. After further surgery, doctors decided to leave the incision open, from sternum to pubis, to allow Brianna’s swollen organs room to expand and prevent them from ripping her skin. Her heart was so swollen it was like a sponge and bled from every pore. Her liver and pancreas shut down and she was gripped by thousands of convulsions, which caused blood clots in her eyes. We were told she was brain-dead.

KF: What a horror. Why is it deadly for some and not others?

MG: We think it has to do with the virulence of the bacteria—some strains are deadlier than others—and the vulnerability of the host. We’re not sure why children under 5 years of age are at the highest risk for dangerous complications, but that is certainly a finding that has been consistent.

KF: Is factory-farmed meat more likely to get E. coli out into the market, or is all meat (even free range) carrying that potential?

MG: In chickens, these bacteria cause a disease called colibacillosis, now one of the most significant and widespread infectious diseases in the poultry industry due to the way we now raise these animals. Studies have shown infection risk to be directly linked to overcrowding on factory chicken farms. In caged egg-laying hens, the most significant risk factor for flock infection is hen density per cage. Researchers have calculated that affording just a single quart of additional living space to each hen would be associated with a corresponding 33 percent drop in the risk of colibacillosis outbreak. This is one of the reasons many efforts to improve the lives of farmed animals is critical not only for animal welfare, but for the health of humans and animals alike.

In terms of other infections like Campylobacter, the most common cause of bacterial food poisoning in the United States, Consumer Reports published an analysis of retail chicken in its January 2010 issue. The majority of store-bought chickens were contaminated with Campylobacter, which can trigger arthritis, heart and blood infections, and a condition called Guillain-Barré syndrome that can leave people permanently disabled and paralyzed. Comparing store brands, 59 percent of the conventional factory-farmed chickens were contaminated, compared to 57 percent of chickens raised organically. So there might be a marginal difference, but the best strategy may be to avoid meat completely. With the virtual elimination of polio, the most common cause of neuromuscular paralysis in the United States now comes from eating chicken.

KF: What about salmonella? Is it really a big deal, or is it just a matter of an upset stomach?

MG: Salmonella kills more Americans than any other food-borne illness. There is an epidemic of egg-borne food poisoning every year in the United States. To this day, more than 100,000 Americans are sickened annually by salmonella-infected eggs.

KF: Do we have more salmonella now than we did 25 or 50 years ago? If so, why?

MG: There was a time when our grandparents could drink eggnog and children could eat raw cookie dough without fear of joining the thousands of Americans hospitalized with salmonella infections every year. Before the industrialization of egg production, salmonella only sickened a few hundred Americans every year and Salmonella enteritidis was not found in eggs at all. By the beginning of the 21st century, however, Salmonella enteritidis-contaminated eggs were sickening an estimated 182,000 Americans annually.

There are many industrial practices that contribute to the alarming rates of this disease. Most eggs come from hens confined in battery cages, small barren wire enclosures affording these animals less living space than a single sheet of letter-sized paper for virtually their entire one- to two-year lifespan. Salmonella-contaminated battery cage operations in the United States confine an average of more than 100,000 hens in a single shed. The massive volume of contaminated airborne fecal dust in such a facility rapidly accelerates the spread of infection.

Factory farming practices also led to the spread of salmonella around the world. Just as the feeding of dead animals to live ones triggered the mad cow crisis, this same practice has also been implicated in the global spread of salmonella. Once egg production wanes, hens may be ground up and rendered into what is called “spent hen meal,” and then fed to other hens. More than half of the feed samples for farmed birds containing slaughter-plant waste tested by the FDA were found contaminated with salmonella. CDC researchers have estimated that more than a million cases of salmonella poisoning in Americans can be directly tied to feed containing animal byproducts.

KF: What happens to the body when salmonella gets into the system?

MG: Within 12 to 72 hours of infection the fever, diarrhea and abdominal cramps start. If the victim is lucky it’s over within a week. If not, the bacteria can burrow through the intestinal wall and infect the bloodstream, seeding its way to other organs, including the heart, bones and brain.

KF: Are there any long-term consequences from exposure?

MG: Thanks to salmonella infection one breakfast omelet can now trigger persistent irritable bowel syndrome and what’s called reactive arthritis, which can become a debilitating lifelong condition of swollen painful joints. Because salmonella can infect the ovaries of hens, eggs from infected birds can be laid prepackaged with the bacteria inside. According to research funded by the American Egg Board, salmonella can survive sunny-side-up, over-easy and scrambled egg cooking methods.

KF: Would free-range meat or eggs make a difference in preventing it?

MG: There is evidence that eggs from cage-free hens pose less of a threat. In the largest study of its kind (analyzing more than 30,000 samples taken from more than 5,000 operations across two dozen countries in Europe) cage-free barns had about 40 percent lower odds of harboring the egg-related strain of salmonella.

KF: Can we get salmonella just from touching something tainted?

MG: Absolutely. In fact the infective dose for salmonella is as few 15-20 bacteria, and a single egg can be infected with hundreds. It’s important to understand where the egg comes out. Eggs emerge from the hen’s vent, which is kind of a joint opening for both her vagina and anus, which explains the level of fecal contamination one can find on eggs.

KF: Is it contagious?

MG: Person-to-person transmission of salmonella can occur when an infected person's feces, unwashed from his or her hands, contaminates food during preparation or comes into direct contact with another person.

KF: Who is most at risk for serious illness or even death?

MG: More than half of all reported salmonella infections occur in children, who are especially susceptible to serious complications. Elderly and immunocompromised adults are also particularly vulnerable. In the United States, though, some strains of salmonella are growing dangerously resistant to up to six major classes of antibiotics, due in large part to the irresponsible factory farming practice of feeding millions of pounds of antibiotics to animals every year as a crutch to combat the stressful and overcrowded conditions of intensive animal agriculture systems. This puts everyone at risk.

KF: What is the overall solution to prevent these dangerous pathogens and bacteria?

MG: Over the last few decades new animal-to-human infectious diseases have emerged at an unprecedented rate. According to the World Health Organization, the increasing global demand for animal protein is a key underlying factor.

Swine flu is not the only deadly human disease traced to factory farming practices. The meat industry took natural herbivores like cows and sheep, and turned them into carnivores and cannibals by feeding them slaughterhouse waste, blood and manure. Then they fed people “downer” animals—those too sick to even walk. Now the world has mad cow disease.

In 2005 the world’s largest and deadliest outbreak of a pathogen called Strep. suis emerged, causing meningitis and deafness in people handling infected pork products. Experts blamed the emergence on factory farming practices. Pig factories in Malaysia birthed the Nipah virus, one of the deadliest of human pathogens, a contagious respiratory disease causing relapsing brain infections and killing 40 percent of people infected. Its emergence was likewise blamed squarely on factory farming.

The pork industry in the U.S. feeds pigs millions of pounds of human antibiotics every year just to promote growth in such a stressful, unhygienic environment, and now there are these multi-drug-resistant bacteria and we as physicians are running out of good antibiotic options. As the UK’s chief medical officer put it in his 2009 annual report, "Every inappropriate use of antibiotics in agriculture is a potential death warrant for a future patient."

In the short term we need to put an end to the riskiest practices, such as extreme confinement—gestation crates and battery cages—and the non-therapeutic feeding of antibiotics. We have to follow the advice of the American Public Health Association to declare a moratorium on factory farms and eventually phase them out completely. How we treat animals can have global public health implications.

KF: Sounds like part of the solution is to gravitate toward a vegetarian diet. Check out One Bite At a Time for information on how to do it.

PETA to Pope Benedict XVI: Veganize the Vatican

2010-01-04T16:21:00.000-08:00

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2009/12/peta-pope-benedict-vegan.html

PETA to Pope Benedict XVI: Veganize the Vatican
December 31, 2009

Taking a cue from Pope Benedict XVI's message for the Catholic Church's World Day of Peace, in which he calls for "a real change of outlook which will result in new life-styles" as a means to combat damage to the environment, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals vice president Bruce Friedrich fired off a letter asking the pontiff to become a vegan and decree that only foods free of animal products be served in Vatican City.

Citing a 2006 report from the United Nations' food and agriculture organization titled "Livestock's Long Shadow," in which the harmful environmental affects of meat production are detailed, Friedrich urges the pope "to consider the fact that the most effective action an individual can take to fight climate change is to go vegan."

By cutting meat, dairy products and eggs from the Vatican's menu, Friedrich argues, Benedict XVI could further not just his goal of reduced energy consumption worldwide, but also influence his followers to live healthier lives as a result of vegan eating habits. (Of course, he notes, animals raised for food stand to benefit from the Vatican's shift to veganism as well.)

The Catholic Church marks World Day of Peace on New Year's Day, but the pope's remarks were released in advance of the event. No word from the Vatican yet on PETA's request, but we suspect the group isn't holding its breath.

Meet Your Meat

2009-12-30T07:23:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4

Quitting Meat Is at the Heart of 2009's Health Zeitgeist

2009-12-20T15:41:00.000-08:00

Quitting Meat Is at the Heart of 2009's Health Zeitgeist, And Author Kathy Freston Is Leading the Debate
By AlterNet
December 20, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144683/

Author Kathy Freston promotes a body/mind/spirit approach to health and happiness that includes a concentration on healthy diet, emotional introspection, spiritual practice, and loving relationships. Over a dozen of her most popular articles for AlterNet this year concern the health benefits of a meat-free or vegan diet. Freston is a New York Times best-selling author, and her latest book is The Quantum Wellness Cleanse: A 21 Day Essential Guide to Healing Your Body, Mind and Spirit. You can find more of her work at kathyfreston.com.

Each of Freston's essays were read by tens of thousands of people on AlterNet. Here are 10 of her most popular from 2009:

1. 10 Signs Vegetarianism Is Catching On

Martha Stewart promotes a vegetarian Thanksgiving? Recently, much attention has been lavished on the horrors of factory farming and the advantages of a meatless diet.

2. Jonathan Safran Foer's 'Eating Animals' Book Will Fundamentally Change the Way You Think About Food

"He is the Michael Pollan of a younger generation: grittier and more daring, more insightful and decisive."

3. There Is a Way to Help Avoid Heart Disease and Diabetes: You Are What You Eat!

A plant-based diet is both preventative and healing, whereas a diet high in animal protein is destructive to our health.

4. A Solution For Diabetes: A Vegan Diet

More Doctors and nutritional scientists are saying that a diet high meat is disastrous to our health, while a plant-based (vegan) diet prevents disease and is restorative to it.

5. Is Eating a Plant-Based Diet a Cure for Cancer?

Experts are saying a plant-based diet is not only good for our health, but it's also curative of the very serious diseases we face.

6. Meatless Mondays: Do Something Good for the Earth and Your Health

A new campaign is focused on convincing the world not to eat chickens, pigs, and other animals -- just one day per week.

7. Eating Meat Is Not Natural

Eating meat is a relatively recent phenomenon in human evolution. And our bodies have never adapted to it.

8. Will We Still Eat Meat, Drink Milk, and Fry Eggs in 2109?

The world will be a much better place in 100 years if we rethink the way we eat.

9. Our Appetite for Animals Is Taking Us Toward Apocalypse

Cutting your meat-eating habits is one of the most impactful ways you can prevent drastic changes to our climate.

10. Are We So Addicted to Meat That We Can't See Where the Swine Flu Came From?

A virus like swine flu is a completely predictable outcome of our cruel and appallingly filthy factory farming systems.

Mayo reports on slaughterhouse illness research

2009-12-13T10:36:00.000-08:00

If working with dead pigs does this to some people, think of what eating them can do to you!

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5huQrUAGc7wv-FEaeH5kUcDqTs6-AD9CAJ9Q81

Mayo reports on slaughterhouse illness research
By CHRIS WILLIAMS (AP) – Dec 1, 2009

MINNEAPOLIS — Doctors at the Mayo Clinic and government public health experts have confirmed the mysterious illnesses in 24 slaughterhouse workers in Minnesota and Indiana from 2006 to 2008 was caused by an autoimmune response to a mist of pig brain tissue.

Their article was published Monday in the British medical journal Lancet Neurology. Mayo Clinic neurologist Dr. Daniel Lachance, the lead author, said it was the first comprehensive account of the outbreak and response from Mayo, the state Health Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This was really a kind of unique experiment of nature where an unusual form of harvesting a part of an animal was utilized and inadvertently exposed individuals through their respiratory tract or their eyes or mouth and ended up triggering an autoimmune response in their own bodies," he said.

The immune response attacked the nervous systems of the 21 workers in Minnesota and three in Indiana from November 2006 to May 2008, causing painful symptoms that included weakness and fatigue to confusion and seizures.

All are improving and most no longer have measurable symptoms, Lachance said, although two may have permanent damage.

All the patients worked in or near areas where compressed air was used to extract pig brains, which are considered a delicacy in some Asian countries. It was a rarely used process then, he said, and he knows of no slaughterhouses that still use it.

Lachance said the Minnesota patients told them the symptoms started to appear within weeks of a speed up on the production line in 2006. "The line speed, the line speed, that's what we heard over and over again," he said.

At slower speeds, he said, workers were able to use compressed air to blast the brains down out of the head and into a bucket under the table.

"But it sounds as if as the line speed increased, the operator was not able to handle the process properly and as a consequence this material was being directed in all directions," Lachance said. "That's our best estimate of what was really going on."

Lachance said it's interesting that blood drawn by the Health Department from more than 85 other employees of the Minnesota slaughterhouse showed that 29 of them had antibodies indicating they were exposed to the brain mist, but didn't get sick. It's not clear why.

"There are actually many, many examples of this in medicine," he said. "There are people who have antibodies to HIV, yet don't have AIDS. There are many instances where the antibodies are the markers for a disease, but aren't a main factor in the appearance of the disease."

The researchers also found a strong connection between how sick workers got and how closely they worked to the head table, he said.

The paper doesn't report on the exact biological mechanism of the disease and Lachance said it might never been known. The slaughterhouses stopped removing brains with compressed air in late 2007, and the Mayo Clinic hasn't seen a new case to study in more than a year.

"Essentially, this is something that has come and passed," he said.

The cluster of the unusual neurological disease was first identified by the Mayo Clinic among workers at the Quality Pork Processors plant in nearby Austin in September 2007. The clinic reviewed its records and discovered it saw its first patient with the symptoms in November 2006. The last patient was in May 2008.

QPP is a privately owned supplier to Hormel Foods Co. The name of the slaughterhouse in Delphi, Ind., has not been made public.

Minnesota Health Department epidemiologist Dr. Aaron DeVries said his department hopes to have its own article published soon. It will focus more on what changed in the slaughterhouses in 2006 to prompt the outbreak and the work done nationally by public health authorities to identify other victims.

The Recession Is Taking a Bite Out of Meat Consumption

2009-12-02T15:03:00.000-08:00

The Recession Is Taking a Bite Out of Meat Consumption
By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet
December 2, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144301/

The recession is having one positive effect. The national cholesterol is going down.

More than half of Americans have cut back on meat, many becoming "recession-bred flexitarians," says Gourmet magazine--people who use meat as a condiment not as a meal anchor.

Even the doyenne of taste and nutrition, Martha Stewart, broadcast a vegetarian Thanksgiving show last week.

A small drop in meat exerts big consequences on your health says Katherine Tallmadge of the American Dietetic Association because red meat is the "primary source of saturated fat, which can boost levels of bad LDL cholesterol and inflammation."

It is no doubt the reason death from heart attacks goes down not up during recessions as Christopher Ruhm, an economist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro reports.

Unfortunately, it also has a big effect on meat producers for whom the droves of flexitarians are equivalent to Atlanta and all its suburbs going vegetarian. And that's before you consider the effect that the swine, sorry H1N1 virus has had on the pork industry.

To address the low demand emergency, the Washington DC-based National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) has a kind of Cash for Clunkers plan.

Funded by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act revenues, its Meat the Need proposal would increase the amount that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients receive in food assistance if they use it for animal products. Recipients would either get a separate electronic benefits transfer (EBT) card or earmarked vouchers.

"Product purchases will quickly reduce the oversupply on the market while additional funding to SNAP for meat purchases will allow low-income families access to more nutritious meals," says the NASDA proposal.

The government purchase program makes so much $ense to producers with unwanted products, 16 businesses expressed their support in Missouri alone including the Missouri Dairy Association, Missouri Dairy Growth Council, Missouri Cattlemen's Association, Missouri Egg Council, Missouri Pork Association, The Poultry Federation and ag oriented bankers.

But there are some wrinkles.

What good is a temporary program if the changes Americans have made in what they eat, spend and drive become permanent after the recession? What if, after our austerity, a consuming, go-go lifestyle no longer appeals?

Is it really conscionable to dump products that the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and almost every other health group say to limit on poorer people because no one else will eat them? To boost the economy? Because they have less choice? Especially when the products include processed meat, known for its carcinogenic potential?

Aren't people with lower incomes who receive food aid disproportionately plagued with diabetes, obesity, heart disease, metabolic disorders, high blood pressure, gallstones, fatty liver and obesity-related cancers already?

Is dumping food no one wants on the least fortunate any different than the nice venison hunters offered to food pantries two years ago except that it might be contaminated with the mad cow like Chronic Wasting Disease and lead? (The pantries refused it.)

Or the plan in Illinois to "harvest" the Canadian geese that live at so many subdivisions and corporate parks for the poor to eat? We're not that hungry food pantry recipients said.

Doesn't dumping high calorie, high fat, high cholesterol food undermine government wellness and school lunch programs which emphasize vegetables, fiber and exercise?

Finally isn't the hallmark of a capitalist versus command economy demand? When it's there you become a Bill Gates and when it's not, an AOL?

Isn't an oversupply of milk, pork or beef the market's own rejection slip? As in 8 track tapes and pantyhose?

No NASDA's Meat the Need program which it admits "promotes the policy of providing nutritious meat and dairy products to families while clearing excess inventory of those products," is just an industry-first-public-second initiative which makes the poor into a client state.

Why not create a program called Light Their Need giving cigarette vouchers to the poor? Tobacco farmers probably need assistance too.

10 Signs Vegetarianism Is Catching On

2009-11-30T05:53:00.000-08:00

10 Signs Vegetarianism Is Catching On
By Kathy Freston, AlterNet
November 30, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144241/

On Thanksgiving, I spent some time taking stock of my life and the world around me and, as we’re supposed to do over the holiday, giving thanks for all the joys -- little and big -- in my life. One of the larger joys for which I am giving thanks is all of the recent attention that has been lavished on a topic that is near and dear to my heart -- the cruelty and environmental harm involved in raising animals for food.

I struggled to cohesively construct an article about some of the many recent and important developments on this topic, but there is just too much. Instead, I decided on a top ten list (a tip of the hat to David Letterman) -- the 10 most interesting articles on the farmed animal welfare front.

So without further ado:

1. World Bank scientists conclude that eating meat causes more than half of global warming (conservatively).

World Bank agricultural scientists Robert Goodland, who spent 23 years as the Bank’s lead environmental advisor, and Jeff Anhang, a research officer and environmental specialist for the Bank, argue convincingly that more than half of all greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to our desire to eat chicken, pigs, and other farmed animals. That’s right: Add up all the causes of climate change, and you find that eating meat causes more than everything else combined.

Honestly, this was the biggest point for me: How can I possibly take the environment seriously if I’m still participating in what is -- by far -- the biggest contributor to warming?

Which might explain:

2. Prominent Stanford biochemist pledges to focus ALL his energy on promoting veganism.

Most of us have heard of Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. RK Pachauri from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and his lectures all over the world promoting vegetarianism. Now along comes Dr. Patrick O. Brown who, as reported in (of all places) Forbes, will spend the next 18 months focused on “put[ting] an end to animal farming.” Explains Dr. Brown, “‘There's absolutely no possibility that 50 years from now this system will be operating as it does now… I want to approach this as a solvable problem.’ Solution: ‘Eliminate animal farming on planet Earth.’”

3. Al Gore is taking notice.

Although Gore’s Global Warming Survival Handbook noted that “refusing meat” is the “single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint” (emphasis in original), Gore had not spoken publically about the issue. Now he has -- repeatedly. For example, on Larry King recently, Gore explained that “the impact of meat-intensive diet is a significant factor” in warming the planet, that “the growing meat intensity of diets around the world is bad for the planet,” and that “the more meals I've substituted with more fruits and vegetables, the better I feel about it…” The truth is becoming less inconvenient, thankfully.

4. Celebrated author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close publishes riveting book based on three-year investigation of factory farming.

Jonathan Safran Foer has been widely hailed as one of the greatest novelists of his generation, was one of Rolling Stone's “People of the Year,” and Esquire's “Best and Brightest” -- and after just two extraordinary works. As Nobel Prize for literature novelist J.M. Coetzee puts it about Foer’s latest work, “The everyday horrors of factory farming are evoked so vividly, and the case against the people who run the system presented so convincingly, that anyone who, after reading Foer's book, continues to consume the industry's products must be without a heart, or impervious to reason, or both.”

In his interview with Mother Jones Magazine (the entire interview is worth reading), Foer points out that Americans “now eat 150 times as much chicken as we did 80 years ago,” and that it “takes between 6 and 26 calories to make one calorie of meat. It is an incredibly inefficient protein because we are cycling through all of these other grains that humans could eat.”

5. Actor Alicia Silverstone and Chef Tal Ronnen on the New York Times bestseller list.

For some weeks now, Chef Tal Ronnen’s Conscious Cook and actress Alicia Silverstone’s Kind Diet have joined Foer and former model agent Rory Freedman (whose book convinced home run slugger Prince Fielder to adopt a vegan diet) on the list with books that make the case for vegetarian eating. You may recall Ronnen from his appearances on Oprah, which caused Oprah to exclaim, “Wow, wow, wow! I never imagined meatless meals could be so satisfying.”

6. Martha Stewart promotes a vegetarian Thanksgiving.

As my friends at Ecorazzi put it, “Martha Stewart has proved once again why she’s a pioneer in the kitchen. Having someone with as much sway as the famous host show people that the big feast doesn’t have to include meat to be successful is huge. Even better, she took the opportunity to educate her audience on factory farming industry -- with help from author Jonathan Safran Foer (of Eating Animals) and filmmaker Robert Kenner (Food, INC.).”

7. Egyptian mummy heart disease in LA Times

I’m not sure it belongs in my top 10 list, but I found it extremely interesting that “CT scans of Egyptian mummies, some as much as 3,500 years old, show evidence of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, which is normally thought of as a disease caused by modern lifestyles...” What on earth could have caused it? I think I know: “The high-status Egyptians ate a diet high in meat from cattle, ducks and geese, all fatty.” If only the ancient Egyptians had the wisdom of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn!

8. Honesty at the Turkey Pardoning

First Obama talks about factory farming and animal rights as a candidate. Then he puts in a garden at the White House. Now he’s adding some honesty to the annual turkey pardoning -- talking about the fate of other birds, the fact that it’s a fairly new ceremony, etc.

Might he have celebrated a vegetarian Thanksgiving? The White House isn’t saying, according to Gail Collins of the New York Times in her delightful Thanksgiving Day contemplation of the turkey pardoning. Okay, I’m kidding a bit (could he really get away with having a veggie Thanksgiving, given the power of Agribusiness -- as documented in this sad piece on FoodConsumer.org), as was Collins of course, but the honesty at the event is refreshing, and we do have the first President who understands the harms of factory farming and who is taking global warming seriously.

9. Cargill launches dairy-free cheese!

The largest privately held company in the United States (six times the size of McDonald’s) has just launched “a 100 percent non-dairy cheese analogue for pizza and other prepared food applications” that “replicates the functionality of dairy protein and replaces it fully at an outstanding cost advantage for the manufacturer.” According to Cargill, “its appearance, taste and texture perfectly match those of processed cheese” and it “also offers health advantages as it contains reduced calories (less fat and no saturated fats) and… a unique opportunity for vegans to enjoy a product that has the characteristics and taste of cheese but without any animal-derived ingredients.” It’s also Halal and Kosher.

10. Yet another study is exposing the horrid treatment of workers by the all-powerful meat industry.

A recent six-part piece in the Lincoln Journal-Star documents the horrid conditions endured by slaughterhouse workers. Sadly, nothing has changed since Human Rights Watch released their report on the industry, “Blood, Sweat, and Fear,” six years ago. Then and now, researchers have documented “systematic human rights violations embedded in meat and poultry industry employment.” It’s becoming all too obvious that if we care about worker rights, it makes sense to go vegan.

For information on making the switch to vegetarianism, please check out my previous post, “A Beginner’s Guide to Conscious Eating.”

Cash for Clunkers-like Ag Program is Domestic Dumping

2009-11-23T13:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Cash-for-Clunkers-like-Ag-by-Martha-Rosenberg-091122-247.html

November 22, 2009
Cash for Clunkers-like Ag Program is Domestic Dumping
By Martha Rosenberg

The recession is having one positive effect. The national cholesterol is going down.

