When animals are raised properly and harvested humanely the meat, dairy and eggs are healthier for us to eat. It really is that simple. In the U.S. these days this is far from the norm despite the idyllic pictures on the packaging at your geographically local grocery store. Drive through the great plains states and you will eventually come across a feed lot where thousands and thousands of cattle are standing on hard packed bare earth. The stench from all that manure is over-powering. The same is true for the chicken and pork "farms" one finds all over the country. A large metal building jam packed with "units" of poultry or pork is a biological hazard for those "units" as well as the living beings in the surrounding area. Proponents of such factory farm set-ups love to talk about how "efficient" these facilities are. What they are really talking about is only a tiny, monetary profit piece of the puzzle. They are efficient only in that someone makes a lot of money of off them (usually a corporate entity such as Tyson, Cargill, ADM, or Monsanto)and that they produce a lot of poisonous products.
What they fail to consider, either through willful obtuseness, malfeasance, or ignorance is the big picture. Part of that big picutre is this, animals raised in confinement get sick. A lot. With all those animals crowded into small, unnatural spaces the animals require vast amounts of antibiotics just to survive. Fecal matter piles up harboring huge amounts of pathogens. Bacteria, like all life forms, adapt to their environment. Some of them become immune to the drugs, survive, replicate, and then continue to sicken animals (be they chickens, pigs, cattle, or farmed salmon)and sometimes people. Who benefits from this type of scenario? Certainly not the animals or the people who choose to eat them. Perhaps the drug manufacturers...
Confinement animal feeding operations (cafos) are notoriously awful in terms of animal well being. The critters in those places are often sullen, scared, sick, and "over worked". Cattle evolved to eat grass rather than grain. Sure they may love the taste of corn ( which is mostly GMO poison) but it actually makes them sick. Despite this fact, it is fed to them to speed weight gain. Dairy cattle, in addition to grains, are often pumped full of growth hormones to make them produce unnaturally large quantities of milk. Back in the mid-90s as a young herdsman on a dairy farm, I myself shot cows up with Monsanto's bovine recombinant growth hormone. The effects were dramatic and due to my ignorance I thought it was great at that time. I failed to connect the dots however. One, the animals live much shorter lives because their bodies simply are not made to produce like that (similarly with egg producing chickens who are housed and fed in ways in cafos that make them crank out more eggs than is natural). Secondly, I never considered what happens to the hormones. When a dairy cow is given antibiotics she must be milked into a tank that gets dumped so the antibiotics stay out of the public's milk. If the antibiotics are going into the milk, surely the hormones are as well. What type of repercussions does that have on human health? What about all the stress hormones that must end up in the meat, milk and eggs from scared, stressed out animals? Surely that has an impact on the people who eat them. Mahatma Gandhi is quoted as saying, "We can judge the heart of a man by how he treats his animals." The system that has produced cafos has hardened the hearts of Americans often unwittingly.
Here in Lancaster County it is possible to find traditionally smoked meats. The smoking process preserves the meat so that it is healthful and nutritious as well as delicious. One of my favorites is apple wood smoked bologna. One taste of that and people would shun Oscar Meyer products forever. Have you ever considered what is in all that lunch meat, bacon, and ham you're eating? Chances are almost 100% that it contains poisonous chemicals sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite, and/or sodium erythorbate. Sodium nitrite aka nitrate is a known carcinogen. It is used to keep meat looking fresh and red. When the FDa tried to ban its use in the 70s the meat industry cried foul and the government caved thus putting profits over health once again. The sodium erythorbate has been linked to a host of problems including anemia, fatigue, dizziness, light-headedness, and digestive disorders. The only people who benefit from this practice are corporate types and perhaps their political allies. None of these chemical poisons can be put into organic meats.
From a strictly culinary and tasty deliciousness stand point cafo produced "products" (I find it impossible to call them foods) are left in the dust by meat, milk, and eggs produced on actual farms where animal welfare is taken into account. Industry best standards on cafos for chicken production for instance allow for the cutting off of beaks and crowding the birds into tiny cages. Anyone who has ever seen a chicken will know that this is inhumane and unnatural for a bird who lives to scratch the Earth and peck it nearly non-stop throughout the day. A free range chicken is a happy chicken. Happy chickens produce more healthful eggs. Crack open a farm fresh free range chicken egg and pour it into a bowl. Next crack open an egg from the local grocery store that probably costs $.99/dozen. You will instantly see the difference. The cafo egg purchased "cheaply" will be a pale, wan imitation of its free range cousin. The free range egg yolk will be a deeply colored orangish-yellow and will be thicker and more nutrient dense. The same holds true for grass fed beef. Studies show that grass fed beef is higher in nutrition than feed lot fed beef. Sure the retail price is more. Just look at that as preventive maintenance costs figured in and remember that raising livestock is hard work and EXPENSIVE. As farmer/activist/author Joel Salatin has said, "If you think organic food is expensive, have you priced cancer lately?" Buying direct from the farmer ensures that he/she is getting a fair price for all the hard work it takes to produce rather than padding some agri-corp's CEO's bonus packet.
Factory farms pollute the air with toxic smells and pollute the water with unreal amounts of chemically laced manure which destroys watersheds and aquatic life. They can only remain profitable if people continue to buy their poisons and lies. We have the power to change policy by refusing to buy the cafo meats. We have the power to redirect funds from agri-business subsidies to ecological restoration projects and helping family organic farms to get established. Refuse to participate. Demand change from your elected officials. Start at the local level. Demand that cafos in your area be taxed so highly that they cannot operate. Give tax breaks to family farms. Raise some backyard chickens. If you choose to eat meat, eat less of it. Drink raw organic milk. Find a farmer's market. Get to know where your food is coming from. You're health depends on it. The health of your planet depends on it.
For more information on these issues I recommend Barbara Kingsolver's excellent book entitled Animal, Vegetable Miracle: A Year of Food Life. I've also heard great things about Michale Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma The films Food Inc and Fastfood Nation are both illuminating as well.
To find locally produced organic foods check out the following websites:
EatWild http://www.eatwild.com/products/
Sunstain Lane http://www.sustainlane.com/
Slow Food USA http://www.slowfoodusa.org/
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