Our World and Everything in It

Last week on Good Morning America there was a guy who has been fueling his little diesel car with Chinese oil. What is Chinese oil? It’s the leftover oil from Chinese restaurants. He said the restaurant was only too happy to give the oil away. He put it in a plastic gas container and uses a funnel to put it in his car. He said he probably saved $3,000 last year by not buying gas. So if you have a little diesel car you drive to work, why not? The Welsh do it. The Welsh were using so much vegetable oil in their cars they had to come up with laws to stop it because the country wasn’t getting enough money from gas tax. The big clue? Everytime there was a new delivery of cooking oil to the supermarkets, the shelves were wiped out in hours. Now the Welsh police are allowed to stop a car and look at what it’s running in its tank. 

On that note, I ran across something good from an oil company. While I was researching oil company contributions to alternative energy, I read that Conoco Phillips is working with Tyson foods to use chicken fat for fuel.  Reuters.com has the entire article. The article stated: “Beef, pork and chicken fat from Tyson rendering plants will be processed at ConocoPhillips refineries to create transportation fuel.” They plan in the future to produce about 175 million gallons per year of this biodiesel. Conoco Phillips is already preparing some of their refineries for processing the animal fat. The first one is in Borger, Texas. ConocoPhillips is processing soybean oil as a biodiesel fuel already at its Whitegate refinery in Cork, Ireland. Tyson said “the fats will be processed with hydrocarbon feedstocks to produce a high-quality diesel fuel that meets all federal standards for ultra-low-sulfur diesel.” And unlike ethanol, this fuel can run through pipelines. 

This is good news. These two companies are making good use of leftover pollution, and there is a lot of it in the meatpacking industry. Since Conoco Phillips doesn’t stand to gain or lose from doing this, this is a very generous move.  I just hope finding a way to get rid of rendering material doesn’t cause a spike in eating more meat, or establishing more CAFO’s! There is a humane and ethical side to the treatment of animals that figures in here, not just the environment, or money. Industrialized farming is extremely horrific for animals, totally inhumane, and we end up with sickly meat.

http://www.reuters.com/article/consumerproducts-SP/idUSN1629340720070416?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Here is a link to a list of organic body care products found to contain 1,4-Dioxane, a carcinogen linked to breast cancer.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/bodycare/DioxaneResults08.cfm

 Finding the list, I found this really good website for people who go organic even sometimes. It is Organic Consumers Association website. This is the largest organization of organic consumers in the country. They have been campaigning for the USDA and organic companies to preserve strict organic standards. I don’t think a responsible company should have to be pressured to do this but considering the warning list above…help by joining the campaign. Look around the OCA website. It covers all types of topics even children’s health.

The basic premise of the Organic Consumers Association as it relates to food is that change for pure food is in the consumer’s hands. Buying locally grown and harvested organic fruits and vegetables as much as possible assures better quality control in a product. And many times this means buying from a smaller farm market. I do this all of the time, always have. It’s cheaper and much of the produce, even chicken, is from Michigan, and raised naturally. I grow my own fruits and vegetables too.

By supporting smaller local farms we help spread the wealth around and show congress that we’re serious about eating healthy foods so that the next time the Farm Bill comes around maybe we can change it for the better. The Farm Bill needs to address the needs of local farmers who want to be good stewards of their land, and despite a big farm lobby.

There was more on the news today about water contamination in America on ABC news. It seems trace amounts of hormones, antibiotics, and antidepressants are turning up in fish everywhere. This time it was Lake Mead near Las Vegas. Our filtration methods seem to be failing more and more.

It’s been quite a few years since I first heard about genderless, or unisex fish in the waters of New York due to unusually high amounts of human waste in some areas due to poor filtration. I started wondering if that water would have the same gender/hormonal affects on humans eventually? We know that baldness is not just hereditary but also related to hormones, and that it is on the rise. Children are reaching puberty far too early. Makes one wonder, doesn’t it?

The next time I heard about gender problems in fish, it was in the Potomac River as reported by Robin Roberts of Good Morning America. That was a year, or more ago. I reported not long ago the same contaminants,  hormones and antidepressants, were found in trace amounts in Lake Michigan. This is an obvious and growing problem—that’s been ignored.