More than half of Americans have cut back on meat, many becoming "recession-bred flexitarians," says Gourmet magazine--people who use meat as a condiment not as a meal anchor.

Even the doyenne of taste and nutrition, Martha Stewart, broadcast a vegetarian Thanksgiving show last week.

A small drop in meat exerts big consequences on your health says Katherine Tallmadge of the American Dietetic Association because red meat is the "primary source of saturated fat, which can boost levels of bad LDL cholesterol and inflammation."

It is no doubt the reason death from heart attacks goes down not up during recessions as Christopher Ruhm, an economist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro reports.

Unfortunately, it also has a big effect on meat producers for whom the droves of flexitarians are equivalent to Atlanta and all its suburbs going vegetarian. And that's before you consider the effect that the swine, sorry H1N1 virus has had on the pork industry.

To address the low demand emergency, the Washington DC-based National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) has a kind of Cash for Clunkers plan.

Funded by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act revenues, its Meat the Need proposal would increase the amount that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients receive in food assistance if they use it for animal products. Recipients would either get a separate electronic benefits transfer (EBT) card or earmarked vouchers.

"Product purchases will quickly reduce the oversupply on the market while additional funding to SNAP for meat purchases will allow low-income families access to more nutritious meals," says the NASDA proposal.

The government purchase program makes so much $ense to producers with unwanted products, 16 businesses expressed their support in Missouri alone including the Missouri Dairy Association, Missouri Dairy Growth Council, Missouri Cattlemen's Association, Missouri Egg Council, Missouri Pork Association, The Poultry Federation and ag oriented bankers.

But there are some wrinkles.

What good is a temporary program if the changes Americans have made in what they eat, spend and drive become permanent after the recession? What if, after our austerity, a consuming, go-go lifestyle no longer appeals?

Is it really conscionable to dump products that are disapproved of by the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and almost every other health group on poorer people because no one else will eat them? To boost the economy? Because they have less choice? Especially when the products include processed meat, known for its carcinogenic potential?

Aren't people with lower incomes who receive food aid disproportionately plagued with diabetes, obesity, heart disease, metabolic disorders, high blood pressure, gallstones, fatty liver and obesity-related cancers already?

Is dumping food no one wants on the least fortunate any different than the nice venison hunters offered to food pantries two years ago except that it might be contaminated with the mad cow like Chronic Wasting Disease and lead? (The pantries refused it.)

Or the plan in Illinois to "harvest" the Canadian geese that live at so many subdivisions and corporate parks for the poor to eat? We're not that hungry people said.

Doesn't dumping high calorie, high fat, high cholesterol food undermine government wellness and school lunch programs which emphasize vegetables, fiber and exercise?

Finally isn't the hallmark of a capitalist versus command economy demand? When it's there you become a Bill Gates and when it's not, an AOL?

Isn't an oversupply of milk, pork or beef the market's own rejection slip? As in 8 track tapes and pantyhose?

No NASDA's Meat the Need program which it admits "promotes the policy of providing nutritious meat and dairy products to families while clearing excess inventory of those products," is just an industry-first-public-second initiative which makes the poor into a client state.

Why not create a program called Light Their Need giving cigarette vouchers to the poor? Tobacco farmers probably need assistance too.

Tormenting turkeys: Not in the holiday spirit

2009-11-23T11:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Tormenting-turkeys-Not-in-by-PETA-091120-284.html

November 22, 2009
Tormenting turkeys: Not in the holiday spirit
By PETA

On Thanksgiving, millions of Americans will gather around dead turkeys to give thanks for the blessings in their lives. Turkeys, of course, have nothing to be thankful for.

Before they're slaughtered, these smart, social birds, who enjoy having their feathers stroked and gobbling along to music, spend five to six months packed together so tightly in dark sheds that flapping a wing or stretching a leg is nearly impossible.

To keep the frustrated, cramped birds from pecking and clawing at one another, factory workers cut off parts of the birds' toes and a portion of their upper beaks. These procedures are known to cause chronic and acute pain. The males' snoods, the fleshy appendage under their chin, are also chopped off—without any pain relievers.

Miserable and suffering, the birds must stand mired in their own waste, breathing strong ammonia fumes which burn their eyes and lungs. Some birds develop congestive heart disease, enlarged livers and other illnesses. Millions of turkeys succumb to "starve-out," a stress-induced condition that causes young birds to stop eating.

To keep more birds alive under the dismal, disease-ridden conditions—and to stimulate their growth—farmers dose them with antibiotics. Because the birds are drugged and bred to grow so large in such a short period of time, their bones can't support their weight, and many suffer from broken legs. Some birds attempt to drag themselves by their wings to reach food and water.

Turkeys are vulnerable to all kinds of gratuitous cruelty. Last fall, a PETA investigator went undercover at Aviagen Turkeys in West Virginia and caught workers stomping on turkeys, punching them, beating them with pipes and boards and twisting the birds' necks repeatedly. One worker even bragged about shoving a broomstick down a turkey's throat because the bird had pecked at him. When the investigator told a supervisor about the cruelty he witnessed, the supervisor responded, "Every once in awhile, everybody gets agitated and has to kill a bird." Following the investigation, a grand jury indicted three workers on animal abuse charges, several of which were felony offenses.

The hideous abuse witnessed at Aviagen Turkeys—the self-proclaimed "world's leading poultry breeding company"—is typical in factory farms and slaughterhouses. Workers at a Butterball slaughterhouse in Ozark, Arkansas, for example, were documented punching and stomping on turkeys, and slamming them against walls, and the manager of a turkey factory farm in Minnesota was seen wringing turkeys' necks and bludgeoning turkeys to death.

But even when turkeys raised for food aren't gratuitously abused, they still suffer greatly.

In slaughterhouses, the terrified birds are hung upside-down and their heads are dragged through an electrified "stunning tank," which immobilizes the birds but does not kill them. Many turkeys dodge the tank and are still conscious when their throats are cut. If the knife or the back-up killer expected to be on duty fails to cut the birds' throats properly, the animals are scalded to death in the tanks of boiling water used for feather removal.

Anyone who eats turkey contributes to this horrific cruelty, often in the name of celebration. Of the nearly 270 million turkeys killed for food every year in the U.S., more than 72 million are slaughtered to be eaten for holiday meals.

Causing pain and suffering hardly seems like the holiday spirit. Let's all give birds a break by choosing tasty vegan alternatives to turkey at the holidays and all year round.

Dan Paden is a senior research associate in PETA's Cruelty Investigations Department, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510. For information about PETA, visit www.PETA.org.

Considering a Faux Turkey for the Holidays? Better Read This First

2009-11-23T09:38:00.000-08:00

Considering a Faux Turkey for the Holidays? Better Read This First
By Tara Lohan
November 23, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers//144107/

Thank Lou Bendrick for doing the dirty work for you. Bendrick enlisted a team of taste testers to try out four different faux turkeys. The hilarious write up was featured in Grist. The rationale behind it: "Any moral high ground gained by having a plant-based Thanksgiving may become absolutely meaningless if you screw up a happy, festive experience with a protein centerpiece that looks gross, or worse yet, has a flavor capable of sending guests, carnivorous and non, in search of a Butterball."

I've never quite recovered from my first and only Tofurky experience about 8 years ago and I even like a lot of veggie meat. Here's what the tasters (and some of them are kids, if that explains any of the comments) had to say about the Tofurky:

Tasters were not sure whether to be comforted or disturbed by the fact that this product had a skin, which one taster described as smelling like "art class." All tasters struggled for texture descriptors for Tofurky (motto: "America's Leading Turkey Alternative Since 1995"), but the most evocative was "squeaky on the teeth." Two tasters described the taste as bologna-like and most concurred that this "bird" was salty. Strangest overall comment: "Carp would love this." The most backhanded compliment came out of the mouth of a babe, who, to the chagrin of her parents, exclaimed "It tastes like McDonald's Chicken McNuggets, and I like those!"

I'm guessing this might not make you want to run out grab a few for your Thanksgiving guests. And the other three Torfurky-like products got even worse reviews one was described as "'unfortunate' and was compared to rubber, cement, and -- oxymoronically -- 'dried pudding.'"

As a vegetarian, I used feel like I should leap to the defense of these faux birds and their place on our table, but it's awfully hard to get behind some of these concoctions, which are beginning to not even resemble food any more. I definitely don't mind a Turkey-less Thanksgiving, I've been enjoying the meal for 20 years without a real bird. But I'd prefer to steer clear of the fake food, too. There's so much delicious goodness to eat this time of year, that plasticized soy just doesn't make the cut. Bendrick's review is just another reminder why.

40 Groups Disagree with USDA's Latest BSE Court Submission; Agency Poised to Conform to Global Edict Instead of Domestic

2009-11-19T11:24:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/40-Groups-Disagree-with-US-by-R-CALF-USA-091118-501.html

November 19, 2009
40 Groups Disagree with USDA's Latest BSE Court Submission; Agency Poised to Conform to Global Edict Instead of Domestic
By R-CALF USA

Billings, Mont. – Yes, the ball is still in play – although a distant memory for some – with regard to the litigation filed in 2007 by R-CALFUSA and 10 other plaintiffs against the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) decision to allow into the U.S. older Canadian cattle born after March 1, 1999, and beef from Canadian cattle of all ages. Canada continually has had a significant problem with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease, and the agency's latest legal notice suggests that ‘the people's agency' is about to kowtow to global interests instead of honoring its congressional mandate to protect U.S. citizens.

On July 3, 2008, a South Dakota federal judge essentially ordered USDA to go back to the drawing board on its over-30-month rule (OTM Rule) and instructed the agency to open a new public comment period on the matter. He then required USDA to report the developments to him on a quarterly basis.

USDA, in its Oct. 5, 2009, status submission to the court, reported that more than 4,800 pages of comments were received and that those comments are currently in “intra-departmental clearance,” and afterward will be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The agency estimates OMB will finish its review no later than Jan. 5, 2010, the date USDA's next status report to the court is due.

On Nov. 17, 2009, R-CALF USA and 39 other groups sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to express their serious concerns about the agency's status submission.

One such concern is that USDA says it is preparing a docket to initiate rule-making that would comprehensively amend the BSE regulations, and the criteria it will propose “would be closely aligned with those of the World Organization for Animal Health” (OIE). This new proposed rule is expected to be published in the Federal Register for comment late this year or early in 2010, according to USDA. The 40-member coalition states that such alignment with weaker OIE standards would not achieve the agency's congressional mandate to protect against the introduction and spread of animal diseases, “particularly from such a pernicious animal disease as BSE that is invariably fatal and that also afflict humans.”

In its letter to Vilsack, the group points out that he has inherited the weakest, most ineffective and liberal BSE import policies when compared to every other major beef-consuming market in the world, and that as past Senators, President Obama and Vice President Biden – as parties to a Senate Resolution of Disapproval declaring that USDA's OTM Rule shall have no force or effect – had objected to the very rules that exist now.

In fact, at the time when the Resolution of Disapproval passed, only four cases of BSE had been detected in Canadian-born cattle, and no post-feed ban BSE cases had been detected. Since then, 17 cases of BSE have been discovered in Canadian-born cattle. Eleven of these 17 BSE-infected cattle were born after Canada's 1997 feed ban, and 10 of these 11 infected post-feed ban cattle were eligible, under USDA's current rules, for export to the United States because they were born after March 1, 1999.

The letter states in part: “We respectfully request that you promulgate BSE rules that restore for U.S. livestock, livestock producers, and the people of the United States the highest possible level of protection against the introduction and spread of animal diseases. Valid science, consumer confidence, and sound economics require the BSE import rules to be tightened according to pre-outbreak norms. This departure from the past Administration's destructive policies will improve consumer confidence in the beef supply, balance trade flows, remedy the severe financial destruction of the U.S. cattle industry, and substantially decrease the risk of livestock and human disease exposure.

Additionally, the group points out that: “The proper policy is to bring United States' BSE regulations in line with past standards, which were more closely aligned to the current standards of our trading partners. Animal health, as well as food and product safety, should be held in higher regard by your Administration than trade facilitation. Public support for such a change is clear. The industry need is clear. Consumer confidence would increase. The United States' current trade imbalances would become more balanced. Risks to animal and human health would be drastically reduced.”

“Current trade policy is losing support, in large part, because food and product safety standards are negated by government efforts to facilitate cross-border trade at all costs, and this trade-trumping-safety policy problem includes, but also goes beyond, cattle and beef,” said R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard. “Because of USDA's past and current persistence in adopting unproven and inapt international standards – rather than continuing pre-BSE disease standards proven to protect consumers of U.S. beef and U.S. citizens, including U.S. cattle producers and their livestock – the U.S. cattle industry is unnecessarily burdened by a flood of unsafe imports. The result is a large trade deficit in cattle and beef that is forcing thousands upon thousands of independent cattle producers out of business each year.”

National organizations that signed on to the letter include: American Grassfed Association; Coalition for a Prosperous America; Consumer Federation of America; CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease) Foundation; Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance; Food & Water Watch; Freedom21, Inc.; International Texas Longhorn Association; National Association of Farm Animal Welfare; National Farmers Union; Organic Consumers Association; Organization for Competitive Markets; R-CALF USA; Sovereignty International, Inc.; The Cornucopia Institute; Western Organization of Resource Councils.

State, regional and county organizations that signed on to the letter include: Buckeye Quality Beef Association (Ohio); Cattle Producers of Washington; Citizens for Private Property Rights, Missouri; Colorado Independent CattleGrower's Association; Independent Cattlemen of Nebraska; Independent Beef Association of North Dakota; Independent Cattlemen of Wyoming; Kansas Cattlemen's Association; Kansas Farmers Union; Mississippi Livestock Markets Association; Missouri Farmers Union; Nebraska Farmers Union; Nevada Live Stock Association; New England Farmers Union; Northeast Organic Farming Association/Massachusetts Chapter, Inc.; Ohio Farmers Union; Oregon Livestock Producers Association; Ozarks Property Rights Congress, Missouri; PCC Natural Markets (Puget Consumers Co-Op); SmallHolders of Massachusetts; South Dakota Farmers Union; South Dakota Stockgrowers Association; Spokane County Cattlemen, Washington; and, the Stevens County Cattlemen, Washington.

Vegetarians Have Lower Cancer Risk Than Meat Eaters

2009-11-18T14:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.NaturalNews.com/z027517_vegetarians_cancer_risk.html

November 18 2009
Vegetarians Have Lower Cancer Risk Than Meat Eaters
by David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Vegetarians are significantly less likely to develop cancer than non-vegetarians, according to a study conducted by researchers from universities in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and published in the British Journal of Cancer.

"These interesting results add to the evidence that what we eat affects our chances of developing cancer," said a spokesperson for Cancer Research U.K. "We know that eating a lot of red and processed meat increases the risk of stomach cancer."

Researchers followed 61,566 British adults and compared cancer rates among vegetarians, those who ate fish but not other kinds of meat, and those with no dietary restrictions. They found that the lifetime risk of developing cancer was 14 percent lower in vegetarians than in the general population. The protective effect was greatest for stomach cancer, bladder cancer, Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and blood cancers. Vegetarians were less than 50 percent as likely to develop lymph and blood cancers as nonrestricted eaters, while their risk of a rare bone marrow cancer known as multiple myeloma was 75 percent lower. Fish-eaters had a lower risk of blood and lymph cancers than nonrestricted eaters, but their risk was still higher than that of vegetarians.

It is the first study specifically showing a link between a vegetarian diet and a lower risk of bone marrow cancer.

"Dietary advice to myeloma patients remains aligned with national guidance -- that they should eat a healthy, balanced diet high in fiber, fruit and vegetables and low in saturated fat, salt and red and processed meat," Myeloma U.K. said.

Red and processed meats have previously been linked to elevated rates of stomach cancer. Processed meat is believed to be particularly dangerous, due to the N-nitroso compound used to preserve them and the high temperatures they are cooked at.

The researchers found that vegetarians and fish eaters had roughly the same risk of stomach cancer, about one-third less than the risk experienced by unrestricted eaters. This adds evidence to the theory that red and processed meats are particular risk factors for this kind of cancer.

Sources for this story include: news.bbc.co.uk.

Are You Eating This Pork?

2009-11-18T13:30:00.000-08:00

If you want to really end cruelty to animals, stop eating them! I won't eat anything with a face!

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Are-You-Eating-This-Pork-by-Martha-Rosenberg-091117-413.html
November 17, 2009
Are You Eating This Pork?
By Martha Rosenberg

"When he bolted her the first time, she didn't die. She just stood there looking stunned as blood trickled from her forehead. She then got her bearings and tried to turn and run."

"The gas cart was filled to the brim with pigs today, a total of 39, including 9 large pigs that were at weaning age. They were left in the cart all day to trample each other, before being gassed all at once."

Read the diary and watch the video of an undercover investigator named Mike who worked at the Country View/Hatfield Quality Meats hog farm last spring http://www.mercyforanimals.org/pigs/and you're sure laws are being broken and the operation will be shut down. Wrong. There is nothing illegal in one of the most gruesome videos to circulate the Web says Mercy For Animals (MFA) who conducted the investigation, because there are no farm welfare laws to break.

As the anti-factory farming movement gains momentum, many have heard about gestation crates, enclosures so small sows can't turn around, that are banned in the European Union and some states. They have heard of tail docking and castration without anesthesia--also banned in some European countries--manure lagoons, dead piles and animals that go cage crazy from their confinement.

But who knew the euthanasia of unwanted piglets and their mothers was so primitive?

Video shows whimpering, seven pound piglets still breathing and blinking at the bottom of the death cart after being gassed with carbon dioxide hours earlier. "32 starve-outs, 16 runts, 10 ruptures, 9 poor quality, 3 deformed and 2 joint infections" were killed in five days writes Mike, who was hired to work as a barn technician last May.

Who knew shooting an animal with a captive bolt pistol-- designed to catastrophically damage the cerebrum, part of the cerebellum, upon penetrating the cranium--might work and then again might not? "My supervisor told me she was dubbing my coworker 'Two-Shot' in light of the fact he rarely kills the sow with one bolt," says Mike.

Working in a hot, fly and manure infested hog barn amid screams of 2,784 sows, 483 sows with litters, 864 gilts, 5,400 nursery pigs and 15 boars could make anyone snap. But some of the workers sound snapped before working at Country View.

One told Mike he prays to run over animals on the highway and was looking forward to bolting a prolapsed sow because "I just feel like killing something." Another worker swung a ruptured pig into the gas cart telling it with glee to "die, %#@&," employing a racial epithet.

Veterinarians viewing the Country View video cite disturbing violations of their profession's oath.

"There are dead piglets in the farrowing crates, and one moribund piglet is captured on video in her last minutes of life," says Illinois veterinarian Debra Teachout. "She is in trembling and in lateral recumbency, respirations are shallow and gasping, eye is swollen and shut. There is a large lesion on her face, and suggests that she is dying of sepsis. This piglet should never have been allowed to get to this point without medical intervention."

"The pig seizuring in the stall unattended is nightmarish, as is the sloppy use of the captive bolt," says Bernard Rollin, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University and Pew Commission member. "The gas 'euthanasia' using CO2 is widespread in the industry. It is horrendous, as the animals suffocate and experience major fear and distress."

Nor is it possible to overlook the animals' intelligence, says Mike who found a sow had liberated herself and her litter from her crate by loosening steel pegs in two different places. "I told a co-worker this story and she said that when a sow figures out how to unlock her crate, she often goes around unlocking all of the other crates as well," wrote Mike.

Pigs also can jump hoops, bow, stand, spin, "speak" on command, roll out a rug, herd sheep, play videogames and use mirrors to find food, reports New York Times science columnist Natalie Angier. They "like being touched and petted," says Mike.

Like the poultry and egg farms it has investigated, the choice of Country View/Hatfield Quality Meats at 12722 Creek Road in Fannettsburg, PA was random--and the practices recorded, universal across the industry, says Chicago-based Mercy For Animals. Hatfield is one of the nation's top pork providers and supplies Wal-Mart, IGA Shaw's, Stop & Shop, Sam's, Club, Costco, Giant and other well known food chains.

"We are calling on the nation's largest grocery chains to take a stand against egregious cruelty to animals," says MFA executive director Nathan Runkle. "These companies have the power and the responsibility to ensure that the products sold on their shelves come from producers who have abandoned the abusive practices uncovered in our investigation. The most humane choice consumers can make is to go vegetarian."

What's Really So Frightening About Burger King's $1 Double Cheeseburgers

2009-11-15T11:24:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I used to eat those nasty things! Eating that shit will kill you plus Burger King is famous for thwarting union organizing for the harvesting tomatoes in Florida! Evil company!!!

What's Really So Frightening About Burger King's $1 Double Cheeseburgers
By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
November 15, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/143954/

Ever time I see a Burger King commercial advertising their $1 double cheeseburgers I'm astounded. How the heck could that be possible? There is meat on there, right? Two patties? I mean it's likely pieces of thousands of feedlot cows and it has got other fillers in there. And usually some sort of chemical to try and kill the bacteria. And then there's the cheese -- maybe something resembling a dairy product, the bun (which has at over 30 ingredients, according the BK website -- I lost count), and of course a few wilted tomatoes or lettuce or pickles maybe? Hard to remember, last time I had a fast food burger I was 11.

And that's just the ingredients -- of course there is also the labor, the packaging, and the other associated costs.

So how could it be remotely possible to do all of that -- even at massive scale -- for a buck?

Well, it turns out you can't.

According to the AP, "The National Franchise Association, a group that represents more than 80 percent of Burger King's U.S. franchise owners, said the $1 promotion forces restaurant owners to sell the quarter-pound burger with at least a 10-cent loss."

So, I was right. Um, barely.

Here's more:

While costs vary by location, the $1 double cheeseburger typically costs franchisees at least $1.10, said Dan Fitzpatrick, a Burger King franchisee from South Bend, Ind. who is a spokesman for the association. That includes about 55 cents for the cost of the meat, bun, cheese and toppings. The remainder typically covers expenses such as rent, royalties and worker wages.

In the race to the bottom, it looks like Burger King may have won -- they have found a meal so disgustingly cheap that it's actually not even profitable. That's scary. About as scary as knowing that the whole shebang actually really costs only $1.10.

Quitting Meat Is a Process -- Almost Impossible to Do All at Once

2009-11-12T10:44:00.000-08:00

Quitting Meat Is a Process -- Almost Impossible to Do All at Once
By Jonathan Safran Foer, AlterNet
November 12, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143892/

Mark Twain said that quitting smoking is among the easiest things one can do; he did it all the time. I would add vegetarianism to the list of easy things. In high school I became a vegetarian more times than I can now remember, most often as an effort to claim some identity in a world of people whose identities seemed to come effortlessly. I wanted a slogan to distinguish my mom's Volvo's bumper, a bake sale cause to fill the self-conscious half hour of school break, an occasion to get closer to the breasts of activist women. (And of course I did also think it was wrong to harm animals and destroy the environment.) Which isn't to say that I refrained from eating meat. Only that I refrained in public. Privately, the pendulum swung. Many dinners of those years began with my father asking, "Any dietary restrictions I need to know about tonight?"

I first became a vegetarian when I was nine, in response to an argument made by a radical babysitter. My great change -- which lasted a couple of weeks -- was based on the very simple instinct that it's wrong to kill animals for food. I imagine most children have some version of this instinct at some point, and while it says nothing at all about the rightness or wrongness of meat, the overcoming of it can, itself, leave a mark. Parental explanations almost always come in the form of half-truths, glossings over, or worse -- "Animals live long, happy lives in the sun, and when they one day die, they share their meat with us." Kids are even better at recognizing such bullshit than adults, even if, because they need a stable world, they don't pursue it. Whether or not something is learned about food, something is learned.

My most recent shift to vegetarianism was inspired by the birth of my first child. Facing the prospect of making food choices on his behalf -- and of having to come up with explanations that he would also digest -- I took the questions posed by meat seriously. Instinct no longer felt like enough. And neither did information. I wanted to have a full engagement with the subject. I wanted to see it for myself, not because there isn't ample access to relevant photographs and videos, but because I was not the photographer. (Observation is easy, implication is honest.) This full engagement -- which resulted in my book, Eating Animals -- required me to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from my childhood, and probe those instincts of right and wrong that two decades earlier made me change. The answers to some questions became very clear very quickly. Some remain cloudy.

Will this vegetarianism be the last one? It's impossible to say, of course, but with my filled-out picture of not only contemporary animal agriculture, but my own understanding of fatherhood, it feels impossible to imagine a time when I would bring such food -- which is virtually always unhealthy, destructive and cruel -- into our home. Our home could not be our home in the same way, given what I now know.

