Nature uses death and disease as a form of birth control to prevent overpopulation.. Factory farming (a.k.a. intensive farming) is a disease-producing form of agriculture that assists Nature in that elimination process.
For many people the word ‘farm’ conjures up a pastoral picture of natural harmony: cattle grazing on green pastures, pigs in open pens and chickens moving about in free-range areas. The reality is quite different: chickens and pigs are crammed into buildings where sunshine never enters and germ-laden dust never leaves. Feed lots for cattle are covered with excrement – an ideal breeding ground for pathogens.
Many human illnesses have their start in diseased animals: Swine Flu in pigs, Bird Flu in chickens, Mad Cow disease in cattle plus Salmonella, Listeria, and E-Coli in a variety of food products. Consequently as factory farming expands, recalls of contaminated food products increase proportionately. Although both plant products and meat are subject to microbial contamination, meat has a much shorter shelf life and potentially is much more dangerous to consume than plant products. To reduce feed costs some ranchers mix it with ground up dead – and often diseased—animals. This practice can cause Mad Cow Disease also known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) which attacks the central nervous system with a proteinaceous agent known as a prion. The deadly disease is transferable to humans under the name of Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease which is characterized by progressive dementia and seizures.
In the meantime the scientific world is in a state of confusion as to what is the best way to deal effectively with the Swine Flu pandemic currently sweeping the world. Clearly there are two kinds of pigs: factory farm pigs and human guinea pigs, i.e. people who are injected with unproven vaccines.
Food is the fuel of life. Natural food is the key to good health. Artificially-altered food undermines it. While the variety of food has skyrocketed, the quality of food has plummeted. People eat more than ever before, but they do not eat better. Today’s food is often lacking the healthy ingredients that were common two or three generations ago.
Much of today’s food is degraded. For example, flour, rice and sugar have been deprived of most of their minerals. White flour, white rice, white sugar have more customer appeal than the raw products they once were. Enriched flour simply means that some of the natural ingredients have been replaced by synthetic ones.
Most of today’s food has been altered in various ways. Little is left that can legitimately be called natural. White sugar may contain bone meal. Cookies sometimes contain beef fat. Even salt – which should simply be sodium chloride – usually comes with several other ingredients, e.g. calcium silicate, invert sugar, potassium iodide and yellow prussiate of soda.
Some foods are irradiated to extend their shelf life without any government regulations requiring consumers to be informed of this fact through labeling. More and more fruits and vegetables are genetically altered, again without consumer warnings, thus robbing people of their fundamental right to make informed decisions on food selection. While minerals and vitamins are often reduced in many food items, artificial coloring and artificial flavors are often added. Substances that poison our food:
1. Chemicals
2. Drugs
3. Toxic metals
4. Pesticides
Chemicals
One commonly used chemical is nitrite which is used in processed meat products such as sausages, ham and bacon. Nitrites are both a preservative and a cosmetic. Nitrite gives meat a pink or red color that makes it appear fresh even when it isn’t. The health risks of nitrites are twofold: they convert hemoglobin in the blood to methemoglobin which cannot carry oxygen and they combine with elements of saliva, tobacco and some foods to form nitrosamines which are potent carcinogens (Joseph Beasley The Betrayal of Health, pp. 108). Chemicals can travel far through water and air – sometimes in the bodies of fish and mammals – or leach into the soil. For example, DDT has been found in the Arctic where it has never been used!
Rachel Carson at the time of writing her book The Silent Spring pointed out that DDT had become so common in various foods that it was hard to find anyone free of the substance. Americans averaged five to seven parts per million in fatty tissues. Even Eskimos in the Arctic were found to have DDT residue in their bodies. Once in the body, pesticides accumulate in target organs and tissues in increasing concentrations and often with deadly results.
Before processed food ends up on your plate, you should realize it has probably been treated with one or more of the following: acidifiers, alkalizers, antifoaming agents, artificial sweeteners, colors or flavors, bleaches, conditioners, defoliants, deodorants, disinfectants, emulsifiers, moisturizers etc.
Drugs
Hormones are used extensively in the food industry to make animals grow and antibiotics to keep them alive. US cancer specialist Dr. Samuel Epstein–who is an authority on the effects of hormones used in the cattle industry–has warned “there’s very good experimental evidence relating estrogen (and other hormones) to reproductive cancers.” He said meat with high hormone residues constitutes a major risk for reproductive cancers, i.e. breast cancer, prostate cancer and testicular cancer. He added hormones may also show up in meat by-products such as gelatin, glycerol, candy, cosmetics and pet food.