I’ve harped over and over again about CAFO’s and their practice called nutrient loading. I can clearly see a link between nutrient loading and tainted crops. Nutrient loading is when the holding lagoons from farm animal excrement is blown all over the surrounding land as some sort of fertilizer. Read the article link below. It states that: “In several recent studies of soil fertilized with livestock manure or with the sludge product from wastewater treatment plants American scientists found earthworms had accumulated those same compounds [widely used antidepressants] while vegetables — including corn, lettuce and potatoes — had absorbed antibiotics. “These results raise potential human health concerns.” This really needs to change.

If drugs show up in crops from manure, why not e-coli from manure as fertilizer on lettuce and spinach? It’s a disgusting situation any way you look at it. I saw the pics of what happened when too much spring rain caused an overflow of those CAFO lagoons down south. It killed all the fish in the subsidiaries all the way to the ocean where more fish were instantly killed.

I remember all these reports.  It seems to be spreading.  Does anyone in charge, truly care about our freshwater?  We keep getting reports that our air, water, and foodstuff is getting increasingly better. Just go ahead and drink tap water, breathe the air from around coalburners, and eat whatever is served up.  We’re just asking for poor health by not being more involved and demanding in the way we want our basic air, food and water. We should really be questioning what’s happening. With all the recalls, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see something very wrong is most certainly happening. It’s not a natural phenomenon that’s happened before. It’s us. It’s not a stretch to think we’re causing global warming, the more we’re aware of the pollution we create by something as simple as flushing our pills.  

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=4422001

It’s really weird how getting sick can break a person’s momentum. I was used to writing about 5 blogs per week, writing an essay or two along with that, and working on a book of all things. I get sick and bam, I’m perfectly contented to lay around in my jammies and watch reruns of “Cheers, Frazier, Just Shoot Me, Three’s Company, Reba…” and makeover programs for houses and people. I can see how America slips right into a comfort zone by not listening to one iota of news, not turning on any intelligent programs, not picking up Time Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, or Rolling Stone, or any of the myriad of environmental stuff like I get daily in the mail. It’s really pretty easy to be blind and numb to the world. But I did check my e-mail and that served as a pretty big tell all. I saw that the wolves were de-listed from the protected list. I immediately read about the backlash from doing that. Anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 phone calls lit up the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and big organizations like Earthjustice have already moved to take that decision to court. Gotta love all those organizations I’ve listed as links. They are on it immediately. I got e-mails that said “the fight has just begun!” I hope Earthjustic ties that decision up until Bush/Cheney are out of office.  

I got an e-mail back from Representative Dingell about the wolves too. Both he and Carl Levin don’t just e-mail back, they usually e-mail back some pretty good information about new bills that just hit the house or senate floor that pertain to whatever subject I’ve written about. For instance: Representative Dingell is one of the authors of the Endangered Species Act, and he’s very concerned over the decision to de-list wolves. He went on to say that on March 9, 2007, Rep. Tom Udall (D-NM) introduced H.R. 1464, the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act of 2007, which would assist in the conservation of rare felids and rare canids, including gray wolves, by supporting and providing financial resources for conservation programs. H.R. 1464 has been referred to the House Natural Resources Committee. He assured me that while he did not sit on this Committee, he would take my comments into consideration should the bill come before him. Boy it takes a long time for a bill to move.  

As I went on through my e-mail I found that Senator Debbie Stabenow is one of a handful of legislators that is working out the details of our new Farm Bill. Defenders of Wildlife wanted their members to call her about protecting habitat for the Swift Fox and other endangered species with the Farm Bill. Well since she’s a Michigan Senator and I found out she’s on the Farm Bill committee, sick or not, I called Lansing. This Farm Bill is so important to finally put a moratorium on those stinking CAFO’s, diversify our crops more, to quit putting high fructose corn syrup in all of our food, to reward farmers for good stewardship of their land like crop rotation, organic farming, and give subsidies to farmer’s to use part of their land for wind or solar energy so that if their crops suffer due to poor weather they still have income from alternative energy sources. Yep I spouted off all of it. Hey they want to hear from us. Well maybe not Bush/Cheney, or Kempthorne, Secy. of the Interior because so far they’ve paid little to no attention to petitions or phone calls about the wolves or aerial hunting. Some of the petitions I signed were for over 25,000 signatures, yet they turned a blind eye and ear to us anyway. Figures.  