But perhaps there's more to it. Perhaps it took all of that previous inconsistency, all of that pendulum swinging, to bring me to this place. Perhaps "failing" was not failing but approaching, one awkward step at a time, what I always wanted.

The question, I've come to think, is not what inspires one to change, but what inspires one to remain changed. It's easy and common to learn something -- through an argument or fact, image or experience -- and feel compelled to make different choices. But for how long? Change is inspiring, but only rarely durable. Part of this difficulty is found exactly where you'd expect to find it: most change isn't easy. Making different choices at restaurants and supermarkets is, for most people, harder than it might seem. What's the big deal? Order something else. The big deal is we've been eating these products since we were kids, and we digested them with stories. We got over our colds with chicken soup. We celebrated the Fourth of July with grilled burgers and hot dogs. We ate our grandmother's brisket. These things matter. As do our cravings. As does convenience.

But I wonder if more of the difficulty doesn't come from the ways that we talk and think about change. When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not. It's a strange formulation, and it's distracting. (Those who profit from animal suffering and environmental destruction want us to think in dichotomies, rather than practical realities.) Imagine someone asking you, "Are you an environmentalist or not?" For most of us, caring about the environment isn't an on-off switch, but a set of daily choices that we try to respond to as best we can. I buy energy-efficient products, and turn off lights when leaving a room, and recycle and so on. But I also fly on airplanes. Does my occasional flying completely undermine my identity as someone who cares and tries? Should I, faced with my inability to live consistently, make no efforts to live better?

Obviously not. We don't live our lives on the inside flaps of philosophy textbooks. We live in the world. And in the world, everyone is a hypocrite. In the world, change is not a switch but a process. Being serious about changing requires a certain amount of forgiveness. I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't draw lines in the sand, or that we should be quick to accept all of our own apologies. But if animal welfare matters to us, if the air and water matter, if swine flu and E. Coli matter, if global warming matters, if biodiversity matters, if rural communities matter, if our ability to tell honest stories to ourselves and our children matters... then we shouldn't be distracted, intimidated or misled by someone else's idea of purity. We should begin at the beginning, and begin now.

Comedian Reveals Unsavoury Truth of Food Production

2009-11-10T11:12:00.000-08:00

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/comedian-reveals-unsavoury-truth-of-food-production-1816859.html

Comedian Reveals Unsavoury Truth of Food Production
Martin Hickman
The Independent
Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:24 EST

With his gangly frame and thick-rimmed spectacles, Alex Riley makes an unlikely assassin. Unfortunately for Britain's £182bn-a-year food and drink industry, his wisecracks about its unsavoury practices in a new BBC TV series are little short of deadly.

In Britain's Really Disgusting Foods, the dry-witted comedian and TV presenter checks out the nutritional content of low-budget meat, interrogates the sourcing of endangered creatures and generally gets in the face of food manufacturers purveying products of dubious environmental and nutritional quality.

Like Morgan Spurlock - the Super Size Me documentary-maker who humbled McDonald's by eating its food - Mr Riley asks awkward questions about what is served up to the public by grocery chains and catering outlets keen to provide products for customers "at a certain price point".

Unlike Mr Spurlock, he engineers products himself in a makeshift laboratory to expose the legal production and labeling tricks used by the food business. In the first show, he demonstrates how it was possible to make a legally saleable chicken kiev with 10 per cent chicken meat and a large amount of breadcrumbs, skin and other animal by-products and, with the help of an industry expert, raised the amount of "meat" on the label to 17 per cent.

He also discovered the secret of a microwaveable lamb shank that lasts for 12 months out of the fridge being sold by a cash-and-carry outlet promoted by Gordon Ramsay. The foul-mouthed chef, who in an episode of Kitchen Nightmares described the meal as "shit in a bag", later explained he no longer endorsed the company.

In a show on dairy products, to be screened tomorrow, Mr Riley looks at the use of hydrogenated fat by a grocery chain and the supermarkets' sale of "singles", which look like processed cheese slices, and are sold in the cheese aisle but contain as little as 6 per cent cheese.

He also tackles the issue of unsustainable palm oil destroying forests. After he arrived at Mars UK HQ with five "orang-utans" and a tanker of "sustainable" palm oil, the chocolate-maker announced it would move to a certified supply by 2015.

In a third show which tackles the EU's Common Fisheries Policy and Nobu restaurants' sale of bluefin tuna, Mr Riley offers to buy Japan's whale meat reserves.

BBC executives commissioned Britain's Really Disgusting Food after the success of an hour-long pilot in 2008 in which the Sheffield-born comic made his own low-budget pie containing a mix of cheap meat, fat, gristle and connective tissue.

By exploiting labeling regulations, Mr Riley's Pies carried a picture of his cloth-capped father, tractors and cows to suggest a wholesome rural image and were blazoned with the words "traditional", "GM-free" and, on account of coming from Reading, "Made in Royal Berkshire".

Its BBC1 debut at 10.35pm on a Monday attracted 2.6 million viewers. "If they get a million they're usually pleased, so it captured the imagination," recalled Mr Riley. "A lot of people came up to me in the street and said: 'I don't believe what these food companies are getting away with. It's ridiculous'."

Mr Riley says that because the shows are aimed at "a typically non-documentary audience" he uses stunts and humor, while maintaining a "journalistic sense." "It's also a way of approaching companies that they're not used to," he explained. "If you're coming to them with a Paxman style they're quite well versed in dealing with that, but when you're coming at them in a disingenuous approach and say: 'Well done for getting 47 per cent beef into a beef burger' they're not quite sure how to take it."

The programs start with a raft of rumors and half-baked ideas, some of which turn out of to be myths, and some true.

"The lawyers have said it's the hardest program to make in the BBC," Mr Riley said. "People do send long legal letters." He added: "The BBC is the only kind of place where you could make this show. In the dairy show we talked about chocolate advertising, you couldn't do that on a commercial channel because they're all big advertisers."

Despite Censorship By Beef Magnate, Michael Pollan Spreads Message About the Real Price of Cheap Food

2009-11-09T13:32:00.000-08:00

DDespite Censorship By Beef Magnate, Michael Pollan Spreads Message About the Real Price of Cheap Food
By , AlterNet
November 9, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143718/

Award-winning food journalist Michael Pollan was invited to speak on October 15 at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo but after pressure from a university donor who is chairman of the Harris Ranch Beef Co., the university changed his speech to a panel discussion.

Pollan, whose works include The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto is the Knight Professor of Environmental Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He's also no stranger to attacks from Big Ag.

Pollan used the forum to continue to challenge people to think about the ways in which we are growing food in our current fossil-fuel dependent system of agriculture. "We're producing ourselves into a hole," he warned the audience.

Joining him on the panel was Gary Smith, the Monford Endowed Chair of meat science at the University of Colorado and Myra Goodman, the co-founder of Earthbound Farm.

What follows is a transcript of the discussion, edited by the AlterNet staff for length and clarity.

Moderator: What is sustainability?

Michael Pollan: I would be remiss if I didn't address a little bit the circumstances surrounding this event, which I don't think we can let pass in silence. But one of the reasons we're doing the panel and not a conventional speech is that there was a real challenge to the university posed by the government, and what is potentially a real threat to academic freedom. And as much as agriculture is what we want to talk about today, academic freedom under girds the ability to have the kind of conversation about agriculture we want to have.

Let me tie this back to sustainability. One of the things we understand from the science of ecology is that the best way to achieve resilience, in any system, is by diversity: biodiversity and intellectual diversity. And that having a diversity of views on this campus -- you know, because universities are the place where these conversations should take place, without any kind of bullying, without any kind of threats. It's critical to trying to figure out how to deal with the challenges that we have.

You could have a monoculture of a university -- one that only tolerated one kind of thinking - and when the world changes, as it inevitably does, you would find yourself in serious trouble. But when you have a lot of different ideas, and they're all nurtured, and they're all brought into contact with one another as we hope to do today, that is where you get the resources to withstand shocks to the system. And god knows those shocks are coming.

Let me just talk about sustainability and the agricultural format, because I really do believe that it's connected. You know, sustainability is a complex concept in one way, but it's also very simple: A sustainable system is one that can go on indefinitely, without destroying the conditions on which it depends -- or without depending on conditions it can't depend on.

So take for example fossil fuels: a system that is highly dependent on cheap oil may not be a sustainable system when oil prices go up. A system that depends on large quantities of free or cheap water has a problem when those situations change.

So sustainability is really -- it's an ideal. There are sustainable systems. A forest. A prairie. I mean, these are sustainable systems; they can go on year after year. They don't need inputs. They don't destroy the conditions on which they depend. But as soon as we get involved and start changing things to feed ourselves, we get into more complicated relationships. So it's a matter of degree, I would say.

Now the question is, 'is the system we have sustainable today?' I just want to offer one little prop to tell you where I think the problem is. I brought along something [laughter] from McDonald's. This is a double quarter-pounder with cheese. Those of you in front can probably smell it. Anyone is welcome to have it [laughter].

Moderator: I believe the students might.

MP: Whoever asks the first question. And I've got some glasses here. Each of these glasses holds six ounces, Okay? It takes a lot of oil to make a modern fast food hamburger. An astonishing amount of oil. And I did a little research to find out just how much went into this.

The oil comes in in several different stages. There is the biggest part, probably: the petroleum needed to create the fertilizer to grow the corn, which is the diet, typically, of these animals. But there's also the moving of that corn, the moving of the burger, the processing, you know, and getting it to a McDonald's near you.

So oil. Six ounces. Six more ounces. Eighteen. Twenty-four. Twenty-six. That's a lot of oil to make the burger! And you have to ask yourself: Is the system that produces that burger sustainable?

Moderator: Thanks, Michael. Myra, sustainability. Could you define it?

Myra Goodman: How do you follow that?

MP: With milk, maybe [laughter].

MG: To me, sustainability is protecting and preserving our resources so that they are there for our children, you know? And I think it feels almost impossible for me as a farmer and a manufacturer of a food product to not be consuming a lot of fossil fuels to get our food to market. And I think a big part of this conversation is the population that we're supporting now on this planet, and I think if you look at ... these perfect systems Michael talks about, I think that those little farms work well in a much less populated planet.

But New York City is our biggest market, and they don't have the ability to grow any fresh greens there for more than half the year. And we know that eating healthy organic food -- organic produce -- is a great thing for them to be eating, versus eating this burger with...how many ounces?

MP: Twenty-six.

MG: Twenty-six ounces of oil. So for our company, you know, we feel that we have made great strides in terms of how to farm on a large scale successfully, organically, without all these synthetic inputs, and we work really hard to reduce our use of fossil fuels and water and a lot of valuable resources. And then we've made some great strides -- mostly with post consumer recycled materials. We've switched to post-consumer recycled cardboard and post-consumer recycled plastics with our clam shells. We were the first company to do that. But we're still using a tremendous amount of resources.

So I ask myself: Am I leaving this planet better for future generations -- I think in certain ways I am, we are. But in certain ways, we're not, and I don't know how to accomplish that.

Gary Smith: Well, the concept of sustainability has been around a long time. We really only started to use the word in the last five years. If you look in a dictionary, the definition is: "to provide nourishment for." And the second definition is: "to be able to prolong or continue." So basically, if you put it together, can you in fact provide nourishment for the foreseeable future?

The word sustainability, unless you qualify it, means nothing because it's anything you could keep going. So you have to put some words in front of it. It's really interesting. There's a wonderful article by Liz Sloan in the last issue of Food Technology. She cited nine studies where they had actually gone up to people and said, "Do you use 'sustainability' or 'green' in making purchasing decisions?"

Fifty-four to 82 percent of them said yes, we do. They then asked, "What does it mean? What does the word 'sustainability' mean?" Sixty percent of them said, "Huh. I really don't know." And so they said in many of these studies, "Well, what do you think it means?" Of all the answers they were given, the number one answer was "natural." Second was "organic." Third was "locally grown." Fourth was "humanely treated." And then it got into small carbon footprint and so on.

So as those of us in universities begin to tackle sustainability, we say there is a "food supply sustainability;" there is an "agriculture sustainability;" And I like commissions like the Pew commission when they said: "What does sustainability mean to animal agriculture?" And the Pew Commission said: "The management of animal agriculture so that it can be maintained indefinitely."

Now that doesn't mean forever. And so our task, as people who are involved in agriculture is: We know things are going to change. We know how we're doing at the moment. We want to be able to do the things that are necessary to make sure that we are able to feed 9.1 billion people in the year 2050.

So to us, agricultural sustainability is food security: Can we continue to do this the best we can, with all the science and technology we can put into the action, can we continue to feed the world's hungry people?

[...]

Moderator: What do you believe are the biggest challenges facing the industry? How do we change, or move toward that ideal, that place that you might see out there that's sustainable?

MP: Yeah, getting from here to there is a tremendous challenge, and I'm sympathetic to any producer who operates under a system that may or may not be working well for them, but it's very hard to picture how to do it differently. One of the key challenges -- just continuing with this oil issue - T. Boone Pickens says we're going to have $350 a barrel oil within 10 years. We all saw what that did to the food system in 2008. It threw everybody's input system through the roof. And transportation costs. You had big growers out here, when the price of broccoli went from three dollars per box to ten dollars per box to get it to New York City ... buying agricultural land on the east coast to shorten the food supply.

So I think one of the metrics that's worth thinking about is, to what extent you can squeeze fossil fuel out of your business model, and replace it with the only source of sustainable energy we really have which is to say solar energy. And the more sun in a system - the more energy that's derived from sun and less from oil, you're moving in the right direction. So I think that's very important.

But it's also very important for people to understand that I'm not an agronomist. I'm not a scientist. I teach writing; I teach journalism. And everything I have learned, I have learned by talking to producers and to academics. This is where my information comes from. And I am out looking for models, you know? Good, bad, medium.

And I think this is really where the university comes in. I think it is the university's job to be the kind of antenna of the industry. The antenna, you know, looking at what's next, testing new models. Figuring out, you know, how productive could you be putting cows back on grass? How well could local food systems -- foodsheds -- feed a given area? What happens to agriculture at $350 a barrel oil? And it's a reason we all need to support the university, as a place where those questions -- scary as they may be, threatening as they may seem, get tried out. Where we do our test tube experiments.

But as an organizing principle, think about that idea of ... just to take you back to your grandparents' age. Pre-war farming: For every calorie of fossil fuel energy we put into the system -- the farm system on the farm -- we got back two calories of food energy. Calories are just measurements of food energy; they could be anything -- could be a Twinkie, could be oil. The modern industrial food system, which I completely acknowledge its achievements in terms of making food really, really cheap ... that is quite an achievement, but you have to look at cost, also. As in everything in life, it's a trade-off. That modern food system, it takes ten calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of fast food, or processed food.

So that again ... can we count on that? I don't think we can.

[...]

I don't think it's about "Do we want?" This isn't about taste. This isn't about "I like this kind of food and I like that kind of food." This is about the fact that we're entering a kind of scary time characterized by less fossil fuel, less water, climate change -- which is an enormous threat to agriculture. It introduces a whole new level of uncertainty. There are already wine makers in the Napa Valley ... they're already saying it's changing their economy, and they have to adapt and figure out new varieties.

So that change is coming whether we want it or not. And the challenge is, do you kind of go into it willing to be experimental, or do you fight?

Now, let's take the oil example with the oil industry. Detroit did a fantastic job of defending itself against change. And they have the Congress of the United States, and all the representatives fighting back all the forces that said, "You know, you really need better gas mileage. This is a mistake." And they won. But they lost by winning.

And we have to make sure agriculture -- big agriculture, little agriculture, all different types of agriculture -- doesn't find itself in that boat.

[...]

Moderator: Myra ... what do you see as the challenges you're going to face, and how do you think we might be addressing those?

MG: On the macro scale, of course, knowing that our fossil fuel resources are limited and are going to get more expensive, going to get more limited. We're going to get huge water problems in the state. Climate change terrifies me, especially as an organic farmer, because we don't have these silver bullets to deal with pests. And everyone talks about climate change making pests a much bigger problem.

I also think when you're a business owner, you also have to look at financial sustainability. And have to look at making an ethical profit, so you can afford to pay your workers a living wage, and get them to return to the farmers that they stay in business. And I think especially in California, what's happening now is that retail has consolidated so much that the last thing I heard was five major retailers own eighty percent of the supermarket space, and there's so many different farmers, and we have no power in these negotiations. There's an auction system for a lot of this business, and you're seeing our margins get really squeezed, and so I think our agenda for financial survival is something that we need to balance with these long term threats. And it would be great, like you were saying, in universities like this, where you're not trying every day to make ends meet and make your payroll and make your company happy, to have some help with some of those big issues that we'll be facing in the future.

[...]

GS: There's no question that fossil fuels, and the emissions that are called greenhouse gases, are a huge problem. EPA did a study in 2009, and they said, "Where is most of the fossil fuel used, and in which sectors are the most greenhouse gas emissions created?" Number one on that list was the electricity generation. Number two on that list was transportation. Number three on that list was manufacturing. Number four on that list was eight percent of fossil fuels from agriculture.

It's very, very difficult for those of us in agriculture - and I have owned a wheat farm; I own part of a natural beef company; I own a laboratory testing company that serves the food industry. Why do we out of our eight percent have to make the price of food increase in order to save fossil fuel? No. Let's don't have a "meatless Monday." Let's have a "no electricity Tuesday." Let's have a "nobody can drive a car Thursday." Why do we focus on eight percent of fossil fuels? I want to feed people. And to tell them we're going to solve their problems by making the cost of food higher?

Thirty-one states increased the level of poverty in this last economic downturn. Increasing the price of food is not the route by which to provide food security to us and the world.

[... ]

MP: It's not as if this system is working so well for farmers. If you look at ... what dairy farmers are doing -- the fact that hog farmers today are losing forty-six bucks for every hog they're growing. Corn and bean farmers this year are projected to lose eight dollars per acre on what they're planting. This regime, based on high efficiency, expensive inputs and overproduction -- sometimes done in the name of feeding the world -- does not really serve the farmer very well. We're producing ourselves into a hole. And yes, there is a larger population coming, but according to the UN, last year, we grew enough food in the world to feed -- as things stand now -- to feed 11 billion people, if we used it as food.

We didn't. We put a lot of it in our cars, in our gas tanks. And we fed a lot of it to animals.

So we have to look at this question of overproduction. It's almost like built into the DNA of how we do it in America. All of our foreign policies are about "faster, quicker, cheaper." Has that really served us? Has it served us as eaters, and has it served us as growers?

The people who have managed to get out of that commodity trap ... figured out another product -- something that was, at the time you started, a really specialized niche, and found new markets. They built new markets. The problem is, over time, you're another commodity, and it's hard to keep innovating that way.

Also, cheap food. We all like cheap food. But if you look at what cheap food has done to us, it's not all good. It's true that we spend less than any people who have ever lived on this planet on food. As a percentage of income, it's under 10 percent. I don't know what other industry boasts about the fact that their products are so cheap. And cheap food has given us all sorts of health care problems. Three quarters of the money we spend on health care in this country goes to treat preventable, chronic diseases. And not all of those are food related, but most of them are.

So we can pay the farmer, or we can pay the doctor. We're moving toward paying the doctor ... and wouldn't it be better to pay the farmer?

What's really in that burger? E.coli and chicken feces both allowed by USDA

2009-11-08T11:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.NaturalNews.com/z027414_disease_cows_mad_cow.html

November 6 2009
What's really in that burger? E.coli and chicken feces both allowed by USDA
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) There are 14 billion hamburgers consumed each year in the United States alone. The people who eat those burgers, though, have little knowledge of what's actually in them. Current USDA regulations, for example, openly allow beef contaminated with E. coli to be repackaged, cooked and sold as ready-to-eat hamburgers.

This simple fact would shock most consumers if they knew about it. People assume that beef found to be contaminated with E. coli must be thrown out or destroyed (or even recalled), but in reality, it's often just pressed into hamburger patties, cooked, and sold to consumers. This practice is openly endorsed by the USDA.

But E. coli may not be the worst thing in your burger: USDA regulations also allow chicken feces to be used as feed for cows, meaning your hamburger beef may be made of second-hand chicken poop, recycled through the stomachs of cows.

Chicken poop in your burgers?
I remember writing about this two years ago. People sent accusatory hate mails to NaturalNews, saying things like, "Stop making things up and scaring people!" Few people believed that chicken feces was being widely used as cattle feed.

According to the FDA, farmers feed their cattle anywhere from 1 million to 2 million tons of chicken feces each year. This cross-species crap-as-food practice worries critics who are concerned it may lead to increased risk of mad cow disease contaminating beef products. So they want to ban the practice and disallow the feeding of chicken litter to cows.

Believe it or not, McDonald's has joined the fight seeking to ban the practice, saying "We do not condone the feeding of poultry litter to cattle." Apparently, even they don't want their customers looking at a Big Mac and thinking, "Wow, this is made out of second-hand chicken crap."

CSPI and the Consumers Union have also joined the fight, petitioning the FDA to ban the practice.

Now, you might wonder how chicken feces could pose a mad cow infection risk to cows. And if you're not already grossed out by what you've read so far, you will be when you read the answer to this question: It's because chickens are fed ground up parts of other animals such as cows, sheep and other animals. Some of that chicken feed spills out and gets swept up as chicken litter, then fed to cows.

So now we have a bizarre experiment in animal feed where dead cows, sheep and other animals are fed to chickens, and then chicken feed spills onto the floor where, combined with chicken poop, it gets swept up and fed to cows. Some of those cows, in turn, may eventually be ground up and fed back to the chickens.

Do you see how this might be a problem?

Do not feed animals to each other
First off, in the real world cows are vegetarians. They don't eat other cows, or chickens, or poop from any creature. Chickens don't eat cows in the real world, either. If given free range, they live primarily on a diet of bugs and weeds.

But through the magic of horrific factory food production practices in the USA, dead cows are fed to chickens, and chicken poop is fed to cows. This is precisely how mad cow disease could contaminate this unnatural food cycle and end up contaminating U.S. cattle with mad cow prions.

Some say this has already happened, and it's only a matter of time before mad cow disease starts appearing in the U.S. population. It takes approximately 5 - 7 years after eating an infected burger for mad cow disease to destroy the brain of a consumer, and cooking a burger does not destroy the mad cow disease prions. That means even burgers that are fully cooked and handled according to federal safety standards can infect consumers with mad cow disease, causing their brains to turn to mush within 7 years.

The beef industry doesn't see a problem with any of this. And that's why this industry deserves what's coming: A massive culling of cattle and a complete economic wipeout of cattle ranchers one day after mad cow disease is revealed in U.S. cattle herds. Rather than trying to protect the integrity of their cows, the U.S. beef industry chooses to pretend that there's nothing wrong with practice of feeding corpses to chickens, and feces to cows. Is there anything too gross, inhumane or horrific for the beef industry to stomach? Seems not.

Remember, too, that the USDA has banned farmers from testing their own cattle for mad cow disease. So instead of allowing cattle ranchers to protect the safety of their herds, the USDA has a policy of covering their eyes and pretending not to see the very real risks that exist. When it comes to infectious disease, this is a sure recipe for disaster.

The perfect storm for mass infections
It all adds up to a "perfect storm" for the mass infection of the beef-eating population with mad cow disease. And remember: Cooking meat does not destroy prions, so if the beef supply becomes contaminated with mad cow disease, it's only a matter of time before humans start to be stricken with the disease.

That takes 5-7 years, as I mentioned previously. It's important to note because it means there could be a five-year gap between the time mad cow disease is present in the beef supply and the time health authorities start to notice a problem. But by that time, most of the population will have already eaten infected beef, and it will be too late to stop the mass human deaths sure to follow.

Dying from mad cow disease isn't pretty, painless or quick. It's ugly. Your brain cells start to turn to mush, slowly shutting down cognitive function little by little like some strange, aggressive form of Alzheimer's disease. First you lose concentration ability, then your speech goes, and eventually all brain function stops altogether. It's a horrifying way to waste away.

Is the risk of that really worth eating burgers?

Remember: Right now, the practice of feeding chicken feces to cow herds continues. So there is a risk of mad cow disease infection in U.S. beef right now. Very little testing is currently being conducted for mad cow disease, meaning an infection could very easily go undetected for years. Meanwhile, the average hamburger contains beef parts from as many as 1,000 different cows.

Do the math. Unless cattle feeding practices are significantly reformed, eating beef products of any kind -- hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks -- is like playing Russian Roulette with your brain cells.

The 10 Weirdest, Grossest Ingredients in Processed Food

2009-11-04T15:19:00.000-08:00

The 10 Weirdest, Grossest Ingredients in Processed Food
By , WebEcoist
Posted on October 30, 2009, Printed on November 4, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143560/

Find more great content at WebEcoist.

Everyone now knows that processed and fast foods are not the bastions of nutrition, but that shouldn’t make these ingredients found inside them any less revolting. This list sends a clear message: when a packaged food contains more than five ingredients and includes some that are difficult to pronounce, stay away. Make a b-line straight to the organics aisle and go for vegan meals or vegetarian recipes instead.