Why are hormones and antibiotics used so extensively in the cattle and poultry industries? It fattens both animals and profits. Author Orville Schell explains:
Some farmers heavily overdose their animals with antibiotics to control diseases brought on by filthy and poorly heated barns. Others, desperate to get weak or even sick animals to market, will continue to administer a variety of drugs to their stock right up to the day they are shipped to the slaughterhouse. Still others will use illegal or banned drugs. Sometimes meat products – spiked with drugs where their use is legal – end up in another country where it is not. The danger of using antibiotics in food animals is their possible transfer to humans who eat their meat. This may result in bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics in the future, thus putting people at risk.
A 21-year study of 25,600 vegetarians has shown that the risk of breast cancer and prostate cancer is at least four times less for vegetarians than for non-vegetarians. Colon cancer in vegetarians is rare. A recent study in Germany showed that vegetarians also have a stronger immune system. None of this is too surprising since animal fat and the wide use of chemicals, antibiotics and hormones in the livestock industry are known to pose serious health hazards. Most importantly, there is no nutritional need for meat in the human diet. Health-wise there is strong justification for its exclusion.
Moreover it takes up to 20 times as much land to produce a pound of meat protein than is required to produce a pound of plant protein. This means if grazing land were used instead for growing plant crops hunger in Third World countries could be proportionately reduced.
Toxic Metals
Aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, copper, nickel, lead and mercury. All of these enter our environment by various means and as they climb up the food chain they concentrate in fatty tissue instead of being excreted. For example, our food supply is contaminated by lead solder in tin cans. The average Canadian and American has 100 to 1000 times more lead in his body than his ancestors. Lead can cause brain damage and permanent neuropsychological disorders. In the workplace 34,000 toxic chemicals have been found and at least 2,000 of these can cause cancer in humans. Heavy metals such as cadmium, lead and mercury moreover can migrate through the placenta and cause birth defects.
Pesticides
In terms of volume and widespread exposure pesticides pose the greatest health risk to our food supply. Some 50,000 pesticide products are registered in the US and only about 20 per cent of the 600 most widely used pesticides have been evaluated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The situation in Canada is very similar and most of the few differences there were have disappeared since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by both Canada and the US.
The US General Accounting Office has identified 143 drugs and chemicals suspected of leaving residues in raw poultry and meat of which 42 are suspected carcinogens, 20 are suspected of causing birth defects and six are suspected mutagens (causing genetic changes that may affect offspring).
There is growing evidence that various pesticides cause cancer. Even after pesticides are banned (E.g. Chlordane and DDT), their effects linger for many more years in the environment and in the people exposed to them. Moreover, some pesticides are banned in one country and introduced by the manufacturers in another, usually a Third World nation.
There is also mounting evidence that fat-soluble pesticides and several common plastics can mimic or amplify the physiological effects of estrogen which can trigger cancer. Such estrogen-mimicking chemicals are known as xenoestrogens and are widely believed to be at least partly responsible for the continuing rise in the incidence of breast cancer.
Dioxin, which is 150,000 times as toxic as cyanide and more than 600 times as lethal as strychnine, is one of the most powerful carcinogens known to science. A dose of dioxin as low as five parts per billion is carcinogenic. Tests at Love Canal showed concentrations of dioxin more than 30 million times higher, courtesy Hooker Chemicals! Dioxin can also be passed on to a fetus and cause birth defects.
Ethylene dibromide (EDB) has been widely used in the citrus industry as a pesticide and fumigant. In the early seventies animal tests showed it is also a potent carcinogen, but it was not until October, 1983 that most of its agricultural applications were finally banned. By that time EDB had contaminated groundwater in Florida, Hawaii, California and Georgia (Joseph Beasley The Betrayal of Health, pp. 114).
Millions of people try to compensate for the impoverishment of their food by taking food supplements such as vitamins and minerals which have spawned a multi-billion industry. But while supplements can play an important role in compensating for the lack of some nutrients, it must be pointed out that some supplements can become toxic when taken in high doses. In other words if a little is good it doesn’t necessarily follow that a lot is better. Eating a well-balanced diet is still the best way to provide the body with all the nutrients it needs to function at optimum efficiency.
So practice environmental self-defense by choosing your food wisely and remember – as the title of a popular book in the seventies proclaimed – You Are What You Eat!
About the author
John J. Moelaert resides on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. This is his latest article since his first one was published 51 years ago. His work has been published in newspapers and magazines across Canada as well as in the US, Japan and Costa Rica. Although most of his published work concerned social and environmental issues, he has also produced columns, book reviews and short stories.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195322-Our-Fatal-Food