All in all I got quite a lot of news just reading my e-mail. I see that Arctic drilling is still threatening the polar bear habitat and that conservation groups are arming for that battle while Bush continues to stall on whether or not to list the polar bear as an endangered species. Like I said before oil vs. polar bear, guess who’s going to die, unless we can keep the oil men at bay until they’re out of office. It’s going to be quite a year of fighting for the environment since the last leg of this administration is still 10 months long. 

The last e-mail I read today got me off my duff to start blogging again. I was reading Motley Fool about investments and there is a new kind of nuclear plant that is being built. I’ve never heard much about this type of plant and it peaked my interest. It seems there are plans for over 20 of these across the country. I’m going to read up on it and blog about it tomorrow. “They,” whoever they are, claim that these plants don’t use as much uranium fuel and there is less spent fuel in the end. My husband said that he read “they,” whoever they are, are digging out areas in the Nevada desert to dump the spent fuel from nuclear reactors “they” plan on building. Just something else I’ve got to know about, along with that deep well “they” are digging somewhere in Michigan to inject CO2 into. You know, I’m starting to feel better already.  There is a bunch of new stuff happening I just have to know about. A little vacation from the news is kind of nice, but I guess I’m just too curious, and a whole lot mistrustful of things that happen when I’m not paying attention to ever give up my interest in our world and just about everything in it.

The U.S. just had the largest beef recall in history.  Who can tell? We’ve had so many. Is it slowing anyone down from eating more burgers? Probably not. Most of the beef, 143 million lbs. was heading to school cafeterias. There was enough tainted beef to provide two burgers to every man, woman, and child in the U.S. according to ABC. Finally, ABC news aired film footage showing how sick, downed animals that are too ill to stand are pushed, prodded, even fork-lifted into a slaughterhouse to be hacked into our food. The news said: “It might be disturbing.”

Disturbing? If we really wanted to cure obesity in America, everyone should have to visit a petting zoo and interact with farmyard animals, pet their soft muzzles, feel their innocence, then visit a CAFO and a slaughterhouse. How about inhaling some fumes from the open-air lagoons while we’re there? It just might work to cure our eating disease.

What I saw on TV this morning is why I quit eating pigs and cows. If the average American experienced where our food came from, how it is processed, we would be a much, much thinner nation. We are an absolutely cruel nation in our utilization of Confined Animal Factories or CAFO’s, and are neglectful in paying any attention to the treatment of our farm animals. The only thing we are interested in is putting the feedbag on ourselves. 

Since the average American is not likely to come near a slaughterhouse, the next best thing is to watch the movie, “Fast Food Nation.” The movie gives many ideas as to why our food industry is serving us up tainted meat. We are processing everything far too quickly and completely neglecting what is known as  “Kosher” or clean and humanely raised food. I honestly don’t think that some of the pigs and cows that are sent into the slaughterhouse are completely dead before being cut up into steaks. The cow on this morning’s newscast was so sick it couldn’t stand, yet someone was screaming at it, scaring it, prodding it to actually walk into the slaughterhouse on its own. I sometimes hate the modern world. It progresses but with less and less empathy for other living things.

Thus is our sustenance these days. Not pretty. CAFO’s and industrialized farming should be stopped. We’re all too fat anyway. I could lose ten lbs. and never miss it. How about you and especially in light of the latest link between obesity and cancer? I’ve often thought the two somehow go together, but hey I’m not a scientist. I just know lugging around 20 extra lbs. is a lot of extra heft. I know that every time I buy 20 lbs of cat litter, or topsoil, or landscaping mulch. I can lift it. I can fling it still, but I can’t imagine walking around every day with that excess hanging about.  
 