1. Fertilizer in Subway Sandwich Rolls

While chemical fertilizers inevitably make it into our produce in trace amounts, you would not expect it to be a common food additive. However, ammonium sulfate can be found inside many brands of bread, including Subway’s. The chemical provides nitrogen for the yeast, creating a more consistent product.

2. Beaver Anal Glands in Raspberry Candy

The anal glands of a beaver, conveniently euphemized as castoreum, are a common ingredient in perfumes and colognes but are also sometimes used to -- believe it or not -- enhance the flavor of raspberry candies and sweets.

3. Beef Fat in All Hostess Products

While this may not bother the most ardent omnivore, others are shocked to discover that their favorite childhood treats contain straight-up beef fat. The ingredient comes included a list of other oils that may or may not be used, so it is always a gamble! It is enough to make some of us want to go vegan.

4. Crushed Bugs as Red Food Coloring

After killing thousands at a time, the dried insects are boiled to produce a liquid solution that can be turned to a dye using a variety of treatments. Some people worry that the coloring -- often called carmine or carminic acid -- could be listed as a “natural color,” disguising the fact that there are bugs in the product.

5. Beetle Juice in Sprinkles and Candies

You know that shiny coating on candies like Skittles? Or the sprinkles on cupcakes and ice cream sundaes? Well, they get that glaze from the secretions of the female lac beetle. The substance is also known as shellac and commonly used as a wood varnish.

6. Sheep Secretions in Bubble Gum

The oils inside sheep’s wool are collected to create the goopy substance called lanolin. From there, it ends up in chewing gum (sometimes under the guise of “gum base”), but also is used to create vitamin D3 supplements.

7. Human Hair and/or Duck Feathers in Bread

What’s in your morning bagel? If you get it from Noah’s Bagels, it contains either human hair or duck feathers, and it’s your guess as to which. The substance, called L-cysteine or cystine, is used as a dough conditioner to produce a specific consistency. While artificial cysteine is available, it is cost prohibitive and mostly used to create kosher and halal products.

8. Coal Tar in Red-Colored Candy

Coal tar is listed as number 199 on the United Nations list of “dangerous goods,” but that doesn’t stop people from using it in food. The coloring Allura Red AC is derived from coal tar and is commonly found in red-colored candies, sodas and other sweets.

9. Calf Stomach in Many Cheeses

In the UK, all cheeses are labeled as either suitable or not suitable for vegetarians because in Britain -- and everywhere else — many cheeses are made using rennet, which is the fourth stomach of a young cow. In the United States and most other countries, people are left to guess about the stomach-content of their cheese.

10. Sand in Wendy’s Chili

Sand is hidden in Wendy’s chili as a name you might remember from high school chemistry class: silicon dioxide. Apparently they use sand as an “anti-caking agent,” perhaps to make sure the chili can last for days and days over a heater. Skip it, cook yourself a quick vegetarian meal instead this Thanksgiving.

This article was originally published on WebEcoist.

Eating animals is making us sick

2009-10-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/10/28/opinion.jonathan.foer/index.html

Eating animals is making us sick
Jonathan Safran Foer
CNN.com
Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:10 EDT

Editor's note: Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. His latest book, the nonfiction Eating Animals, (Little, Brown and Co.) will be published November 2.

Like most people, I'd given some thought to what meat actually is, but until I became a father and faced the prospect of having to make food choices on someone else's behalf, there was no urgency to get to the bottom of things.

I'm a novelist and never had it in mind to write nonfiction. Frankly, I doubt I'll ever do it again. But the subject of animal agriculture, at this moment, is something no one should ignore. As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention.

If the way we raise animals for food isn't the most important problem in the world right now, it's arguably the No. 1 cause of global warming: The United Nations reports the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.

It's the No. 1 cause of animal suffering, a decisive factor in the creation of zoonotic diseases like bird and swine flu, and the list goes on. It is the problem with the most deafening silence surrounding it.

Even the most political people, the most thoughtful and engaged, tend not to "go there." And for good reason. Going there can be extremely uncomfortable. Food is not just what we put in our mouths to fill up; it is culture and identity. Reason plays some role in our decisions about food, but it's rarely driving the car.

We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn't ignore or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more able we will be to follow our best instincts. And although there are many respectable ways to think about meat, there is not a person on Earth whose best instincts would lead him or her to factory farming.

My book, Eating Animals, addresses factory farming from numerous perspectives: animal welfare, the environment, the price paid by rural communities, the economic costs. In two essays, I will share some of what I've learned about how the way we raise animals for food affects human health.

What we eat and what we are

Why aren't more people aware of, and angry about, the rates of avoidable food-borne illness? Perhaps it doesn't seem obvious that something is amiss simply because anything that happens all the time -- like meat, especially poultry, becoming infected by pathogens -- tends to fade into the background.

Whatever the case, if you know what to look for, the pathogen problem comes into terrifying focus. For example, the next time a friend has a sudden "flu" -- what folks sometimes misdescribe as "the stomach flu" -- ask a few questions. Was your friend's illness one of those "24-hour flus" that come and go quickly: retch or crap, then relief? The diagnosis isn't quite so simple, but if the answer to this question is yes, your friend probably didn't have the flu at all.

He or she was probably suffering from one of the 76 million cases of food-borne illness the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated happen in America each year. Your friend didn't "catch a bug" so much as eat a bug. And in all likelihood, that bug was created by factory farming.

Beyond the sheer number of illnesses linked to factory farming, we know that factory farms are contributing to the growth of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens simply because these farms consume so many antimicrobials.

We have to go to a doctor to obtain antibiotics and other antimicrobials as a public-health measure to limit the number of such drugs being taken by humans. We accept this inconvenience because of its medical importance. Microbes eventually adapt to antimicrobials, and we want to make sure it is the truly sick who benefit from the finite number of uses any antimicrobial will have before the microbes learn how to survive it.

On a typical factory farm, drugs are fed to animals with every meal. In poultry factory farms, they almost have to be. It's a perfect storm: The animals have been bred to such extremes that sickness is inevitable, and the living conditions promote illness.

Industry saw this problem from the beginning, but rather than accept less-productive animals, it compensated for the animals' compromised immunity with drugs. As a result, farmed animals are fed antibiotics nontherapeutically: that is, before they get sick.

In the United States, about 3 million pounds of antibiotics are given to humans each year, but a whopping 17.8 million pounds are fed to livestock -- at least, that is what the industry claims.

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimated that the industry underreported its antibiotic use by at least 40 percent.

The group calculated that 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics were fed to chickens, pigs and other farmed animals, counting only nontherapeutic uses. And that was in 2001. In other words, for every dose of antibiotics taken by a sick human, eight doses are given to a "healthy" animal.

The implications for creating drug-resistant pathogens are quite straightforward. Study after study has shown that antimicrobial resistance follows quickly on the heels of the introduction of new drugs on factory farms.

For example, in 1995, when the Food and Drug Administration approved fluoroquinolones -- such as Cipro -- for use in chickens against the protest of the Centers for Disease Control, the percentage of bacteria resistant to this powerful new class of antibiotics rose from almost zero to 18 percent by 2002.

A broader study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed an eightfold increase in antimicrobial resistance from 1992 to 1997 and linked this increase to the use of antimicrobials in farmed chickens. As far back as the late 1960s, scientists have warned against the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in farmed-animal feed.

Today, institutions as diverse as the American Medical Association; the Centers for Disease Control; the Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academy of Sciences; and the World Health Organization have linked nontherapeutic antibiotic use on factory farms with increased antimicrobial resistance and called for a ban.

Still, the factory farm industry has effectively opposed such a ban in the United States. And, unsurprisingly, the limited bans in other countries are only a limited solution.

There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn't happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals.

What is the source of the industry's immense power? We give it to them. We have chosen, unwittingly, to fund this industry on a massive scale by eating factory-farmed animal products. And we do so daily.

The same conditions that lead at least 76 million Americans to become ill from their food annually and that promote antimicrobial resistance also contribute to the risk of a pandemic.

At a remarkable 2004 conference, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) put their tremendous resources together to evaluate the available information on "emerging zoonotic diseases" or those spread by humans-to- animals and animals-to-humans.

At the time of the conference, H5N1 and SARS topped the list of feared emerging zoonotic diseases. Today, the H1N1 swine flu would be the pathogen enemy No. 1.

The scientists distinguished between "primary risk factors" for zoonotic diseases and mere "amplification risk factors," which affect only the rate at which a disease spreads. Their examples of primary risk factors were "change to an agricultural production system or consumption patterns." What particular agricultural and consumer changes did they have in mind?

First in a list of four main risk factors was "increasing demand for animal protein," which is a way of saying that demand for meat, eggs, and dairy is a "primary factor" influencing emerging zoonotic diseases. This demand for animal products, the report continues, leads to "changes in farming practices." Lest we have any confusion about the "changes" that are relevant, poultry factory farms are singled out.

Similar conclusions were reached by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, which brought together industry experts and experts from the WHO, OIE and USDA. Their 2005 report argued that a major impact of factory farming is "the rapid selection and amplification of pathogens that arise from a virulent ancestor (frequently by subtle mutation), thus there is increasing risk for disease entrance and/or dissemination."

Breeding genetically uniform and sickness-prone birds in the overcrowded, stressful, feces-infested and artificially lit conditions of factory farms promotes the growth and mutation of pathogens. The "cost of increased efficiency," the report concludes, is increased global risk for diseases. Our choice is simple: cheap chicken or our health.

Today, the factory farm-pandemic link couldn't be more lucid. The primary ancestor of the recent H1N1 swine flu outbreak originated at a hog factory farm in America's most hog-factory-rich state, North Carolina, and then quickly spread throughout the Americas.

It was in these factory farms that scientists saw, for the first time, viruses that combined genetic material from bird, pig and human viruses. Scientists at Columbia and Princeton Universities have actually been able to trace six of the eight genetic segments of the most feared virus in the world directly to U.S. factory farms.

Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science, that something terribly wrong is happening. We know that it cannot possibly be healthy to raise such grotesque animals in such grossly unnatural conditions. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film.

We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory -- disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat, we live on tortured flesh. Increasingly, those sick animals are making us sick.

Warning: Eating Meat May Cause Sickness, Paralysis and Death

2009-10-12T10:21:00.000-07:00

Warning: Eating Meat May Cause Sickness, Paralysis and Death
By Tom Laskawy, Grist.org
October 12, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143136/

It's hard to draw any other conclusion from Michael Moss's New York Times blockbuster investigative piece on E. coli in industrial beef, which is centered on the plight of Stephanie Smith, a young dance instructor left comatose, near death and now paralyzed from eating a single Cargill hamburger. Of course, a "single hamburger" can include meat from hundreds, some would say thousands, of animals. As Moss puts it:

Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.

This is why a food safety expert who helped develop tracking systems for E. coli in meat can declare that, "Ground beef is not a completely safe product." No kidding. The problem, however, is not with E. coli in general. The problem is that the particular strain of E. coli which infected Smith -- known as E. coli O157:H7 -- is virulent, deadly, persistent and endemic in industrial beef. How virulent, deadly and persistent? This much:

Food scientists have registered increasing concern about the virulence of this pathogen since only a few stray cells can make someone sick, and they warn that federal guidance to cook meat thoroughly and to wash up afterward is not sufficient. A test by The Times found that the safe handling instructions are not enough to prevent the bacteria from spreading in the kitchen.

In other words, if a piece of infected meat ends up in your kitchen, you are almost guaranteed exposure to it no matter how carefully you handle it. And how endemic? This year alone almost half a million pounds of E. coli infected ground beef have been recalled nationwide (and that doesn't include the 800,000 pounds of Cargill beef recalled for contamination with antibiotic-resistant salmonella). Indeed, if Moss's work proves anything, it's that the safety systems in industrial beef processing are both barely functioning and almost fully opaque. And while the government is able to peek behind the curtain at these massive slaughterhouses and processing facilities, it seems far more concerned with protecting companies' intellectual property than with the public health:

The meat industry treats much of its practices and the ingredients in ground beef as trade secrets. While the Department of Agriculture has inspectors posted in plants and has access to production records, it also guards those secrets. Federal records released by the department through the Freedom of Information Act blacked out details of Cargill's grinding operation that could be learned only through copies of the documents obtained from other sources. Those documents illustrate the restrained approach to enforcement by a department whose missions include ensuring meat safety and promoting agriculture markets.

In one of the most chilling, and I thought devastating, quotes in the entire piece, a top official at the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service observed that his options were somewhat limited since he had to "look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health." Note the fact that his phrasing sets the meat industry's needs at odds with ours -- the two can't be reconciled in his eyes. What does that say about the government's ability to ensure a safe food supply? No matter how you structure it, the industry now appears too big and too powerful to be regulated. What other explanation is there for the fact that the top food safety job at the USDA remains unfilled if not regulatory paralysis -- the meat industry seems to have veto power over its regulators and hasn't found a federal overseer to its liking.

One area that Moss does not cover is how E. coli O157 got into industrial beef in the first place. In fact it's there because of the meat industry's insistence on feeding cows corn -- something they cannot easily digest -- instead of grass. Among other things, corn feeding requires cows to be fed a steady dose of antibiotics, which has led to the rise of antibiotic resistance among various pathogens. But more importantly, it has caused very real changes in the cow's gut which has allowed this toxic strain of E. coli to take hold, a strain that research suggests cannot survive in the gut of cows that eat only grass.

In short, E. coli didn't just "happen" to the meat industry -- it's a consequence of industrial practices. But nowhere in the article (or in the halls of the USDA or the largescale beef producers for that matter) is the possibility of moving away from this corn-based system raised as a solution for the industrial system. Surprisingly, the article includes virtually no proposed solutions for this crisis -- just vague assurances that the USDA isn't "standing still" on the issue. In reality, the industry focuses exclusively on "managing" the ongoing presence of E. coli O157 though the development of an E. coli vaccine for cows, and irradiation or chemical washes for the meat. All of which are attempts to mask the risks of a failed system and represent an institutionalizing of the underlying failures. And none of which make me ever want to touch industrial meat again.

Indeed, if there ever was a powerful argument for eating only grass-fed beef from small producers, this article is it. The only conclusion worth drawing from this expose is that industrial ground beef simply isn't worth the risk. And without wholesale industry and regulatory reform -- neither of which appears likely or even possible, it may never be.

A Solution For Diabetes: A Vegan Diet

2009-10-08T05:17:00.001-07:00

A Solution For Diabetes: A Vegan Diet
By Kathy Freston, AlterNet
Printed on October 8, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143149/

I've been researching the most common and devastating diseases Americans are dealing with, with the aim of finding a common thread running throughout both cause and reversal. As it is now, one out of every two of us will get cancer or heart disease, and one out of every three children born after the year 2000 will be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. These are devastating diseases, certainly to those who are burdened by them, but also to a health care system that is struggling to keep up.

The extraordinary doctors and nutritional scientists I've spoken with seem to be saying - and saying fervently - the same thing: a diet high in animal protein is disastrous to our health, while a plant-based (vegan) diet prevents disease and is restorative to our health. And they say this with peer-reviewed (the gold standard of studies) science to back them up. Even the very conservative ADA (American Dietetic Association) says: "Vegetarian diets are often associated with a number of health advantages, including lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure levels, and lower risk of hypertension and type 2 diabetes. Vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index (BMI) and lower overall cancer rates."

Diabetes does not just mean you take a pill or injection every day. It means you can lose a decade of life. And you while you inch toward that uncomfortable end, you deal with an increased risk of heart attack, blindness, amputation, and loss of kidney function. It's a very serious disease. The good news is that diabetes can be halted and reversed in a very short time through some diet modifications.

To understand diabetes better, and to learn how to reverse it, I've talked with Dr. Neal Barnard, president of The Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine. He is an adjunct associate professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine, and the author of numerous scientific articles in leading peer-reviewed journals, and a frequent lecturer at the American Diabetes Association's scientific sessions. His diabetes research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Government's research branch. He is also the author of Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes.

KF: Why is type 2 diabetes suddenly so prevalent?

NB: Diets are changing, not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Diabetes seems to follow the spread of meaty, high-fat, high-calorie diets. In Japan, for example, the traditional rice-based diet kept the population generally healthy and thin for many centuries. Up until 1980, only 1-5% of Japanese adults over age 40 had diabetes. Starting around that time, however, the rapid westernization of the diet meant that meat, milk, cheese, and sodas became fashionable. Waistlines expanded, and, by 1990, diabetes prevalence in Japan had climbed to 11-12%.

The same sort of trend has occurred in the U.S. Over the last century, per capita meat consumption increased from about 150 pounds per year (which was already very high, compared with other countries) in the early 1900s to over 200 pounds today. In other words, the average American now eats 50 pounds more meat every year, compared with a century ago. In the same interval, cheese intake soared from less than 4 pounds per person per year to about 32 pounds today. Sugar intake has gone up, too, by about 30 pounds per person per year. Where are we putting all that extra meat, cheese, and sugar? It contributes to body fat, of course, and diabetes follows. Today, about 13% of the U.S. adult population has type 2 diabetes, although many of them are not yet aware they have it.

KF: What causes diabetes?

NB: Normally, the cells of the body use the simple sugar glucose as fuel, the way a car uses gasoline. Glucose comes from starchy or sweet foods we eat, and the hormone insulin escorts it into the muscle cells to power our movements. Glucose also passes into our brain cells to power our thoughts. In type 2 diabetes, the cells resist insulin's action, so glucose has trouble getting into the cells.

KF: What happens to the body when one develops diabetes? What's the fallout?

NB: If glucose can't get into the cells, it builds up in the blood. It is as if gasoline coming out of a gas pump somehow can't get into your gas tank, and it ends up spilling over the side of your car, coming in through your car windows, and dribbling all over the pavement. It is a dangerous situation. The abnormally high levels of glucose circulating in the bloodstream are toxic to the blood vessels, especially the tiny blood vessels of the eyes, the kidneys, the extremities, and the heart.

KF: Is it really that serious, or can we just take a drug for it?

NB: A person with diabetes loses more than a decade of life, on average; about three-quarters will die prematurely of a heart attack. It is also a leading cause of blindness, amputations, and loss of kidney function. Many drugs are available, from insulin to oral medications and an ever-increasing variety of other medications. In order to protect the heart, many patients are also put on medications to lower cholesterol and blood pressure. A person with diabetes who walks into my office is typically using $3,000 to $5,000 worth of medications each year. And yet these medications only slow the progression of the disease; many people have serious complications despite being on medications.

Let me emphasize that this grim scenario does not have to occur. If an unhealthy diet is the cause, a better diet can provide the answer to this problem.

KF: How can we avoid it?

NB: The key is to help our body's insulin to work normally. So long as your body's insulin can escort glucose into the cells normally, diabetes will not occur. The resistance to insulin that leads to diabetes appears to be caused by a build-up of fat inside the muscle cells and also inside the liver. Let me draw an analogy: I arrive home from work one day, and put my key in my front door lock. But I notice the key does not turn properly, and the door does not open. Peering inside the lock, I see that someone has jammed chewing gum into the lock. Now, if the insulin "key" cannot open up the cell to glucose, there is something interfering with it. It's not chewing gum, of course. The problem is fat. In the same way that chewing gum in a lock makes it hard to open your front door, fat particles inside muscle cells interfere with insulin's efforts to open the cell to glucose. This fat comes from beef, chicken, fish, cooking oils, dairy products, etc. The answer is to avoid these fatty foods. People who avoid all animal products obviously get no animal fat at all, they appear to have much less fat build-up inside their cells, and their risk of diabetes is extremely low. Minimizing vegetable oils helps, too.

And we can go beyond prevention. When people who already have diabetes adopt a low-fat vegan diet, their condition often improves dramatically. In our research, funded by the U.S. Government, we found that a vegan diet is more effective than a traditional current diabetes diet, and is much safer than a low-carb diet.

KF: What about the claim that a vegetarian diet has too many starches, which raises blood sugar?

NB: Starchy foods, such as whole grains, beans, and vegetables, are healthful foods, and the body is designed to use the glucose that they hold. In type 2 diabetes, the body has lost some of this ability. But the answer is not to avoid starches, but to restore the body's ability to use them. After all, cultures whose diets are traditionally high in carbohydrate--Japan, China, Latin America, etc.--have had very low diabetes rates until meat, cheese, and other fatty foods displace their healthy carbohydrate-rich diets; only then does diabetes becomes more common.

The Atkins fad unfortunately left many people imagining that carbohydrate (that is, starch) is somehow risky. That notion is as unscientific as suggesting that water or oxygen is dangerous. The body needs all these things for good health.

A similarly persistent but misguided idea is the blood-type diet approach. A popular book on this subject said that people with type A blood should follow a vegetarian diet but that people with type O blood should not. Unfortunately many readers with type O blood followed this advice, which turned out to be quite wrong. The fact is, people with type O blood do as well as everyone else on a plant-based diet. A vegan diet is helpful and effective, regardless of blood type.

KF: Can diabetes be reversed?

NB: Yes. When people begin a healthful diet, most see big improvements in weight, cholesterol, and their blood sugar. Their need for medications diminishes, and some may not need medications at all. In some cases, you would never know they had had diabetes. However, I caution people not to simply throw their medications away. They need to speak with their doctors so they can alter their medication regimens only when and if it is appropriate.

Let me describe a case: A man named Vance joined our study. His father was dead by age 30, and Vance was 31 when he was diagnosed with diabetes. As our study began, he started a low-fat, vegan diet and gradually lost about 60 pounds over a year's time. His blood sugar control returned to normal, and his doctor discontinued his medications. Imagine what it feels like to see family members assaulted by this disease, but then to realize that you have effectively tackled it by making healthful adjustments to your diet.

Vance also encouraged me to mention that it is not only blood sugar that gets better, his erectile dysfunction also improved dramatically, too--in case anyone needs an extra motivator.

E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection

2009-10-04T17:06:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html?_r=1&hp

October 4, 2009
E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection

By MICHAEL MOSS

Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes.

Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.

Ms. Smith, 22, was found to have a severe form of food-borne illness caused by E. coli, which Minnesota officials traced to the hamburger that her mother had grilled for their Sunday dinner in early fall 2007.

“I ask myself every day, ‘Why me?’ and ‘Why from a hamburger?’ ”Ms. Smith said. In the simplest terms, she ran out of luck in a food-safety game of chance whose rules and risks are not widely known.

Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.

Ms. Smith’s reaction to the virulent strain of E. coli was extreme, but tracing the story of her burger, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe.

Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Using a combination of sources — a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger — allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.

Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows. Yet Cargill, like most meat companies, relies on its suppliers to check for the bacteria and does its own testing only after the ingredients are ground together. The United States Department of Agriculture, which allows grinders to devise their own safety plans, has encouraged them to test ingredients first as a way of increasing the chance of finding contamination.

Unwritten agreements between some companies appear to stand in the way of ingredient testing. Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding companies. Slaughterhouses fear that one grinder’s discovery of E. coli will set off a recall of ingredients they sold to others.

“Ground beef is not a completely safe product,” said Dr. Jeffrey Bender, a food safety expert at the University of Minnesota who helped develop systems for tracing E. coli contamination. He said that while outbreaks had been on the decline, “unfortunately it looks like we are going a bit in the opposite direction.”

Food scientists have registered increasing concern about the virulence of this pathogen since only a few stray cells can make someone sick, and they warn that federal guidance to cook meat thoroughly and to wash up afterward is not sufficient. A test by The Times found that the safe handling instructions are not enough to prevent the bacteria from spreading in the kitchen.

Cargill, whose $116.6 billion in revenues last year made it the country’s largest private company, declined requests to interview company officials or visit its facilities. “Cargill is not in a position to answer your specific questions, other than to state that we are committed to continuous improvement in the area of food safety,” the company said, citing continuing litigation.

The meat industry treats much of its practices and the ingredients in ground beef as trade secrets. While the Department of Agriculture has inspectors posted in plants and has access to production records, it also guards those secrets. Federal records released by the department through the Freedom of Information Act blacked out details of Cargill’s grinding operation that could be learned only through copies of the documents obtained from other sources. Those documents illustrate the restrained approach to enforcement by a department whose missions include ensuring meat safety and promoting agriculture markets.

Within weeks of the Cargill outbreak in 2007, U.S.D.A. officials swept across the country, conducting spot checks at 224 meat plants to assess their efforts to combat E. coli. Although inspectors had been monitoring these plants all along, officials found serious problems at 55 that were failing to follow their own safety plans.

“Every time we look, we find out that things are not what we hoped they would be,” said Loren D. Lange, an executive associate in the Agriculture Department’s food safety division.

In the weeks before Ms. Smith’s patty was made, federal inspectors had repeatedly found that Cargill was violating its own safety procedures in handling ground beef, but they imposed no fines or sanctions, records show. After the outbreak, the department threatened to withhold the seal of approval that declares “U.S. Inspected and Passed by the Department of Agriculture.”

In the end, though, the agency accepted Cargill’s proposal to increase its scrutiny of suppliers. That agreement came early last year after contentious negotiations, records show. When Cargill defended its safety system and initially resisted making some changes, an agency official wrote back: “How is food safety not the ultimate issue?”

The Risk

On Aug. 16, 2007, the day Ms. Smith’s hamburger was made, the No.3 grinder at the Cargill plant in Butler, Wis., started up at 6:50 a.m. The largest ingredient was beef trimmings known as “50/50” — half fat, half meat — that cost about 60 cents a pound, making them the cheapest component.

Cargill bought these trimmings — fatty edges sliced from better cuts of meat — from Greater Omaha Packing, where some 2,600 cattle are slaughtered daily and processed in a plant the size of four football fields.

As with other slaughterhouses, the potential for contamination is present every step of the way, according to workers and federal inspectors. The cattle often arrive with smears of feedlot feces that harbor the E. coli pathogen, and the hide must be removed carefully to keep it off the meat. This is especially critical for trimmings sliced from the outer surface of the carcass.

Federal inspectors based at the plant are supposed to monitor the hide removal, but much can go wrong. Workers slicing away the hide can inadvertently spread feces to the meat, and large clamps that hold the hide during processing sometimes slip and smear the meat with feces, the workers and inspectors say.

Greater Omaha vacuums and washes carcasses with hot water and lactic acid before sending them to the cutting floor. But these safeguards are not foolproof.

“As the trimmings are going down the processing line into combos or boxes, no one is inspecting every single piece,” said one federal inspector who monitored Greater Omaha and requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

The E. coli risk is also present at the gutting station, where intestines are removed, the inspector said

Every five seconds or so, half of a carcass moves into the meat-cutting side of the slaughterhouse, where trimmers said they could keep up with the flow unless they spot any remaining feces.

“We would step in and stop the line, and do whatever you do to take it off,” said Esley Adams, a former supervisor who said he was fired this summer after 16 years following a dispute over sick leave. “But that doesn’t mean everything was caught.”

Two current employees said the flow of carcasses keeps up its torrid pace even when trimmers get reassigned, which increases pressure on workers. To protest one such episode, the employees said, dozens of workers walked off the job for a few hours earlier this year. Last year, workers sued Greater Omaha, alleging that they were not paid for the time they need to clean contaminants off their knives and other gear before and after their shifts. The company is contesting the lawsuit.

Greater Omaha did not respond to repeated requests to interview company officials. In a statement, a company official said Greater Omaha had a “reputation for embracing new food safety technology and utilizing science to make the safest product possible.”

The Trimmings

In making hamburger meat, grinders aim for a specific fat content — 26.6 percent in the lot that Ms. Smith’s patty came from, company records show. To offset Greater Omaha’s 50/50 trimmings, Cargill added leaner material from three other suppliers.

Records show that some came from a Texas slaughterhouse, Lone Star Beef Processors, which specializes in dairy cows and bulls too old to be fattened in feedlots. In a form letter dated two days before Ms. Smith’s patty was made, Lone Star recounted for Cargill its various safety measures but warned “to this date there is no guarantee for pathogen-free raw material and we would like to stress the importance of proper handling of all raw products.”

Ms. Smith’s burger also contained trimmings from a slaughterhouse in Uruguay, where government officials insist that they have never found E. coli O157:H7 in meat. Yet audits of Uruguay’s meat operations conducted by the U.S.D.A. have found sanitation problems, including improper testing for the pathogen. Dr. Hector J. Lazaneo, a meat safety official in Uruguay, said the problems were corrected immediately. “Everything is fine, finally,” he said. “That is the reason we are exporting.”

Cargill’s final source was a supplier that turns fatty trimmings into what it calls “fine lean textured beef.” The company, Beef Products Inc., said it bought meat that averages between 50 percent and 70 percent fat, including “any small pieces of fat derived from the normal breakdown of the beef carcass.” It warms the trimmings, removes the fat in a centrifuge and treats the remaining product with ammonia to kill E. coli.

With seven million pounds produced each week, the company’s product is widely used in hamburger meat sold by grocers and fast-food restaurants and served in the federal school lunch program. Ten percent of Ms. Smith’s burger came from Beef Products, which charged Cargill about $1.20 per pound, or 20 cents less than the lean trimmings in the burger, billing records show.

An Iowa State University study financed by Beef Products found that ammonia reduces E. coli to levels that cannot be detected. The Department of Agriculture accepted the research as proof that the treatment was effective and safe. And Cargill told the agency after the outbreak that it had ruled out Beef Products as the possible source of contamination.

But federal school lunch officials found E. coli in Beef Products material in 2006 and 2008 and again in August, and stopped it from going to schools, according to Agriculture Department records and interviews. A Beef Products official, Richard Jochum, said that last year’s contamination stemmed from a “minor change in our process,” which the company adjusted. The company did not respond to questions about the latest finding.

In combining the ingredients, Cargill was following a common industry practice of mixing trim from various suppliers to hit the desired fat content for the least money, industry officials said.

In all, the ingredients for Ms. Smith’s burger cost Cargill about $1 a pound, company records show, or about 30 cents less than industry experts say it would cost for ground beef made from whole cuts of meat.

Ground beef sold by most grocers is made from a blend of ingredients, industry officials said. Agriculture Department regulations also allow hamburger meat labeled ground chuck or sirloin to contain trimmings from those parts of the cow. At a chain like Publix Super Markets, customers who want hamburger made from whole cuts of meat have to buy a steak and have it specially ground, said a Publix spokeswoman, Maria Brous, or buy a product like Bubba Burgers, which boasts on its labeling, “100% whole muscle means no trimmings.”

To finish off the Smiths’ ground beef, Cargill added bread crumbs and spices, fashioned it into patties, froze them and packed them 18 to a carton.

The listed ingredients revealed little of how the meat was made. There was just one meat product listed: “Beef.”

Tension Over Testing

As it fed ingredients into its grinders, Cargill watched for some unwanted elements. Using metal detectors, workers snagged stray nails and metal hooks that could damage the grinders, then warned suppliers to make sure it did not happen again.

But when it came to E. coli O157:H7, Cargill did not screen the ingredients and only tested once the grinding was done. The potential pitfall of this practice surfaced just weeks before Ms. Smith’s patty was made. A company spot check in May 2007 found E. coli in finished hamburger, which Cargill disclosed to investigators in the wake of the October outbreak. But Cargill told them it could not determine which supplier had shipped the tainted meat since the ingredients had already been mixed together.

“Our finished ground products typically contain raw materials from numerous suppliers,” Dr. Angela Siemens, the technical services vice president for Cargill’s meat division, wrote to the U.S.D.A. “Consequently, it is not possible to implicate a specific supplier without first observing a pattern of potential contamination.”

Testing has been a point of contention since the 1994 ban on selling ground beef contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 was imposed. The department moved to require some bacterial testing of ground beef, but the industry argued that the cost would unfairly burden small producers, industry officials said. The Agriculture Department opted to carry out its own tests for E. coli, but it acknowledges that its 15,000 spot checks a year at thousands of meat plants and groceries nationwide is not meant to be comprehensive. Many slaughterhouses and processors have voluntarily adopted testing regimes, yet they vary greatly in scope from plant to plant.

The retail giant Costco is one of the few big producers that tests trimmings for E. coli before grinding, a practice it adopted after a New York woman was sickened in 1998 by its hamburger meat, prompting a recall.

Craig Wilson, Costco’s food safety director, said the company decided it could not rely on its suppliers alone. “It’s incumbent upon us,” he said. “If you say, ‘Craig, this is what we’ve done,’ I should be able to go, ‘Cool, I believe you.’ But I’m going to check.”

Costco said it had found E. coli in foreign and domestic beef trimmings and pressured suppliers to fix the problem. But even Costco, with its huge buying power, said it had met resistance from some big slaughterhouses. “Tyson will not supply us,” Mr. Wilson said. “They don’t want us to test.”

A Tyson spokesman, Gary Mickelson, would not respond to Costco’s accusation, but said, “We do not and cannot” prohibit grinders from testing ingredients. He added that since Tyson tests samples of its trimmings, “we don’t believe secondary testing by grinders is a necessity.”

The food safety officer at American Foodservice, which grinds 365 million pounds of hamburger a year, said it stopped testing trimmings a decade ago because of resistance from slaughterhouses. “They would not sell to us,” said Timothy P. Biela, the officer. “If I test and it’s positive, I put them in a regulatory situation. One, I have to tell the government, and two, the government will trace it back to them. So we don’t do that.”

The surge in outbreaks since 2007 has led to finger-pointing within the industry.

Dennis R. Johnson, a lobbyist for the largest meat processors, has said that not all slaughterhouses are looking hard enough for contamination. He told U.S.D.A. officials last fall that those with aggressive testing programs typically find E. coli in as much as 1 percent to 2 percent of their trimmings, yet some slaughterhouses implicated in outbreaks had failed to find any.

At the same time, the meat processing industry has resisted taking the onus on itself. An Agriculture Department survey of more than 2,000 plants taken after the Cargill outbreak showed that half of the grinders did not test their finished ground beef for E. coli; only 6 percent said they tested incoming ingredients at least four times a year.

In October 2007, the agency issued a notice recommending that processors conduct at least a few tests a year to verify the testing done by slaughterhouses. But after resistance from the industry, the department allowed suppliers to run the verification checks on their own operations.

In August 2008, the U.S.D.A. issued a draft guideline again urging, but not ordering, processors to test ingredients before grinding. “Optimally, every production lot should be sampled and tested before leaving the supplier and again before use at the receiver,” the draft guideline said.

But the department received critical comments on the guideline, which has not been made official. Industry officials said that the cost of testing could unfairly burden small processors and that slaughterhouses already test. In an October 2008 letter to the department, the American Association of Meat Processors said the proposed guideline departed from U.S.D.A.’s strategy of allowing companies to devise their own safety programs, “thus returning to more of the agency’s ‘command and control’ mind-set.”

Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an assistant administrator with the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said that the department could mandate testing, but that it needed to consider the impact on companies as well as consumers. “I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health,” Dr. Petersen said.

Tracing the Illness

The Smiths were slow to suspect the hamburger. Ms. Smith ate a mostly vegetarian diet, and when she grew increasingly ill, her mother, Sharon, thought the cause might be spinach, which had been tied to a recent E. coli outbreak.

Five days after the family’s Sunday dinner, Ms. Smith was admitted to St. Cloud Hospital in excruciating pain. “I’ve had women tell me that E. coli is more painful than childbirth,” said Dr. Phillip I. Tarr, a pathogen expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

The vast majority of E. coli illnesses resolve themselves without complications, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Five percent to 10 percent develop into a condition called hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can affect kidney function. While most patients recover, in the worst cases, like Ms. Smith’s, the toxin in E. coli O157:H7 penetrates the colon wall, damaging blood vessels and causing clots that can lead to seizures.

To control Ms. Smith’s seizures, doctors put her in a coma and flew her to the Mayo Clinic, where doctors worked to save her.

“They didn’t even think her brain would work because of the seizuring,” her mother said. “Thanksgiving Day, I was sitting there holding her hand when a group of doctors came in, and one looked at me and just walked away, with nothing good to say. And I said, ‘Oh my God, maybe this is my last Thanksgiving with her,’ and I stayed and prayed.”

Ms. Smith’s illness was linked to the hamburger only by chance. Her aunt still had some of the frozen patties, and state health officials found that they were contaminated with a powerful strain of E. coli that was genetically identical to the pathogen that had sickened other Minnesotans.

Dr. Kirk Smith, who runs the state’s food-borne illness outbreak group and is not related to Ms. Smith, was quick to finger the source. A 4-year-old had fallen ill three weeks earlier, followed by her year-old brother and two more children, state records show. Like Ms. Smith, the others had eaten Cargill patties bought at Sam’s Club, a division of Wal-Mart.

Moreover, the state officials discovered that the hamburgers were made on the same day, Aug. 16, 2007, shortly before noon. The time stamp on the Smiths’ box of patties was 11:58.

On Friday, Oct. 5, 2007, a Minnesota Health Department warning led local news broadcasts. “We didn’t want people grilling these things over the weekend,” Dr. Smith said. “I’m positive we prevented illnesses. People sent us dozens of cartons with patties left. It was pretty contaminated stuff.”

Eventually, health officials tied 11 cases of illness in Minnesota to the Cargill outbreak, and altogether, federal health officials estimate that the outbreak sickened 940 people. Four of the 11 Minnesota victims developed hemolytic uremic syndrome — an usually high rate of serious complications.

In the wake of the outbreak, the U.S.D.A. reminded consumers on its Web site that hamburgers had to be cooked to 160 degrees to be sure any E. coli is killed and urged them to use a thermometer to check the temperature. This reinforced Sharon Smith’s concern that she had sickened her daughter by not cooking the hamburger thoroughly.

But the pathogen is so powerful that her illness could have started with just a few cells left on a counter. “In a warm kitchen, E. coli cells will double every 45 minutes,” said Dr. Mansour Samadpour, a microbiologist who runs IEH Laboratories in Seattle, one of the meat industry’s largest testing firms.

With help from his laboratories, The Times prepared three pounds of ground beef dosed with a strain of E. coli that is nonharmful but acts in many ways like O157:H7. Although the safety instructions on the package were followed, E. coli remained on the cutting board even after it was washed with soap. A towel picked up large amounts of bacteria from the meat.

Dr. James Marsden, a meat safety expert at Kansas State University and senior science adviser for the North American Meat Processors Association, said the Department of Agriculture needed to issue better guidance on avoiding cross-contamination, like urging people to use bleach to sterilize cutting boards. “Even if you are a scientist, much less a housewife with a child, it’s very difficult,” Dr. Marsden said.

Told of The Times’s test, Jerold R. Mande, the deputy under secretary for food safety at the U.S.D.A., said he planned to “look very carefully at the labels that we oversee.”

“They need to provide the right information to people,” Mr. Mande said, “in a way that is readable and actionable.”

Dead Ends

With Ms. Smith lying comatose in the hospital and others ill around the country, Cargill announced on Oct. 6, 2007, that it was recalling 844,812 pounds of patties. The mix of ingredients in the burgers made it almost impossible for either federal officials or Cargill to trace the contamination to a specific slaughterhouse. Yet after the outbreak, Cargill had new incentives to find out which supplier had sent the tainted meat.

Cargill got hit by multimillion-dollar claims from people who got sick.

Shawn K. Stevens, a lawyer in Milwaukee working for Cargill, began investigating. Sifting through state health department records from around the nation, Mr. Stevens found the case of a young girl in Hawaii stricken with the same E. coli found in the Cargill patties. But instead of a Cargill burger, she had eaten raw minced beef at a Japanese restaurant that Mr. Stevens said he traced through a distributor to Greater Omaha.

“Potentially, it could let Cargill shift all the responsibility,” Mr. Stevens said. In March, he sent his findings to William Marler, a lawyer in Seattle who specializes in food-borne disease cases and is handling the claims against Cargill.

“Most of the time, in these outbreaks, it’s not unusual when I point the finger at somebody, they try to point the finger at somebody else,” Mr. Marler said. But he said Mr. Stevens’s finding “doesn’t rise to the level of proof that I need” to sue Greater Omaha.

It is unclear whether Cargill presented the Hawaii findings to Greater Omaha, since neither company would comment on the matter. In December 2007, in a move that Greater Omaha said was unrelated to the outbreak, the slaughterhouse informed Cargill that it had taken 16 “corrective actions” to better protect consumers from E. coli “as we strive to live up to the performance standards required in the continuation of supplier relationship with Cargill.”

Those changes included better monitoring of the production line, more robust testing for E. coli, intensified plant sanitation and added employee training.

The U.S.D.A. efforts to find the ultimate source of the contamination went nowhere. Officials examined production records of Cargill’s three domestic suppliers, but they yielded no clues. The Agriculture Department contacted Uruguayan officials, who said they found nothing amiss in the slaughterhouse there.

In examining Cargill, investigators discovered that their own inspectors had lodged complaints about unsanitary conditions at the plant in the weeks before the outbreak, but that they had failed to set off any alarms within the department. Inspectors had found “large amounts of patties on the floor,” grinders that were gnarly with old bits of meat, and a worker who routinely dumped inedible meat on the floor close to a production line, records show.

Although none were likely to have caused the contamination, federal officials said the conditions could have exacerbated the spread of bacteria. Cargill vowed to correct the problems. Dr. Petersen, the federal food safety official, said the department was working to make sure violations are tracked so they can be used “in real time to take action.”

The U.S.D.A. found that Cargill had not followed its own safety program for controlling E. coli. For example, Cargill was supposed to obtain a certificate from each supplier showing that their tests had found no E. coli. But Cargill did not have a certificate for the Uruguayan trimmings used on the day it made the burgers that sickened Ms. Smith and others.

After four months of negotiations, Cargill agreed to increase its scrutiny of suppliers and their testing, including audits and periodic checks to determine the accuracy of their laboratories.

A recent industry test in which spiked samples of meat were sent to independent laboratories used by food companies found that some missed the E. coli in as many as 80 percent of the samples.

Cargill also said it would notify suppliers whenever it found E. coli in finished ground beef, so they could check their facilities. It also agreed to increase testing of finished ground beef, according to a U.S.D.A. official familiar with the company’s operations, but would not test incoming ingredients.

Looking to the Future

The spate of outbreaks in the last three years has increased pressure on the Agriculture Department and the industry.

James H. Hodges, executive vice president of the American Meat Institute, a trade association, said that while the outbreaks were disconcerting, they followed several years during which there were fewer incidents. “Are we perfect?” he said. “No. But what we have done is to show some continual improvement.”

Dr. Petersen, the U.S.D.A. official, said the department had adopted additional procedures, including enhanced testing at slaughterhouses implicated in outbreaks and better training for investigators.

“We are not standing still when it comes to E. coli,” Dr. Petersen said.

The department has held a series of meetings since the recent outbreaks, soliciting ideas from all quarters. Dr. Samadpour, the laboratory owner, has said that “we can make hamburger safe,” but that in addition to enhanced testing, it will take an aggressive use of measures like meat rinses and safety audits by qualified experts.

At these sessions, Felicia Nestor, a senior policy analyst with the consumer group Food and Water Watch, has urged the government to redouble its effort to track outbreaks back to slaughterhouses. “They are the source of the problem,” Ms. Nestor said.

For Ms. Smith, the road ahead is challenging. She is living at her mother’s home in Cold Spring, Minn. She spends a lot of her time in physical therapy, which is being paid for by Cargill in anticipation of a legal claim, according to Mr. Marler. Her kidneys are at high risk of failure. She is struggling to regain some basic life skills and deal with the anger that sometimes envelops her. Despite her determination, doctors say, she will most likely never walk again.

The Trials of Being a Conscious Meat Eater

2009-09-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

I didn't stop eating meat right way. I had to think about it for a while and be conscious of what I was eating. Now that I've been a vegetarian for quite some time, I will never go back! My Body and Soul feels so much BEtter!

The Trials of Being a Conscious Meat Eater
By Sandor Ellix Katz, Chelsea Green Publishing
Posted on September 16, 2009, Printed on September 16, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142638/

The following is an excerpt from The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements by Sandor Ellix Katz. It has been adapted for the web.

I love meat. The smell of it cooking can fill me with desire, and I find its juicy, rich flavor uniquely satisfying. At the same time, everything I see, hear, or read about standard commercial factory farming and slaughtering fills me with disgust. I hold great respect for the ideals that people seek to put into practice through vegetarianism.

Vegetarianism is the original manifestation of food activism. Since ancient times vegetarians have sought to embody ideals that they see as making the world a kinder, gentler place. A small minority of people throughout history -- mostly inspired by religious ideals -- have eschewed animal flesh, among them Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Roman Catholic Trappist monks, and Essenes, an ancient Jewish sect. Historically vegetarianism has been a practice of asceticism: a rejection of material pleasure and an embrace of universal compassion. In more recent times vegetarianism has largely been motivated by political and ethical ideas, as well as the pursuit of good health, as we shall explore below.

I was a half-hearted vegetarian for a couple of years, even vegan (avoiding not only meat but all animal products) for a little while, based on the abstract idea that animal fats are unhealthy, which I no longer believe to be true. When I tried being vegan, I found myself dreaming about eggs. I could find no virtue in denying my desires. I now understand that many nutrients are soluble only in fats, and animal fats can be vehicles of rich nourishment. Of course, much depends upon how the animals are raised, and also upon how you integrate them into your diet.

Animals raised factory-style, pumped up with antibiotics and growth hormones and fed the by-products of chemical agriculture, contain high levels of toxicity that have become concentrated up the food chain. They are also often treated cruelly and live in deplorable conditions. A friend who attends a state agriculture school was in a livestock class that required students to perform acts of unnecessary violence such as dehorning mature bulls, rather than the alternative procedure of cauterization in infancy, which involves far less pain and suffering. Students’ concerns about animal welfare were dismissed by the professor with "Don’t go PETA on me" (PETA being the animal-rights direct-action group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). "The industrial farm is said to have been patterned on the factory production line," writes Wendell Berry "In practice, it looks more like a concentration camp."

Where the meat comes from and how the animals lived are factors that figure into my eating decisions. I am grateful to be meeting farmers everywhere who are talking about the ethics that guide their animal raising and slaughtering practices. I appreciate that they are reflecting upon these difficult questions, trying to learn what exactly it means to breed and kill animals in a conscientious way. Animal-rights activists may consider "humane meat" to be an oxymoron, but for many of us seeking to satisfy our nutritional needs while upholding values of simple decency, humane meat is instead an ideal to strive for and support.

…

Varieties of Vegetarian Volition

The realities of factory-farmed meat make a compelling case for vegetarianism, though people are motivated to become vegetarians by many different concerns. A number of people I’ve talked to about it just always felt a visceral revulsion toward meat and stopped eating it, even as children, as best they could. Many vegetarians stop eating meat for more ideological reasons. Religious beliefs have inspired vegetarians for thousands of years. Reincarnation, for instance, suggests that the same souls incarnate as animals and as humans, raising the possibility that the animal you are eating was your grandmother or some other beloved soul. Many different ideals, from renunciations of the pleasures of the body to expressions of compassion toward all living creatures, lead spiritual adherents to reject animal flesh.

Animal welfare is another ancient motivation for vegetarianism. Can we not refrain from murdering our fellow beings? This question has often been linked to the human tendency toward violence, and philosophies of pacifism and nonviolence have also long inspired vegetarians. "For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other," the vegetarian Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras is said to have observed. As if to illustrate Pythagoras’s point, during the rise and spread of Christianity many vegetarian sects were attacked as heretical. According to the British Vegetarian Society, "These non-violent vegetarian ascetics were painted as fanatical deviants, feared, loathed, and frequently persecuted by the established church." Pythagorean ideals of peaceful coexistence with animals reemerged during the Enlightenment and were embraced by several different Christian movements of the nineteenth century. Until the past century, in fact, vegetarians were often referred to as Pythagoreans.

Promoting a more equitable usage of natural resources is another important motivation for many vegetarians. A watershed book that helped catalyze the contemporary vegetarian movement is Frances Moore Lappé’s 1971 Diet for a Small Planet. This book drew connections between the persistence of world hunger and the practice of feeding grain to livestock. Each pound of beef, reported Lappé, required twenty-one pounds of high-quality grain that could otherwise nourish people directly. But a resource allocation analysis does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that vegetarianism is more ethical than eating meat. Animals are healthier on pasture than on grain, and they can graze on marginal land where intensive crops would not be possible. When Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon began their year on the Hundred-Mile Diet, they had been vegetarian for fifteen years. Facing a paucity of locally grown vegetable protein sources, they realized, "The most readily available protein sources are all animal based: fish and shellfish, eggs, dairy, meat. It is increasingly clear that local, sustainable eating is not always going to be vegetarian."

Related to resource allocation issues, yet distinct, is concern about the ecological impacts of large-scale farming, ranging from the deforestation of the Amazon rain forest to create grazing land to the dramatic air and water toxicity associated with concentrated animal feeding operations. Large-scale factory farms concentrate the wastes of huge numbers of animals in small areas, creating noxious odors, contaminating drinking water sources, killing fish populations, encouraging antibiotic resistant bacteria, and endangering human health. In California’s San Joaquin Valley, one of the U.S. regions with the worst air quality, local pollution-control officials say that more smog-producing gases are produced by the region’s rapidly growing dairy industry -- with an unprecedented concentration of 2.5 million dairy cows -- than by either automobiles or pesticides.

Yet another inspiration for vegetarianism comes from a feminist critique of meat eating, which draws parallels between the processes of domination and domestication of both animals and women. "The same societal influences create these oppressive systems and the only way for all to be free is to connect the issues of oppression," states a flyer from Feminists for Animal Rights. My friends at the Bloodroot Collective -- whose café in Bridgeport, Connecticut, founded in 1977, is still thriving -- wrote in their 1980 cookbook The Political Palate:

Our food is vegetarian because we are feminists. We are opposed to the exploitation, domination, and destruction which come from factory farming and the hunter with the gun. We oppose the keeping and killing of animals for the pleasure of the palate just as we oppose men controlling abortion or sterilization. We won’t be part of the torture and killing of animals.

The feminist-vegetarian critique has been elaborated by Carol J. Adams in two volumes, The Sexual Politics of Meat (1990) and The Pornography of Meat (2003). "Objectification permits an oppressor to view another being as an object," writes Adams. "The oppressor then violates this being by object-like treatment: e.g., the rape of women that denies women freedom to say no, or the butchering of animals that converts animals from living breathing beings into dead objects." Adams describes meat eating as a "mirror and representation of patriarchal values" and "the re-inscription of male power at every meal."

For most people political ideals such as feminism, pacifism, concern about world hunger, fairness, animal welfare, and the state of the earth are all too abstract to motivate such radical behavioral change as becoming a vegetarian. Ultimately more compelling than all these noble impulses, the biggest motivation for vegetarianism (at least in North America) seems to be personal health. Specific reasons vary: to reduce the risk of heart disease; to avoid exposure to growth hormones, antibiotics, and chemical and radioactive toxicities that concentrate in animal fats; to lose weight; to reduce the risk of cancer; to remedy digestive disorders; to feel lighter; or all of the above.

Sandor Ellix Katz is the author of the newly published The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved and Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods (Chelsea Green, 2003). He travels widely teaching people about food preservation and alternatives ways to get nourishing food. A native of New York City, he lives in Tennessee.

Pain-free animals would not be guilt-free

2009-09-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

It doesn't matter if you take away the pain, the animal is still killed. This kind of thinking is evil! Who's next to lose their pain? Humans? Does this open the door up for 'legal' and 'guilt-free' euthanasia, eugenics, depopulation and/or a death cult for evil psychopaths who would mostly be doing the killing of humans? With or without pain, death is still death and death is permanent!

Pain-free animals would not be guilt-free
New Scientist
Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:34 UTC

In Douglas Adams's novel The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, the character Arthur Dent is horrified when a cow-like creature is wheeled to the restaurant table, introduces itself as the dish of the day and proceeds to describe the cuts of meat that are available from its body. The cow has been bred to want to be eaten, and to be capable of saying so.

As so often happens with Adams's work, the truth isn't too far behind. This week we report on proposals to genetically engineer livestock to be untroubled by pain - something all too common in intensively farmed animals (see Pain-free animals could take suffering out of farming). The concept treats cows, pigs and chickens as if they were inanimate objects whose suffering is like a computer program in need of debugging.

As with Adams's fictional cow, there is something deeply unsettling about an animal engineered to be pain-free. One researcher called the idea "icky", and conversations about it around our office often ended in awkward silence, the thought too unsavoury to discuss.

But also as with Adams's cow, there is a cold logic that is hard to argue against. Eating an animal that wants to be eaten is surely better than eating one that doesn't; engineering a farm animal so it does not suffer from pain is surely more humane. If factory farming must exist, then surely we have a moral duty to limit the distress it inflicts.

This doesn't mean we should welcome the creation of pain-free animals, though. The reason we find the idea so disquieting is that it runs counter to our visceral sense of right and wrong. This is known as the "yuck factor" and it is a common reaction to advances in biotechnology and biomedicine such as cloning, genetic modification and human-animal chimeras.

Some conservative commentators argue that the yuck factor is a reliable indicator that a moral Rubicon has been crossed. Yet all too often such distaste is irrational and a barrier to progress. Progressive thought often comes from ignoring such reactions and thinking things through logically instead.

In this case, however, there is value in the yuck factor. Yes, logically speaking, pain-free animals make sense. But only in a world that has already devalued animal lives to the point where factory farming is acceptable. Our visceral reaction to pain-free animals is actually a displaced reaction against the system that makes them necessary.

Too many of us are too attached to the pleasures of affordable meat to consider the plight of factory-farmed animals. If the proposal to create pain-free animals achieves anything, it is to force us to confront the pain and suffering that our diets inflict. End factory farming, and the "problem" of pain-free animals goes away too.

Murdering Baby Chicks as 'Food Units'

2009-09-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Video-Shows-Price-of-Cheap-by-Martha-Rosenberg-090902-68.html

September 2, 2009
Video Shows Price of Cheap Eggs: Chicks Ground Up Alive
By Martha Rosenberg

The "food units" cascading down the conveyor in the video are sorted like apples, fine grade, rejects. www.mercyforanimals.org/hatchery

Except that the kinetic yellow balls--an undulating fuzzy mass-- are not pears or peppers but newborn chicks.

And they're being sorted into male, female and deformed--with male and deformed destined for death.

A video just released by Mercy For Animals from Hy-Line Hatchery in Spencer, Iowa, the largest hatchery for egg-laying breed chicks in the U.S., confirms what has been rumored for years about the egg industry: that newborn males which are worthless to the industry are ground up alive in chopping machines called macerators.

Video from a hidden camera clearly shows healthy male chicks, peeping and bouncing as they greet the world, fed into the blades of the macerator like so much litter. Hello! Goodbye!

"I saw a bloody slush coming out of the bottom of the grinder," writes the MFA investigator who worked in the Hy-Line "transfer room" and on the cleaning crew during May and June. "The plant manager told me that the ground-up male chicks were used in dog food and fertilizer."

Also shown in the Mercy For Animals video is the debeaking procedure in which chicks are inserted en mass into a laser cutter where they dangle by their beaks, struggling, while burns are inflicted that make part of their beak fall off in a week.

Nor does the egg industry want to waste any time letting a chick peck its way out of its shell to start its tour of duty on the egg farm, if it's female.

The hatchery's "separator" machine efficiently disconnects newborns from their shells at the price of the few which fall to the ground or get caught in the machine and "washed" along with the equipment.

Asked about the panting, damp newborns on the floor, half born and half dead, a worker tells the MFA investigator, "Some of them get on the floor and get wet and then they're no good."

Like veal calves on dairy farms, egg industry chicks experience no moments with their mothers despite their innate biological urges. Their first memories will be of blades, pain and terror not of a mother in the mechanized hell the egg industry has devised to bring cheap product to the market.

Some veterinarians condemn the procedures shown in the video, which are both legal and accepted industry practices--including in so-called free range operations--and approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Hello?

"Intense pain, shock and bleeding result" from debeaking--which is done to offset the effects of crowding--and "some chicks may die outright in the process," says Nedim C. Buyukmihci, V.M.D., Emeritus Professor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California who has specialized in farmed animals and chickens. "There is loss of weight because the chicks are too painful or disfigured to eat properly, sometimes because the tongue is injured or severed during the process."

Illinois veterinarian Debra Teachout agrees.

The beak is a "sensory organ" necessary not just for grasping food, but for "preening, drinking, manipulating objects in the environment, nest building and defense," says Dr. Teachout. "As a practicing veterinarian, if I were treating a pet chicken of the same age that required a similar surgical procedure on its beak for therapeutic reasons, and I did not use anesthetics followed by pain modulation, it would be considered malpractice."

And maceration? A fate which greets 150,000 baby males a day at the hatchery according to the MFA investigator?

To render chicks "into pink mush" even as they "bounce and vocalize" cannot be termed euthanasia, says Dr. Teachout because that term implies a "good death."

The U.S. trade group United Egg Producers confirms the daily maceration of thousands of chicks depicted by the video. It's just the price we pay for cheap eggs said spokesman Mitch Head to the Associated Press. "There is, unfortunately, no way to breed eggs that only produce female hens. If someone has a need for 200 million male chicks, we're happy to provide them to anyone who wants them. But we can find no market, no need."

But at simultaneous press conferences this week in Spencer, Des Moines and Davenport, Iowa where the video was presented, Mercy For Animals contended that many consumers would reject such cruelty if they knew about it. The Chicago-based group is calling on Wal-Mart, Kroger, Safeway and 47 other grocery chains to affix a new label to egg cartons that says "Warning: Male chicks are ground-up alive by the egg industry," depicting a chick atop grinding blades.

"The vast majority of Americans care deeply about farmed animal welfare issues, yet, they're kept in the dark about the egg industry's painful disposal of male chicks," says Nathan Runkle, MFA executive director. "If egg producers threw, mutilated and ground up puppies or kittens, they'd be prosecuted for cruelty to animals!"

Grocery stores and consumers have an obligation to acknowledge the truth about eggs, says Runkle, especially when there are so many "easy and delicious" alternatives. "Compassionate consumers can find an assortment of mouthwatering egg-free recipes at ChooseVeg.com," he says.

Killing the Animals You Eat

2009-08-29T03:06:00.001-07:00

This is why Mommy here is a vegetarian! You don't have to kill animals to eat!

Ever Wonder if You Could Kill What You Eat? We Did the Other Night
By Makenna Goodman, Chelsea Green Publishing

August 29, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142295/

Last night, we had fourteen people over for dinner. And they wanted chicken. Good thing we had some...but they were running around. And so it was--all in the name of well balanced meals--farm life came down to its grittiest.

I live and work on a farm in central Vermont, and there's always family around. That means a lot of emotional turmoil (and joy, ehem), a lot of secretly chugging whiskey in the closet (not really, but really), and best of all--extra hands. No one visits without pitching in. And now that it's late August, the farm work is at its peak. Harvesting, preserving food for winter, and chicken killing.

While some may balk (bawwwk) at the idea of taking a life on the grounds of a homestead, we do it for the sake of food--not sport--and when it comes down to it, for the sake of the chicken itself. It's not indulging in sadism, nor for power over an animal, nor an image of something hardcore and awesome to impress the neighbors. It's about being connected to the very foundations of self sufficiency, and understanding that meat does not simply fall from the sky, packaged on a shelf in a supermarket; it comes from a living, breathing being. Chicken killing at home is deep. Emotional. Ethical. As Joel Salatin says in his book Pastured Poultry Profit$, it's necessary:

"Animal rights activists, for all their misdirection, are right on target when pushing for animal slaughter as close to the point of production as possible. Not only does it relieve [the chicken's] stress, a direct cause of tough meat, but is far more environmentally sensible."
Joel Salatin is at the forefront of the farming movement. His name is becoming household, and his practices are emulated across the country. He's the farmer who changed Michael Pollan's life, in The Omnivore's Dilemma, remember? He's the farmer young farmers want to be; he makes money farming, but he does it right--his animals live according to their "ness", which means closest to their nature. And while most chicken producers send their birds long distances to slaughter houses (which really stresses out the chickens in their final days), like us--and many other small farmers in Vermont--Salatin supports the at-home processing method. To him, it represents the very foundation of his respect for his animals. He says:

"We have customers who occasionally like to come out and 'get connected' to their food...If one of our ultimate goals is to reconnect the urban and rural sectors of our culture, on-farm processing affords us a technique to accomplish that goal."
My fella's stepmom was intent on killing one of the two broilers for last night's dinner. She's a foodie from Brooklyn, and wanted to honor this chicken by taking its life as sweetly and quickly as possible. She wanted to get more connected to her food. She was nervous, but determined. We all gathered to watch, including Clara, the seven year-old aspiring artist/farmer, whose eyes were glued to the scene. It's not an easy thing to watch a chicken slaughter. While it may be common knowledge there's post-mortem thrashing--ever heard of "like a chicken with it's head cut off"?--seeing it live can be a bit gruesome. But unlike a public prisoner execution, we were there to celebrate the chicken's life, and what it had to offer us. And what better way to experience death for the first time. There was no: "take that, you sucker!" No proving our cultural masculinity, nor prowess. Therese was as careful and as kind as could be as she cooed to the bird, and quick as a wink in her execution with the knife. There was no suffering or stress on the bird, and it died in a habitat it's come to know quite well, with familiar smells and familiar views. Frida the dog sat quietly through it all, and afterward buried her treat: the feet.

Were we traumatized? Did we feel sorry for the chicken? Are we dreading this weekend, where (without family around for help) we'll have to kill 150 more? Here's why not.

I've been feeding, pasturing, watering, and talking to these guys since the spring. They wander around all day in grass, pecking for bugs. So I know they've had a good life when they make it to that cone; as far as a chicken goes, they've seen the best there is to offer. Of course there's something to say for one being taking another being's life--and to be honest, I'll probably be dealing with that emotionally for the rest of my life. It's not easy.

Did we feel more connected to our dinner, because of the kill? Surprisingly, the guests' reaction varied. Clara was ravenous for the meat. Another young woman couldn't touch it: "Too soon!" And Therese didn't wind up feel a closer connection to her food, the opposite of what she thought would happen. Perhaps it was her adrenaline, or maybe the ambiance of "this happens every day" farms tend to have. But maybe feeling connected to her food, in the end, wasn't as important as being connected to the animal during its life and final moments. Which is the nobler goal for us local food eating, small-scale farm supporting folk? I know since moving to a farm, I'm much less concerned with labels like Organic, Local, and Farm-Fresh. I want to know how that animal lived, not just what it ate, or where it came from. Local chicken could come from next door, and been raised in a cage. Organic chicken could have been pumped with feed, and not a blade of grass. Foodie labels don't excite me anymore. I want to know the amount of sun, fresh air and forage that animal got during its life. Organic, shmorganic, in other words. Give me the backstory.

I ate up the meat just like any other dinner--I felt no urge to pat myself on the back. It was almost like being numbed, until I realized--farming gets you as close to death as one can get. We see the composting of bodies, of soil, and the process by which an animal is born and leaves the world. We facilitate their birth and their death. We offer our animals a good life, in exchange for their bodies. And in time (the amount of which we'll never know, for we will never be able to control it), we'll offer up our own to the earth. But, at the same time...what if robots descended upon earth and decided to farm us? I might not like it.

7 Delicious Meat Alternatives (and Not a Lick of Tofu in Sight)

2009-08-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.ecosalon.com/7_delicious_meat_alternatives_and_not_a_lick_of_tofu_in_sight/

7 Delicious Meat Alternatives (and Not a Lick of Tofu in Sight)
By Sarah Irani, EcoSalon
May 7, 2009

When you get hungry, and I mean hungry, it’s your body calling out for protein. While you don’t have to go full-time veg to green your lifestyle, many people are surprised to learn that simply cutting back on meat consumption is one of the most significant ways to help the planet. And it doesn’t require subsistence on tofu. (Personally, I find tofu delicious, but it’s one of those vegetarian protein sources people either really love or really don’t.)

There are so many delicious options available that slipping out of meat mode is breeze. Try one meat-free dinner a week, and build from there:

QUINOA

Your kitchen is not complete without highly nutritious quinoa. Known as the “Mother Grain” of the Andes, quinoa (pronounced KEE-nwah) comes complete with all necessary amino acids, high iron content, a delicious nutty flavor, and a faster cooking time than rice. Try it hot with steamed vegetables, cold in a salad, or in the ingenious form of quinoa pasta.

VEGGIE BURGER (YES)

Even carnivores love a veggie burger – they no longer resemble sorry imitations of meat that isn’t that choice to begin with. Amy’s Kitchen makes the tastiest organic ones, in my opinion, but there are dozens out there. Rare is the veggie burger that really tastes like meat, but I personally wouldn’t want that, anyway. You’ve got a variety of flavors to choose from, each typically made with protein-rich soy and organic vegetables.

ALMONDS

King of the nuts, the amazing almond is high in both protein and calcium (it’s a great low-carb snack with only a few grams of non-fiber carbohydrate per serving). Try >almond milk or Living Tree’s naturally sweet organic almond butter, too. For a real splurge, go for raw.

YOGURT

With a 4,500 year history, organic yogurt is here to stay. Boasting protein, calcium and living cultures, organic yogurt with fruit slices makes for a healthy and filling breakfast or dessert. Buy plain, organic, full-fat yogurt – it’s the best for >your body. Low-fat yogurt is highly processed and flavored yogurts are very high in sugar and/or high-fructose corn syrup.

TEMPEH

O.K., technically this is tofu. But wait! Organic and non-GMO tempeh, made from fermented soy beans and rice, is high in fiber and protein. It has a nutty flavor and tastes amazing in a stir-fry or on a kabob. I recommend Henry’s Gourmet. It’s much nuttier and chewier than >tofu, which will satisfy a serious protein craving.

LEGUMES

Legumes, like lentils, black beans and chickpeas are filling and high in protein and fiber. A Middle Eastern staple, hummus is simple to make, making it one of my favorite foods!

CHEESE

Though it’s not a vegan option, you can find cheeses that come from animals raised humanely (look for artisan or organic choices). Cheddar and mozzarella top the list of organic cheeses for protein content. I recommend raw dairy if you’re comfortable with that. Here’s a cheddar cheese scone recipe – simply substitute whole-grain flour.

ENJOY!

It’s easy to get plenty of satisfying protein in your meals while still eating low on the food chain. While you’re here, don’t forget to check out my tips for making salads exciting again.

How the Food Industry Has Made Bacon a Weapon of Mass Destruction

2009-07-23T03:50:00.000-07:00

Gonzo Gastronomy: How the Food Industry Has Made Bacon a Weapon of Mass Destruction
By Arun Gupta, AlterNet
Posted on July 23, 2009, Printed on July 23, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141498/

Among my fondest childhood memories is savoring a strip of perfectly cooked bacon that had just been dragged through a puddle of maple syrup. It was an illicit pleasure; varnishing the fatty, salty, smoky bacon with sweet arboreal sap felt taboo. How could such simple ingredients produce such riotous flavors?

That was then. Today, you don't need to tax yourself applying syrup to bacon -- McDonald's does it for you with the McGriddle. It conveniently takes an egg, American cheese and pork and nestles it between pancakelike biscuits suffused with genuine fake-maple-syrup flavor.

The McGriddle is just one moment in an era of extreme food combinations -- a moment in which bacon plays a starring role, from high cuisine to low.

There is: bacon ice cream; bacon-infused vodka; deep-fried bacon; chocolate-dipped bacon; bacon-wrapped hot dogs filled with cheese (which are fried, then battered and fried again); brioche bread pudding smothered in bacon sauce; hard-boiled eggs coated in mayonnaise encased in bacon -- called, appropriately, the "heart attack snack"; bacon salt; bacon doughnuts, cupcakes and cookies; bacon mints; "baconnaise," which Jon Stewart described as "for people who want to get heart disease but [are] too lazy to actually make bacon"; Wendy's "Baconnator" -- six strips of bacon mounded atop a half-pound cheeseburger -- which sold 25 million in its first eight weeks; and the outlandish bacon explosion -- a barbecued meat brick composed of 2 pounds of bacon wrapped around 2 pounds of sausage.

It's easy to dismiss this gonzo gastronomy as typical American excess best followed with a Lipitor chaser. Behind the proliferation of bacon offerings, however, is a confluence of government policy, factory farming, the boom in fast food and manipulation of consumer taste that has turned bacon into a weapon of mass destruction.

While bacon's harmful effects were once limited to individual consumers, its production in vast porcine cities has become an environmental disaster. The system of industrialized hog (and beef and poultry) farming that has developed over the last 40 years turns out to be ideal for breeding novel strains of deadly pathogens, such as the current pandemic of swine flu. If a new killer virus appears, like the Spanish flu that killed tens of millions after World War I, factory farms will have played a central role in its genesis.

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) churn out cheap, but flavorless, meat. However, for the CAFOs to exist there must be demand for the product. That's where the industrial food sector comes in. Chains like McDonald's, Chili's, Taco Bell, Applebee's and Pizza Hut approach the tasteless, limp factory beef, pork and chicken as a blank canvas with which to create highly enticing, even addictive, foods by pumping it full of fat, salt, sugar and chemical flavorings.

The chains lard on bacon in particular as a high-profit method of adding an item that has a "high flavor profile," a "one-of-a-kind product that has no taste substitute." According to David Kessler, author of The End of Overeating, a standard joke in the restaurant chain industry goes, "When in doubt, throw cheese and bacon on it."

More than that, notes Kessler, the food industry uses science and marketing to try to make its products addictive. By manipulating what he calls the "three points of the compass" -- fat, sugar and salt -- the food industry creates highly processed foods that can hook us like drugs. In various countries and regions, the levels of fat, sugar and salt are even calibrated to different "bliss points" to maximize the consumers' pleasure.

Kessler talks to one scientist who studied lab mice that were willing to work nearly as hard to get doses of Ensure, a drink high in fat and sugar, as they were to get hits of cocaine. One food company executive calls his industry "the manipulator of the consumers' minds and desires."

In essence, the food industry has hit on a magic formula: Companies conjure up endless variations on the McGriddle that itself is the mass-produced version of the maple-syrup-soaked bacon strip from our childhoods.

This points to why our food system is so entrenched and why noble experiments, from food co-ops and community-supported agriculture to organic food and the locavore movement, are fleas on the industrial food elephant.

The crisis of factory farming has thus become its own solution. We know our food system is killing the planet, killing us with heart disease, diabetes and cancer and threatens to incubate a deadly global pandemic, but how can we resist when it tastes oh so good?

How CAFOS Were Created

Our current food system has its roots in the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. With thousands of farming families fleeing the land, the Roosevelt administration dispensed credit and established price supports to stabilize the agricultural sector.

The policy worked, but it inadvertently created large grain surpluses. The problem of surpluses was temporarily alleviated by the demand created by the total mobilization of the nation during World War II. But after the war, the question of what to do with the excess product became more pressing.

The answer was to dump the surpluses, first on a devastated Europe, then during the Korean War and finally, as "humanitarian aid" to Third World countries. U.S. policy evolved to protect a national export-oriented agricultural sector.

In the name of national food security, the U.S. government subsidized farmers to produce more food than Americans could eat and to dump that surplus as a weapon in the Cold War. This policy favored economy of scale and technological innovation to increase yields, because managing overproduction was more effective if the farm sector was reduced and subsidies aimed at large-scale monoculture producers rather than farmers who produced a variety of goods or had small plots of land.

While the U.S. farm population had been shrinking since the late 18th century, when it was 90 percent of the general population, in 1940, on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II, some 18 percent of Americans were still farmers. This would plummet to 4.6 percent of the population by 1970, because small farmers could not compete with government-subsidized agribusiness.

This agricultural system was exported to developing countries and Europe. In exchange for the right to protect large-scale food production, such as cereals, beef, milk and sugar, the European Economic Community agreed to allow in duty-free soy beans for livestock feed in the 1960s.

French farmer and anti-corporate-globalization campaigner Jose Bove notes that the arrival of U.S. soy beans into French ports signaled the start of agricultural industrialization.

Bove explains: "Cheap soya beans are very useful in intensive breeding, because they make it possible to rear herds in small areas of land close to the delivery ports."

The end result, writes sociologist Philip McMichael, was "a policy to reduce the farm population by 90 percent (eliminating, especially, polyculture and subsistence producers), and establish production quotas, hastening monocultures and farm concentration as a survival tactic."

The Livestock Revolution

It is government policy that allowed CAFOs to come into being. Karl Polanyi argued decades ago in "The Great Transformation" that "laissez-faire was planned." In other words, government regulation of land, labor and finance creates the conditions for free-market capitalism to operate.

The post-WW II period witnessed a series of agricultural revolutions that have been exported around the world, starting in the 1950s with the U.S.-led "Green Revolution" in cereal grains. In the 1970s, the "Livestock Revolution" went global. And the 1980s saw the "Blue Revolution," factory-farming of fish and seafood. Over the past few decades, global meat production has increased by more than 500 percent.

In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser recounts the 1960s rise of Iowa Beef Packers, which revolutionized the beef industry. IBP came into being because it exploit heavily subsidized water, fuel, land and grain for cattle feed; a national transportation infrastructure; and anti-union laws.

IBP's innovation was to combine slaughterhouses with enormous cattle feedlots. In the slaughterhouses, IBP used Fordist production techniques to de-skill meat cutting, paid low wages and busted unions to drive prices down and rake in profits.

Faced with the relentless low-cost competition from IBP, other meatpackers had to adapt or die. By 1971, notes Schlosser, the last Chicago stockyard shut down.

The poultry revolution begins earlier, in the 1940s, but government policies once again play a key role. During WW II, the U.S. government rationed beef and pork, prioritizing them for the troops. Americans on the home front were encouraged to eat chicken, which was freely available, while the government set a price of 30 cents per pound of chicken, "well above the cost of production." The War Department also contracted to buy chicken for soldiers. All these actions spurred demand and supply.

Poultry producers like Tyson Foods, Holly Farms and Perdue Farms seize the opportunity to develop the model of vertical integration. An Associated Press report describes how "Tyson Foods embodied a new mode of agriculture that emerged in Southern states after World War II. Chicken companies were the first to absorb all the local pieces of a small-town economy and bring them under one corporate roof. Tyson owned the feed mill, the hatchery and the slaughterhouse. It paid farmers to grow its chicks, using its feed, at a price set by Tyson."

'Excremental Hell'

It is in the 1970s that Smithfield Foods revolutionizes hog production. "What we did in the pork industry is what Perdue and Tyson did in the poultry business," Joseph W. Luter III, chairman and chief executive of Smithfield, told the New York Times in 2000.

According to a Rolling Stone exposé, Smithfield "controls every stage of production, from the moment a hog is born until the day it passes through the slaughterhouse. [It] imposed a new kind of contract on farmers: The company would own the living hogs; the contractors would raise the pigs and be responsible for managing the hog shit and disposing of dead hogs. The system made it impossible for small hog farmers to survive -- those who could not handle thousands and thousands of pigs were driven out of business."

In the 1950s, there were 2.1 million hog farmers, with an average of 31 hogs each. As of 2007, there were 79,000 hog farmers left, averaging over 1,000 hogs each. A single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah holds a half-million hogs and produces more shit every day than all the residents of Manhattan.

Rolling Stone's stunning report describes the lakes of shit that surround pig factories as the color of Pepto Bismol because of the "interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement and chemicals and drugs."

Vegetarians who think they are unaffected by this toxic fecal frappe should think again: The sludge is often used to "fertilize" crops that end up on your table.

Beef, poultry and hog CAFOs could not exist without large-scale environmental devastation. Governments at every level exempt these operations from the laws and regulations covering air pollution, water pollution and solid-waste disposal. They are also largely free from proper bio-surveillance, that is, public monitoring to detect, observe and report on the outbreak of diseases.

Mike Davis, author of The Monster at Our Door, writes that scrutiny of the interface between human and animal diseases is "primitive, often nonexistent" because Smithfield, IBP and Tyson would have to spend money on surveillance and upgrade conditions at their hellish animal factories.

The environmental devastation is epic. In 1999, Hurricane Floyd walloped North Carolina, home to massive Smithfield hog operations. Rolling Stone described how the hurricane "washed 120 million gallons of unsheltered hog waste" -- more than 10 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill a decade earlier -- "into the Tar, Neuse, Roanoke, Pamlico, New and Cape Fear rivers." After scouring the rivers of aquatic life, the toxic sludge oozed to the Albemarle-Pamlico Sound, one of the most important fish nurseries in the eastern Atlantic.

For Smithfield, razing the environment is just a minor cost of doing business. In Virginia, in 1997 it was slapped with a $12.6 million fine for 6,982 violations of the Clean Water Act. The judge could have hit Smithfield with a $175 million fine. For Smithfield, the smaller fine was like paying half a cent for every dollar in revenue it rang up that year.

Rolling Stone paints a grim picture of what goes on inside a hog CAFO: "Sows are artificially inseminated and fed and delivered of their piglets in cages so small they cannot turn around. Forty fully grown 250-pound male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment. They trample each other to death. There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth. The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into a catchment pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets accidentally crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs …"

Manufacturing Pandemics

Factory farms are a hot spot for new infectious diseases. According to a former chief of the Centers for Disease Control's Special Pathogens Branch, "Intensive agricultural methods often mean that a single, genetically homogeneous species is raised in a limited area, creating a perfect target for emerging diseases, which proliferate happily among a large number of like animals in close proximity."

A 1998 report prepared for the then British Ministry of Agriculture paints a picture of hog factories as disease factories. "Treatment may be given to sows for metritis, mastitis and for diseases such as erysipelas and leptospirosis. In most indoor herds, antibiotic treatment starts soon after birth. Piglets will receive drugs for enteritis and for respiratory disease."

After weaning, usually at three weeks, piglets "develop post-weaning diarrhea caused by E. coli," which "is quickly followed by a range of other diseases," such as Glasser's disease at 4 weeks, "pleuropneumonia at 6-8 weeks, proliferative enteropathy from 6 weeks and spirochaetal diarrhea and colitis at any time from 6 weeks onward. ... At 8 weeks, the pigs are termed growers and moved to another house. Here they will develop enzootic pneumonia, streptococcal meningitis … and, possibly, swine dysentery. Respiratory disease may cause problems until slaughter."

In his book, Bird Flu, physician Michael Greger writes, "Factory farms are considered such breeding grounds for disease that much of the animals' metabolic energy is spent just staying alive under such filthy, crowded, stressful conditions; normal physiological processes like growth are put on the back burner. Reduced growth rates in such hostile conditions cut into profits, but so would reducing the overcrowding. Antibiotics, then, became another crutch the industry can use to cut corners and cheat nature."

But what happens when a poultry factory is doused with antivirals? According to Greger, "Say there's a one in a billion chance of an influenza virus developing resistance to amantadine [an antiviral drug]. Odds are, any virus we would come in contact with would be sensitive to the drug. But each infected bird poops out more than a billion viruses every day. The rest of their viral colleagues may be killed by the amantadine, but that one resistant strain of virus will be selected to spread and burst forth from the chicken farm, leading to widespread viral resistance and emptying our arsenal against bird flu."

To compound the problem, "the raising of swine is increasingly centralized in huge operations, often adjacent to poultry farms and migratory bird habitats," writes Mike Davis. These operations often abut cities, meaning the "superurbanization of the human population … has been paralleled by an equally dense urbanization of its meat supply." These elements have produced an interspecies blender that is spitting out new viruses at an alarming rate, like the current swine flu bug. The Frankenstein monster that is factory farming is leading to a Frankenstein monster of a deadlier kind.

Arun Gupta is a founding editor of The Indypendent newspaper. He is writing a book on the decline of American empire for Haymarket Books.

Farmed Fish Could Give Humans Mad Cow Disease

2009-07-21T14:53:00.000-07:00

That's why this vegetarian doesn't eat fish! Meat is bad for you and now it's become more killing!

http://www.NaturalNews.com/z026666_disease_farmed_fish_mad_cow.html

by S. L. Baker, features writer

(NaturalNews) There is probably no illness that has more terrifying symptoms, or a more ghastly outcome, than variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) -- best known as mad cow disease. Abnormal proteins called prions found in brain tissue of cows suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) can cause vCJD in humans who eat meat from the animals. These mad cow disease-causing prions can literally result in people losing their minds because the infectious particles eat away at the brain, leaving tiny sponge-like holes. There is no treatment available and death always follows.

With government regulations notoriously lax when it comes to testing for BSE in the food supply, many people have given up eating beef in hopes of protecting themselves from exposure to mad cow disease. But an article just published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease suggests there may be another ticking time bomb source of vCJD -- farmed fish.

In a paper entitled Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Aquaculture, University of Kentucky neurologist Robert P. Friedland and colleagues point out that fish consumption is widely recommended because omega-3 fatty acids are known to reduce the risks of cardiovascular and Alzheimer's diseases. However, the scientists have doubts that the health benefits of farmed fish outweigh a potentially deadly danger. "We are concerned that consumption of farmed fish may provide a means of transmission of infectious prions from cows with bovine spongiform encephalopathy to humans, causing variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease," they stated.

Dr. Friedland and his team point out that farmed fish are fed byproducts rendered from cows -- a totally unnatural source of food for fish. The risk of transmission of mad cow disease to humans who eat farmed fish would seem to be slim because there are often barriers between species that help prevent infections. But, according to the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease article, there are several reasons to be concerned about fish spreading mad cow to humans.

First, fish could be carriers of the disease from eating infected meat products, even though the fish themselves are not obviously infected or sick. In addition, it is possible that eating prion-infected cow parts could result in fish experiencing pathological changes that permit the prion infection to be transmitted between the two species. Based on these worrisome possibilities, the scientists are calling for government regulators to ban feeding cow meat or bone meal to fish until this common practice can be shown to be safe.

"We have not proven that it's possible for fish to transmit the disease to humans. Still, we believe that out of reasonable caution for public health, the practice of feeding rendered cows to fish should be prohibited. Fish do very well in the seas without eating cows," Friedland said in an interview with the Kentucky Post newspaper.

"The fact that no cases of Creutzfeldt Jakob disease have been linked to eating farmed fish does not assure that feeding rendered cow parts to fish is safe. The incubation period of these diseases may last for decades, which makes the association between feeding practices and infection difficult. Enhanced safeguards need to be put in place to protect the public," Friedland stated.

Being a vegetarian can cut your risk of cancer by a half, claim scientists

2009-07-02T11:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5698784/Being-a-vegetarian-can-cut-your-risk-of-cancer-by-a-half-claim-scientists.html

Being a vegetarian protects you from cancer, claim scientists in a wide-ranging study which found cutting out meat can reduce the risk of some types of the disease by half.

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent
Published: 7:00AM BST 01 Jul 2009

Researchers who studied tens of thousands of Britons over more than a decade found that vegetarians were 12 per cent less likely to contract cancer than their meat eating counterparts.

With a third of the population developing cancer in their lifetime, changing diets could result in more than two million people avoiding the disease altogether, said the researchers.

'Stop eating lamb and drinking beer to save the planet' For some cancers like leukaemia, stomach and bladder cancers the difference was even more striking with up to 45 per cent fewer non-meat eaters contracting the diseases than carnivores.

Dr Naomi Allen, an epidemiologist at Oxford University and co-author of the study, said: "This is strong evidence that vegetarians have lower rates of cancer than meat eaters."

Although it is widely recommended people eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day to reduce their risk of cancer and other diseases, there is very little evidence looking specifically at a vegetarian diet.

The study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, is one of the findings from the European Perspective Investment into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) which is following half a million people.

More than 61,000 people aged between 20 and 89, roughly half of whom were vegetarian, were followed for more than 12 years in the British arm of the research which is supported by Cancer Research UK.

During the time 3,350 people contracted 20 different cancers and the team compared the rates of meat eaters, fish eaters and vegetarians. All the results were adjusted to take into account smoking, obesity, alcohol intake and lifestyle.

While common cancers such as prostate and breast cancer showed little difference, the overall cancer rates were different as were those for blood, stomach and bladder cancers.

Fish eaters actually had the lowest rate of cancer – 18 per cent lower than meat eaters – but they were also the smallest sample.

Sara Hiom, Cancer Research UK's director of health information, said: "These interesting results add to the evidence that what we eat affects our chances of developing cancer.

"We know that eating a lot of red and processed meat increases the risk of stomach cancer. But the links between diet and cancer risk are complex and more research is needed to see how big a part diet plays and which specific dietary factors are most important.

"The relatively low number of vegetarians who developed cancer in this study supports Cancer Research UK's advice that people should eat a healthy, balanced diet high in fibre, fruit and vegetables and low in saturated fat, salt and red and processed meat."

Su Taylor, of The Vegetarian Society, said: "That is why we need more research along these lines to find out exactly what is going on. We are not saying vegetarianism is the panacea for all ill health but it certainly helps protect against a number of diseases."

Eating Meat Is Not Natural

2009-06-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.alternet.org/story/140643/

Eating Meat Is Not Natural
By Kathy Freston, AlterNet

Going through the reader feedback on some of my recent articles, I noticed the frequently stated notion that eating meat was an essential step in human evolution. While this notion may comfort the meat industry, it’s simply not true, scientifically.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus at Cornell University and author of The China Study (please check out the link), explains that in fact, we only recently (historically speaking) began eating meat, and that the inclusion of meat in our diet came well after we became who we are today. He explains that “the birth of agriculture only started about 10,000 years ago at a time when it became considerably more convenient to herd animals. This is not nearly as long as the time [that] fashioned our basic biochemical functionality (at least tens of millions of years) and which functionality depends on the nutrient composition of plant-based foods.”

That jibes with what Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine President Dr. Neal Barnard says in his book, The Power of Your Plate, in which he explains that “early humans had diets very much like other great apes, which is to say a largely plant-based diet, drawing on foods we can pick with our hands. Research suggests that meat-eating probably began by scavenging -- eating the leftovers that carnivores had left behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.”

There is no more authoritative source on anthropological issues than paleontologist Dr. Richard Leakey, who explains what anyone who has taken an introductory physiology course might have discerned intuitively -- that humans are herbivores. Leakey notes that “[y]ou can’t tear flesh by hand, you can’t tear hide by hand ... We wouldn’t have been able to deal with food source that required those large canines” (although we have teeth that are called “canines,” they bear little resemblance to the canines of carnivores).

In fact, our hands are perfect for grabbing and picking fruits and vegetables. Similarly, like the intestines of other herbivores, ours are very long (carnivores have short intestines so they can quickly get rid of all that rotting flesh they eat). We don’t have sharp claws to seize and hold down prey. And most of us (hopefully) lack the instinct that would drive us to chase and then kill animals and devour their raw carcasses. Dr. Milton Mills builds on these points and offers dozens more in his essay, “A Comparative Anatomy of Eating.”

The point is this: Thousands of years ago when we were hunter-gatherers, we may have needed a bit of meat in our diets in times of scarcity, but we don’t need it now. Says Dr. William C. Roberts, editor of the American Journal of Cardiology, “Although we think we are, and we act as if we are, human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us, because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”

Sure, most of us are “behavioral omnivores” -- that is, we eat meat, so that defines us as omnivorous. But our evolution and physiology are herbivorous, and ample science proves that when we choose to eat meat, that causes problems, from decreased energy and a need for more sleep up to increased risk for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Old habits die hard, and it’s convenient for people who like to eat meat to think that there is evidence to support their belief that eating meat is “natural” or the cause of our evolution. For many years, I too, clung to the idea that meat and dairy were good for me; I realize now that I was probably comforted to have justification for my continued attachment to the traditions I grew up with.

But in fact top nutritional and anthropological scientists from the most reputable institutions imaginable say categorically that humans are natural herbivores, and that we will be healthier today if we stick with our herbivorous roots. It may be inconvenient, but it alas, it is the truth.

Pork's Dirty Secret: The nation's top hog producer is also one of America's worst polluters

2009-05-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13479

Jeff Tietz
Global Research
Mon, 04 May 2009 22:35 UTC

This background review article on hog farms published in December 2006 is of particular relevance to the recent outbreak of swine flu.

It is increasingly apparent, from several studies and news reports, that swine flu is a consequence of the health and environmental conditions prevailing in the industrialised hog farms. The Mexican outbreak originated in a hog farm in La Gloria, Veracruz, which is an affiliate of Smithfields.

Recent press reports have pointed to the outbeak of swine flu in a hog farm in Alberta, Canada. The Canadian media has casually described this outbreak as a result of a "human to pig transmission of the virus. A Mexican worker, who contracted the H1N1 virus is said to the source of the outbreak of swine flu on the Alberta hog farm.

The fundamental question is: what are the causes as well as the origins of the swine flu outbreak. Did it originate in Mexico or is it the result of the toxic environment affecting pigs Worldwide in industrial hog farms.

Michel Chossudovsky, May 4, 2009

America's top pork producer churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history. Welcome to the dark side of the other white meat.

Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year. That's a number worth considering. A slaughter-weight hog is fifty percent heavier than a person. The logistical challenge of processing that many pigs each year is roughly equivalent to butchering and boxing the entire human populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Louisville, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Las Vegas, Portland, Oklahoma City and Tucson.

Smithfield Foods actually faces a more difficult task than transmogrifying the populations of America's thirty-two largest cities into edible packages of meat. Hogs produce three times more excrement than human beings do. The 500,000 pigs at a single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan. The best estimates put Smithfield's total waste discharge at 26 million tons a year. That would fill four Yankee Stadiums. Even when divided among the many small pig production units that surround the company's slaughterhouses, that is not a containable amount.

Smithfield estimates that its total sales will reach $11.4 billion this year. So prodigious is its fecal waste, however, that if the company treated its effluvia as big-city governments do -- even if it came marginally close to that standard -- it would lose money. So many of its contractors allow great volumes of waste to run out of their slope-floored barns and sit blithely in the open, untreated, where the elements break it down and gravity pulls it into groundwater and river systems. Although the company proclaims a culture of environmental responsibility, ostentatious pollution is a linchpin of Smithfield's business model.

A lot of pig shit is one thing; a lot of highly toxic pig shit is another. The excrement of Smithfield hogs is hardly even pig shit: On a continuum of pollutants, it is probably closer to radioactive waste than to organic manure. The reason it is so toxic is Smithfield's efficiency. The company produces 6 billion pounds of packaged pork each year. That's a remarkable achievement, a prolifically unimagined only two decades ago, and the only way to do it is to raise pigs in astonishing, unprecedented concentrations.

Smithfield's pigs live by the hundreds or thousands in warehouse-like barns, in rows of wall-to-wall pens. Sows are artificially inseminated and fed and delivered of their piglets in cages so small they cannot turn around. Forty fully grown 250-pound male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment. They trample each other to death. There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth. The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into a catchment pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets accidentally crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs -- anything small enough to fit through the foot-wide pipes that drain the pits. The pipes remain closed until enough sewage accumulates in the pits to create good expulsion pressure; then the pipes are opened and everything bursts out into a large holding pond.

The temperature inside hog houses is often hotter than ninety degrees. The air, saturated almost to the point of precipitation with gases from shit and chemicals, can be lethal to the pigs. Enormous exhaust fans run twenty-four hours a day. The ventilation systems function like the ventilators of terminal patients: If they break down for any length of time, pigs start dying.

From Smithfield's point of view, the problem with this lifestyle is immunological. Taken together, the immobility, poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs' immune systems. They become susceptible to infection, and in such dense quarters microbes or parasites or fungi, once established in one pig, will rush spritelike through the whole population. Accordingly, factory pigs are infused with a huge range of antibiotics and vaccines, and are doused with insecticides. Without these compounds -- oxytetracycline, draxxin, ceftiofur, tiamulin -- diseases would likely kill them. Thus factory-farm pigs remain in a state of dying until they're slaughtered. When a pig nearly ready to be slaughtered grows ill, workers sometimes shoot it up with as many drugs as necessary to get it to the slaughterhouse under its own power. As long as the pig remains ambulatory, it can be legally killed and sold as meat.

The drugs Smithfield administers to its pigs, of course, exit its hog houses in pig shit. Industrial pig waste also contains a host of other toxic substances: ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide, phosphorous, nitrates and heavy metals. In addition, the waste nurses more than 100 microbial pathogens that can cause illness in humans, including salmonella, cryptosporidium, streptocolli and girardia. Each gram of hog shit can contain as much as 100 million fecal coliform bacteria.

Smithfield's holding ponds -- the company calls them lagoons -- cover as much as 120,000 square feet. The area around a single slaughterhouse can contain hundreds of lagoons, some of which run thirty feet deep. The liquid in them is not brown. The interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement and chemicals and drugs turn the lagoons pink.

Even light rains can cause lagoons to overflow; major floods have transformed entire counties into pig-shit bayous. To alleviate swelling lagoons, workers sometimes pump the shit out of them and spray the waste on surrounding fields, which results in what the industry daintily refers to as "overapplication." This can turn hundreds of acres -- thousands of football fields -- into shallow mud puddles of pig shit. Tree branches drip with pig shit.

Some pig-farm lagoons have polyethylene liners, which can be punctured by rocks in the ground, allowing shit to seep beneath the liners and spread and ferment. Gases from the fermentation can inflate the liner like a hot-air balloon and rise in an expanding, accelerating bubble, forcing thousands of tons of feces out of the lagoon in all directions.

The lagoons themselves are so viscous and venomous that if someone falls in it is foolish to try to save him. A few years ago, a truck driver in Oklahoma was transferring pig shit to a lagoon when he and his truck went over the side. It took almost three weeks to recover his body. In 1992, when a worker making repairs to a lagoon in Minnesota began to choke to death on the fumes, another worker dived in after him, and they died the same death. In another instance, a worker who was repairing a lagoon in Michigan was overcome by the fumes and fell in. His fifteen-year-old nephew dived in to save him but was overcome, the worker's cousin went in to save the teenager but was overcome, the worker's older brother dived in to save them but was overcome, and then the worker's father dived in. They all died in pig shit.

The chairman of Smithfield Foods, Joseph Luter III, is a funny, jowly, canny, barbarous guy who lives in a multimillion-dollar condo on Park Avenue in Manhattan and conveys himself about the planet in a corporate jet and a private yacht. At sixty-seven, he is unrepentant in the face of criticism. He describes himself as a "tough man in a tough business" and his factories as wholly legitimate products of the American free market. He can be sardonic; he likes to mock his critics and rivals.

"The animal-rights people," he once said, "want to impose a vegetarian's society on the U.S. Most vegetarians I know are neurotic." When the Environmental Protection Agency cited Smithfield for thousands of violations of the Clean Water Act, Luter responded by comparing what he claimed were the number of violations the company could theoretically have been charged with (2.5 million, by his calculation) to the number of documented violations up to that point (seventy-four). "A very, very small percent," he said.

Luter grew up butchering hogs in his father's slaughterhouse, in the town of Smithfield, Virginia. When he took over the family business forty years ago, it was a local, marginally profitable meatpacking operation. Under Luter, Smithfield was soon making enough money to begin purchasing neighboring meatpackers. From the beginning, Luter thought monopolistically. He bought out his local competition until he completely dominated the regional pork-processing market.

But Luter was dissatisfied. The company was still buying most of its hogs from local farmers; Luter wanted to create a system, known as "total vertical integration," in which Smithfield controls every stage of production, from the moment a hog is born until the day it passes through the slaughterhouse. So he imposed a new kind of contract on farmers: The company would own the living hogs; the contractors would raise the pigs and be responsible for managing the hog shit and disposing of dead hogs. The system made it impossible for small hog farmers to survive -- those who could not handle thousands and thousands of pigs were driven out of business. "It was a simple matter of economic power," says Eric Tabor, chief of staff for Iowa's attorney general.

Smithfield's expansion was unique in the history of the industry: Between 1990 and 2005, it grew by more than 1,000 percent. In 1997 it was the nation's seventh-largest pork producer; by 1999 it was the largest. Smithfield now kills one of every four pigs sold commercially in the United States. As Smithfield expanded, it consolidated its operations, clustering millions of fattening hogs around its slaughterhouses. Under Luter, the company was turning into a great pollution machine: Smithfield was suddenly producing unheard-of amounts of pig shit laced with drugs and chemicals. According to the EPA, Smithfield's largest farm-slaughterhouse operation -- in Tar Heel, North Carolina -- dumps more toxic waste into the nation's water each year than all but three other industrial facilities in America.

Luter likes to tell this story: An old man and his grandson are walking in a cemetery. They see a tombstone that reads here lies charles w. johnson, a man who had no enemies.

"Gee, Granddad," the boy says, "this man must have been a great man. He had no enemies."

"Son," the grandfather replies, "if a man didn't have any enemies, he didn't do a damn thing with his life."

If Luter were to set this story in Ivy Hill Cemetery in his hometown of Smithfield, it would be an object lesson in how to make enemies. Back when he was growing up, the branches of the cemetery's trees were bent with the weight of scores of buzzards. The waste stream from the Luters' meatpacking plant, with its thickening agents of pig innards and dead fish, flowed nearby. Luter learned the family trade well. Last year, before he retired as CEO of Smithfield, he took home $10,802,134. He currently holds $19,296,000 in unexercised stock options.

One day this fall, a retired Marine Corps colonel and environmental activist named Rick Dove, the former riverkeeper of North Carolina's Neuse River, arranged to have me flown over Smithfield's operation in North Carolina. Dove, a focused guy of sixty-seven years, is unable to talk about corporate hog farming without becoming angry. After he got out of the Marine Corps in 1987, he became a commercial fisherman, which he had wanted to do since he was a kid. He was successful, and his son went into business with him. Then industrial hog farming arrived and killed the fish, and both Dove and his son got seriously ill.

Dove and other activists provide the only effective oversight of corporate hog farming in the area. The industry has long made generous campaign contributions to politicians responsible for regulating hog farms. In 1995, while Smithfield was trying to persuade the state of Virginia to reduce a large fine for the company's pollution, Joseph Luter gave $100,000 to then-governor George Allen's political-action committee. In 1998, corporate hog farms in North Carolina spent $1 million to help defeat state legislators who wanted to clean up open-pit lagoons. The state has consistently failed to employ enough inspectors to ensure that hog farms are complying with environmental standards.

To document violations, Dove and other activists regularly hire private planes to inspect corporate hog operations from the air. The airport Dove uses, in New Bern, North Carolina, is tiny; the plane he uses, a 1975 Cessna single-prop, looks tiny even in the tiny airport. Its cabin has four cracked yellow linoleum seats. It looks like the interior of a 1975 VW bug, but with more dials. The pilot, Joe Corby, is older than I expected him to be.

"I have a GPS, so I can kinda guide you," Dove says to Corby while we taxi to the runway.

"Oh, you do!" Corby says, apparently unaccustomed to such a luxury. "Well, OK."

We take off. "Bunch of turkey buzzards," Dove says, looking out the window. "They're big."

"Don't wanna hit them," Corby says. "They would be . . . very destructive."

We climb to 2,000 feet and head toward the densest concentration of hogs in the world. The landscape at first is unsuspiciously pastoral -- fields planted in corn or soybeans or cotton, tree lines staking creeks, a few unincorporated villages of prefab houses. But then we arrive at the global locus of hog farming, and the countryside turns into an immense subdivision for pigs. Hog farms that contract with Smithfield differ slightly in dimension but otherwise look identical: parallel rows of six, eight or twelve one-story hog houses, some nearly the size of a football field, containing as many as 10,000 hogs, and backing onto a single large lagoon. From the air I see that the lagoons come in two shades of pink: dark or Pepto Bismol -- vile, freaky colors in the middle of green farmland.

From the plane, Smithfield's farms replicate one another as far as I can see in every direction. Visibility is about four miles. I count the lagoons. There are 103. That works out to at least 50,000 hogs per square mile. You could fly for an hour, Dove says, and all you would see is corporate hog operations, with little towns of modular homes and a few family farms pinioned amid them.

Studies have shown that lagoons emit hundreds of different volatile gases into the atmosphere, including ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. A single lagoon releases many millions of bacteria into the air per day, some resistant to human antibiotics. Hog farms in North Carolina also emit some 300 tons of nitrogen into the air every day as ammonia gas, much of which falls back to earth and deprives lakes and streams of oxygen, stimulating algal blooms and killing fish.

Looking down from the plane, we watch as several of Smithfield's farmers spray their hog shit straight up into the air as a fine mist: It looks like a public fountain. Lofted and atomized, the shit is blown clear of the company's property. People who breathe the shit-infused air suffer from bronchitis, asthma, heart palpitations, headaches, diarrhea, nosebleeds and brain damage. In 1995, a woman downwind from a corporate hog farm in Olivia, Minnesota, called a poison-control center and described her symptoms. "Ma'am," the poison-control officer told her, "the only symptoms of hydrogen-sulfide poisoning you're not experiencing are seizures, convulsions and death. Leave the area immediately." When you fly over eastern North Carolina, you realize that virtually everyone in this part of the state lives close to a lagoon.

Each of the company's lagoons is surrounded by several fields. Pollution control at Smithfield consists of spraying the pig shit from the lagoons onto the fields to fertilize them. The idea is borrowed from the past: The small hog farmers that Smithfield drove out of business used animal waste to fertilize their crops, which they then fed to the pigs. Smithfield says that this, in essence, is what it does -- its crops absorb every ounce of its pig shit, making the lagoon-sprayfield system a zero-discharge, nonpolluting waste-disposal operation. "If you manage your fields correctly, there should be no runoff, no pollution," says Dennis Treacy, Smithfield's vice president of environmental affairs. "If you're getting runoff, you're doing something wrong."

In fact, Smithfield doesn't grow nearly enough crops to absorb all of its hog weight. The company raises so many pigs in so little space that it actually has to import the majority of their food, which contains large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus. Those chemicals -- discharged in pig shit and sprayed on fields -- run off into the surrounding ecosystem, causing what Dan Whittle, a former senior policy associate with the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, calls a "mass imbalance." At one point, three hog-raising counties in North Carolina were producing more nitrogen, and eighteen were producing more phosphorus, than all the crops in the state could absorb.

As we fly over the hog farms, I notice that springs and streams and swamplands and lakes are everywhere. Eastern North Carolina is a coastal plain, grooved and tilted towards the sea -- and Smithfield's sprayfields almost always incline toward creeks or creek-fed swamps. Half-perforated pipes called irrigation tiles, commonly used in modern farming, run beneath many of the fields; when they become unplugged, the tiles effectively operate as drainpipes, dumping pig waste into surrounding tributaries. Many studies have documented the harm caused by hog-waste runoff; one showed the pig shit raising the level of nitrogen and phosphorus in a receiving river as much as sixfold. In eastern North Carolina, nine rivers and creeks in the Cape Fear and Neuse River basins have been classified by the state as either "negatively impacted" or environmentally "impaired."

Although Smithfield may not have enough crops to absorb its pig shit, its contract farmers do plant plenty of hay. In 1992, when the number of hogs in North Carolina began to skyrocket, so much hay was planted to deal with the fresh volumes of pig shit that the market for hay collapsed. But the hay from hog farms can be so nitrate-heavy that it sickens livestock. For a while, former governor Jim Hunt -- a recipient of hog-industry campaign money -- was feeding hog-farm hay to his cows. Locals say it made the cows sick and irritable, and the animals kicked Hunt several times, seemingly in revenge. It's a popular tale in eastern North Carolina.

To appreciate what this agglomeration of hog production does to the people who live near it, you have to appreciate the smell of industrial-strength pig shit. The ascending stench can nauseate pilots at 3,000 feet. On the day we fly over Smithfield's operation there is little wind to stir up the lagoons or carry the stink, and the region's current drought means that lagoon operators aren't spraying very frequently. It is the best of times. We can smell the farms from the air, but while the smell is foul it is intermittent and not particularly strong.

To get a really good whiff, I drive down a narrow country road of white sand and walk up to a Smithfield lagoon. At the end of the road stands a tractor and some spraying equipment. The fetid white carcass of a hog lies in a dumpster known as a "dead box." Flies cover the hog's snout. Its hooves look like high heels. Millions of factory-farm hogs -- one study puts it at ten percent -- die before they make it to the killing floor. Some are taken to rendering plants, where they are propelled through meat grinders and then fed cannibalistically back to other living hogs. Others are dumped into big open pits called "dead holes," or left in the dumpsters for so long that they swell and explode. The borders of hog farms are littered with dead pigs in all stages of decomposition, including thousands of bleached pig bones. Locals like to say that the bears and buzzards of eastern North Carolina are unusually lazy and fat.

No one seems to be around. It is quiet except for the gigantic exhaust fans affixed to the six hog houses. There is an unwholesome tang in the air, but there is no wind and it isn't hot, so I can't smell the lagoon itself. I walk the few hundred yards over to it. It is covered with a thick film; its edge is a narrow beach of big black flies. Here, its odor is leaking out. I take a deep breath.

Concentrated manure is my first thought, but I am fighting an impulse to vomit even as I am thinking it. I've probably smelled stronger odors in my life, but nothing so insidiously and instantaneously nauseating. It takes my mind a second or two to get through the odor's first coat. The smell at its core has a frightening, uniquely enriched putridity, both deep-sweet and high-sour. I back away from it and walk back to the car but I remain sick -- it's a shivery, retchy kind of nausea -- for a good five minutes. That's apparently characteristic of industrial pig shit: It keeps making you sick for a good while after you've stopped smelling it. It's an unduly invasive, adhesive smell. Your whole body reacts to it. It's as if something has physically entered your stomach. A little later I am driving and I catch a crosswind stench -- it must have been from a stirred-up lagoon -- and from the moment it hit me a timer in my body started ticking: You can only function for so long in that smell. The memory of it makes you gag.
Unsurprisingly, prolonged exposure to hog-factory stench makes the smell extremely hard to get off. Hog factory workers stink up every store they walk into. I run into a few local guys who had made the mistake of accepting jobs in hog houses, and they tell me that you just have to wait the smell out: You'll eventually grow new hair and skin. If you work in a Smithfield hog house for a year and then quit, you might stink for the next three months.

If the temperature and wind aren't right and the lagoon operators are spraying, people in hog country can't hang laundry or sit on their porches or mow their lawns. Epidemiological studies show that those who live near hog lagoons suffer from abnormally high levels of depression, tension, anger, fatigue and confusion. "We are used to farm odors," says one local farmer. "These are not farm odors." Sometimes the stink literally knocks people down: They walk out of the house to get something in the yard and become so nauseous they collapse. When they retain consciousness, they crawl back into the house.

That has happened several times to Julian and Charlotte Savage, an elderly couple whose farmland now abuts a Smithfield sprayfield -- one of several meant to absorb the shit of 50,000 hogs. The Savages live in a small, modular kit house. Sitting in the kitchen, Charlotte tells me that she once saw Julian collapse in the yard and ran out and threw a coat over his head and dragged him back inside. Before Smithfield arrived, Julian's family farmed the land for the better part of a century. He raised tobacco, corn, wheat, turkeys and chickens. Now he has respiratory problems and rarely attempts to go outside.

Behind the house, a creek bordering the sprayfield flows into a swamp; the Savages have seen hog waste running right into the creek. Once, during a flood, the Savages found pig shit six inches deep pooled around their house. They had to drain it by digging trenches, which took three weeks. Charlotte has noticed that nitrogen fallout keeps the trees around the house a deep synthetic green. There's a big buzzard population.

The Savages say they can keep the pig-shit smell out of their house by shutting the doors and windows, but to me the walls reek faintly. They have a windbreak -- an eighty-foot-wide strip of forest -- between their house and the fields. They know people who don't, though, and when the smell is bad, those people, like everyone, shut their windows and slam their front doors shut quickly behind them, but their coffee and spaghetti and carrots still smell and taste like pig shit.

The Savages have had what seemed to be hog shit in their bath water. Their well water, which was clean before Smithfield arrived, is now suspect. "I try not to drink it," Charlotte says. "We mostly just drink drinks, soda and things." While we talk, Julian spends most of the time on the living room couch; his lungs are particularly bad today. Then he comes into the kitchen. Among other things, he says: I can't breathe it, it'll put you on the ground; you can't walk, you fall down; you breathe you gon' die; you go out and smell it one time and your ass is gone; it's not funny to be around it. It's not funny, honey. He could have said all this somewhat tragicomically, with a thin smile, but instead he cries the whole time.

Smithfield is not just a virtuosic polluter; it is also a theatrical one. Its lagoons are historically prone to failure. In North Carolina alone they have spilled, in a span of four years, 2 million gallons of shit into the Cape Fear River, 1.5 million gallons into its Persimmon Branch, one million gallons into the Trent River and 200,000 gallons into Turkey Creek. In Virginia, Smithfield was fined $12.6 million in 1997 for 6,900 violations of the Clean Water Act -- the third-largest civil penalty ever levied under the act by the EPA. It amounted to .035 percent of Smithfield's annual sales.

A river that receives a lot of waste from an industrial hog farm begins to die quickly. Toxins and microbes can kill plants and animals outright; the waste itself consumes available oxygen and suffocates fish and aquatic animals; and the nutrients in the pig shit produce algal blooms that also deoxygenate the water. The Pagan River runs by Smithfield's original plant and headquarters in Virginia, which served as Joseph Luter's staging ground for his assault on the pork-raising and processing industries. For several decades, before a spate of regulations, the Pagan had no living marsh grass, a tiny and toxic population of fish and shellfish and a half foot of noxious black mud coating its bed. The hulls of boats winched up out of the river bore inch-thick coats of greasy muck. In North Carolina, much of the pig waste from Smithfield's operations makes its way into the Neuse River; in a five-day span in 2003 alone, more than 4 million fish died. Pig-waste runoff has damaged the Albemarle-Pamlico Sound, which is almost as big as the Chesapeake Bay and which provides half the nursery grounds used by fish in the eastern Atlantic.

The biggest spill in the history of corporate hog farming happened in 1995. The dike of a 120,000-square-foot lagoon owned by a Smithfield competitor ruptured, releasing 25.8 million gallons of effluvium into the headwaters of the New River in North Carolina. It was the biggest environmental spill in United States history, more than twice as big as the Exxon Valdez oil spill six years earlier. The sludge was so toxic it burned your skin if you touched it, and so dense it took almost two months to make its way sixteen miles downstream to the ocean. From the headwaters to the sea, every creature living in the river was killed. Fish died by the millions.

It's hard to conceive of a fish kill that size. The kill began with turbulence in one small part of the water: fish writhing and dying. Then it spread in patches along the entire length and breadth of the river. In two hours, dead and dying fish were mounded wherever the river's contours slowed the current, and the riverbanks were mostly dead fish. Within a day dead fish completely covered the riverbanks, and between the floating and beached and piled fish the water scintillated out of sight up and down the river with billions of buoyant dead eyes and scales and white bellies -- more fish than the river seemed capable of holding. The smell of rotting fish covered much of the county; the air above the river was chaotic with scavenging birds. There were far more dead fish than the birds could ever eat.

Spills aren't the worst thing that can happen to toxic pig waste lying exposed in fields and lagoons. Hurricanes are worse. In 1999, Hurricane Floyd washed 120,000,000 gallons of unsheltered hog waste into the Tar, Neuse, Roanoke, Pamlico, New and Cape Fear rivers. Many of the pig-shit lagoons of eastern North Carolina were several feet underwater. Satellite photographs show a dark brown tide closing over the region's waterways, converging on the Albemarle-Pamlico Sound and feeding itself out to sea in a long, well-defined channel. Very little freshwater marine life remained behind. Tens of thousands of drowned pigs were strewn across the land. Beaches located miles from Smithfield lagoons were slathered in feces. A picture taken at the time shows a shark eating a dead pig three miles off the North Carolina coast.

From a waste-disposal perspective, Hurricane Floyd was the best thing that had ever happened to corporate hog farming in North Carolina. Smithfield currently has tens of thousands of gallons of open-air waste awaiting more Floyds.

In addition to such impressive disasters, corporate hog farming contributes to another form of environmental havoc: Pfiesteria piscicida, a microbe that, in its toxic form, has killed a billion fish and injured dozens of people. Nutrient-rich waste like pig shit creates the ideal environment for Pfiesteria to bloom: The microbe eats fish attracted to algae nourished by the waste. Pfiesteria is invisible and odorless -- you know it by the trail of dead. The microbe degrades a fish's skin, laying bare tissue and blood cells; it then eats its way into the fish's body. After the 1995 spill, millions of fish developed large bleeding sores on their sides and quickly died. Fishermen found that at least one of Pfiesteria's toxins could take flight: Breathing the air above the bloom caused severe respiratory difficulty, headaches, blurry vision and logical impairment. Some fishermen forgot how to get home; laboratory workers exposed to Pfiesteria lost the ability to solve simple math problems and dial phones; they forgot their own names. It could take weeks or months for the brain and lungs to recover.

Smithfield is no longer able to disfigure watersheds quite so obviously as in the past; it can no longer expand and flatten small pig farms quite so easily. Several state legislatures have passed laws prohibiting or limiting the ownership of small farms by pork processors. In some places, new slaughterhouses are required to meet expensive waste-disposal requirements; many are forbidden from using the waste-lagoon system. North Carolina, where pigs now outnumber people, has passed a moratorium on new hog operations and ordered Smithfield to fund research into alternative waste-disposal technologies. South Carolina, having taken a good look at its neighbor's coastal plain, has pronounced the company unwelcome in the state. The federal government and several states have challenged some of Smithfield's recent acquisition deals and, in a few instances, have forced the company to agree to modify its waste-lagoon systems.

These initiatives, of course, come comically late. Industrial hog operations control at least seventy-five percent of the market. Smithfield's market dominance is hardly at risk: Twenty-six percent of the pork processed in this country is Smithfield pork. The company's expansion does not seem to be slowing down: Over the past two years, Smithfield's annual sales grew by $1.5 billion. In September, the company announced that it is merging with Premium Standard Farms, the nation's second-largest hog farmer and sixth-largest pork processor. If the deal goes through, Smithfield will own more pigs than the next eight largest pork producers in the nation combined. The company's market leverage and political clout will allow it to produce ever greater quantities of hog waste.

Smithfield points to the improvements it has made to its waste-disposal systems in recent years. In 2003, Smithfield announced that it was investing $20 million in a program to turn its pig shit in Utah into alternative fuel. It now produces approximately 2,500 gallons a day of biomethanol and has begun building a facility in Texas to produce clean-burning biodiesel fuel.

"We're paying a lot of attention to energy right now," says Treacy, the Smithfield vice president. "We've come such a long way in the last five years." The company, he adds, has undergone a "complete cultural shift on environmental matters."

But cultural shifts, no matter how genuine, cannot counter the unalterable physical reality of Smithfield Foods itself. "All of a sudden we have this 800-pound gorilla in the pork industry," Successful Farming magazine warned -- six years ago. There simply is no regulatory solution to the millions of tons of searingly fetid, toxic effluvium that industrial hog farms discharge and aerosolize on a daily basis. Smithfield alone has sixteen operations in twelve states. Fixing the problem completely would bankrupt the company. According to Dr. Michael Mallin, a marine scientist at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington who has researched the effects of corporate farming on water quality, the volumes of concentrated pig waste produced by industrial hog farms are plainly not containable in small areas. The land, he says, "just can't absorb everything that comes out of the barns." From the moment that Smithfield attained its current size, its waste-disposal problem became conventionally insoluble.

Joe Luter, like his pig shit, has an innate aversion to being contained in any way. Ever since American regulators and lawmakers started forcing Smithfield to spend more money on waste treatment and attempting to limit the company's expansion, Luter has been looking to do business elsewhere. In recent years, his gaze has fallen on the lucrative and unregulated markets of Poland.

In 1999, Luter bought a state-owned company called Animex, one of Poland's biggest hog processors. Then he began doing business through a Polish subsidiary called Prima Farms, acquiring huge moribund Communist-era hog farms and converting them into concentrated feeding operations. Pork prices in Poland were low, so Smithfield's sweeping expansion didn't make strict economic sense, except that it had the virtue of pushing small hog farmers toward bankruptcy. By 2003, Animex was operating six subsidiary companies and seven processing plants, selling nine brands of meat and taking in $338 million annually.

The usual violations occurred. Near one of Smithfield's largest plants, in Byszkowo, an enormous pool of frozen pig shit, pumped into a lagoon in winter, melted and ran into two nearby lakes. The lake water turned brown; residents in local villages got skin rashes and eye infections; the stench made it impossible to eat. A recent report to the Helsinki Commission found that Smithfield's pollution throughout Poland was damaging the country's ecosystems. Overapplication was endemic. Farmers without permits were piping liquid pig shit directly into watersheds that fed into the Baltic Sea.

When Joseph Luter entered Poland, he announced that he planned to turn the country into the "Iowa of Europe." Iowa has always been America's biggest hog producer and remains the nation's chief icon of hog farming. Having subdued Poland, Luter announced this summer that all of Eastern Europe -- "particularly Romania" -- should become the "Iowa of Europe." Seventy-five percent of Romania's hogs currently come from household farms. Over the next five years, Smithfield plans to spend $800 million in Romania to change that.

Are We So Addicted to Meat That We Can't See Where the Swine Flu Came From?

2009-05-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

By Kathy Freston, AlterNet
Posted on May 5, 2009, Printed on May 5, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/139803/

Are we killing ourselves?

There has been a lot of talk in recent days about how factory farmed animals are the cause of the deadly hybrid virus that is eerily mutating, and some are calling it cosmic retribution, a sort of "chickens coming home to roost" scenario. I don't know about that, but an animal virus like swine flu is a completely predictable (and was a widely predicted) response to our modern horribly cruel and appallingly filthy factory farming systems.

Undoubtedly, some animal welfare people are hoping that swine flu will serve as a wake-up call for humanity, that the "groupthink" in support of intensive farming might move toward thoughtfulness about the health hazards and cruelty of intensively confining animals, and that governments will pass laws to make these "confined animal feeding operations" (CAFOs, the industry term for "factory farm") smaller, cleaner, less cruel, and less dependent on drugs--which are used to keep the animals alive through the filthy and stressful conditions that would otherwise kill them in much greater numbers.

I must admit that this does feel like a wake-up call: Are we really so addicted to eating meat (even as we demand that meat be inexpensive, meat processors want to make more money, which means faster, meaner ways of raising and slaughtering animals for food) that we're willing to risk the millions who could die from such mutating viruses? Has our desire for gustatory pleasure at any cost pushed us into terrible consequences as we creep toward an ugly future? The "big one" may not be this particular version of the flu, but scientists say we have not seen the last of H1N1; not by a long shot.

When the swine flu hit, I was already wondering and talking with friends about whether the economic crisis might inspire a paradigm shift in how we live our lives, especially after reading a remarkable column by generally sober and hyper-realistic Thomas Friedman in the New York Times. Writes Friedman, "What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically...?"

Friedman concludes that "Often in the middle of something momentous, we can't see its significance. But for me there is no doubt: 2008 will be the marker--the year when 'The Great Disruption' began."

Of course, the economic meltdown is already forcing us to rethink our priorities and what we value, so there is a process of letting go of a lot of things we considered important. People have cut back on buying non-essential items; we're eating out less, using the library more, and generally becoming more reasonable in our consumption and more civic-minded in our overall way of being--the economic crunch is, as Friedman predicted, causing a reevaluation of our priorities.

But will the changes be as massive as Friedman predicts? President Obama certainly hopes so. I recently saw a quote by the president: "History reminds us that, at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas." Yes, we have; and we can again, of course.

In the past, America has faced and overcome enormous difficulties again and again, from the Revolutionary War to World War II to the obstacles of racism and sexism. These challenges, and our ability as a people to address them--with both individual and societal change--should inspire us to optimism in the face of current challenges.

What can we do, as individuals, to create a sea change, to halt the mutation of deadly viruses, to say no to out-of-control business practices, to stop creating environmental havoc, and to bring our health up to a better level? All of this can be covered, incredibly, by thinking very seriously about the foods we choose to eat, and then changing our habits if we find that our choices are generating problems. And as we change as individuals, society and governments will change with us.

Here's a home run solution that I can't help coming back to: eat less (and eventually no) animal protein. A diet high in animal protein bloats us physically by clogging our bodies with saturated fat, growth hormones, and antibiotics; it has been proven conclusively to cause cancer, heart disease, and obesity.

And the meat industry poisons and depletes our clean air, potable water, and fertile topsoil almost more than any other sector of business. As just one example, the meat industry is responsible for about 18 percent of all global warming--that's almost half again as much as all cars, planes, and trucks combined.

And now it's become all too clear that factory farms are breeding grounds for viruses to mutate and become deadly.

Basically, our current food choices (the average American eats about 200 pounds of meat annually) are killing us on a host of different levels. Perhaps now more than ever, it's time to clear out old, tired, uninformed ways of eating and opt instead for food that nourishes us, is easy on the planet, and gives the animals some breathing room.

Oh, and especially useful in these exceedingly difficult economic times: Eating a plant-based diet is cheap relative to eating meat. Compare the price of grains and beans with that of chicken and cheese. And growing grains and vegetables is by no means the filthy business that animal agriculture has become.

I realize it's not painless to give up what we are used to, what we like the taste and tradition of, in favor of a diet that we know is better for us and the planet. But if we lean into the shift of eating consciously by giving up one animal at a time (give up chickens first, as I discuss here), or eating only vegetarian for two out of three meals, we will find our way and get used to new tastes. We will grow to love different foods that are kinder to our bodies, the environment, and the animals.

As I ponder Obama's call for change and Friedman's vision of a paradigm shift, and I think about recent predictions that unless we turn back now, ecological disaster is inevitable, I wonder if economic collapse and swine flu might be our only hope.

Perhaps in these trying days, the law of unintended consequences may represent our salvation. No one is glad for the swine flu or the economic meltdown, but maybe these great calamities are the push we needed to re-boot and start afresh.

We are a world out of balance, to be sure. But we can begin to eat (so simply!) in a way that brings us back to equilibrium, personally and globally. I just hope enough of us answer the call.

You can find recipes and cookbook recommendations here, and some tips for making the transition here.

Taiwan Buddhist master says swine flu is warning for mankind

2009-05-02T11:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/266852,taiwan-buddhist-master-says-swine-flu-is-warning-for-mankind.html

Taiwan Buddhist master says swine flu is warning for mankind
Posted on : 2009-04-30

Taipei - A Taiwan Buddhist master said Thursday that swine flu is "the earth's warning" to human beings to stop destroying the environment. Master Cheng Yen, 72, nicknamed Taiwan's Mother Teresa for her charity work, gave the warning in her daily speech to her disciples around the world.

Choked with tears, Cheng Yen said it is not a coincidence that it was exactly this time six years ago that severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, broke out.

She said people need not panic, but should see swine flu as a warning to tell them that human beings have caused too much destruction to the earth's ecology.

"This is the cycle of cause and effect. Human beings should return to the simple lifestyle, stop killing animals and go vegetarian. When everyone performs kindness, spreads kindness and lets the earth take a rest, there will be peace and harmony in the world," she said on a programme broadcast by her Tzu Chi Foundation.

Master Cheng Yen called on her disciples, who number around one million around the world, and people in all countries to go vegetarian for one month in May to show their respect to the earth.

Cheng Yen's Tzu Chi Foundation teaches Buddhism, and also rushes relief to countries hit by natural disasters and helps people in disaster-struck regions rebuild.