 My mind works in strange ways and so all the things I’m blogging about here go together in my mind. I was watching the Super Bowl and I caught the beginning where everyone was reciting the Declaration of Independence. I thought I just wrote something with the Declaration of Independence in it, and sure enough I did a blog on the 4th of July. I was urging people to be patriotic and contact their reps to support a moratorium on CAFO’s in Michigan. That didn’t happen. As a matter of fact thanks to the MI Farm Bureau and Republican Senate, it’s easier than ever to come to Michigan with a CAFO. Go to the link about CAFO’s below and check out the aerial pictures. Tell me during downpours of rain that those lagoons don’t breach. Groundwater runoff in Michigan ultimately ends up in a lake somewhere. So the opening of the Super Bowl brought up a sore subject for me.

Today, I’m reading an article in the Detroit Free Press about botulism killing Great Lakes birds. It said: “The deaths of hundreds of loons, cormorants, gulls, long-tailed ducks and grebes were scattered across the sand washed up and rotting.” There were 2900 dead birds along a 14-mile stretch of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. That’s ugly. The botulism is being blamed on two foreign, Black Sea area, mussels and round gobies that look like minnows but fatter. Biologists think they are the cause, and it looks like warmer weather, and lower water levels contribute to the problem. The botulism is native to the Great Lakes but hasn’t been around for more than 20 years. The cycle of botulism works like this:

The lakes are warmer and more shallow. The mussels are so numerous they filter the water, which becomes clearer. The sun penetrates to the bottom farther in clear shallow water, and a type of cladophora algae over grows from the sunlight. When the algae dies, it rots and the botulism comes to life. The mussels absorb the botulism, the gobie fish eat the mussels, the birds eat the gobie fish—and ultimately die from botulism.

The article in the Free Press said that the cladophora algae flourished in the 60’s and 70’s because it was nourished by the phosphorus from fertilizer runoff and poor sewage treatment. Bans in Michigan on phosphorus and improved sewage treatment reduced that algae in the 80’s and 90’s. Well, it’s back. 50,000 birds have died from E botulism since 1999.

I remember yesterday’s game, the Declaration of Independence, the CAFOs, and now sewage. I started thinking about a proposal I did for septic systems in Michigan as an assignment for class. Boy was that an eye opener. I found a fairly current article in the Sanitation Journal that said there are over 1.2 million septic systems in Michigan, and up until a few years ago Michigan didn’t have a state sanitary code. Over 40 percent of the new homes in Michigan are in rural areas where septic systems are necessary, and new homes near the water must have above-the-ground engineered septic fields now. But what about older homes like mine?

My husband is a stickler about our septic system, but there are homes along my road that are 40 years old with the original owner in them. Many of Michigan’s septic fields are only inspected when a home sells. Get the picture? The Sanitation Journal said one of the biggest contaminants of our lakes and streams, rivers, springs and such, is failed septic systems, so that’s something the state is really watching.” I don’t know about that, not all of it anyway. I thought we were supposed to be keeping a watchful eye on the ballast water of freighters too, and look at all the mussels.  

The Detroit Free Press story link is below. It was an exceptionally poignant story because one of the biologists rounding up the dead birds found one with a band on its leg. It was an old loon he tracked for 14 years or more. A loon that kept a mate for one of the longest pairings ever recorded, and most amount of chicks raised. That would have really got to me.

 http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=87.

If you want to see what I mean about CAFO’s: http://www.mythinglinks.org/FactoryFarms_WalmartManureDoc.html

More about CAFO’s: http://www.ccofdc.org/documents/CAFO.pdf

http://www.sanitationjournal.com/mstadavesnyder.html.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008802040334

Just 10 days ago I blogged about cloned meat and that I thought the idea of doing it for food was ludicrous, considering we throw half of all our food produce away in this country. I provided a link to an article with a picture of a stacked pile of dead pigs. We don’t need more meat, so cloning for food is a ruse to get into the research arena.

 And there is it today, in the Associated Press: “Scientists Clone Human Embryos.” Of course, we know this has been done before. As a matter of fact the article said someone from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute couldn’t tell that anything new was being presented. He said the ‘next big advance will be to create a human embryonic stem cell line’ from cloned embryos and that hasn’t been achieved yet.  I figured we didn’t need the food and the push to get cloned beings into research is the real reason we’re hearing cloned, cloned, cloned. Heck, people are still arguing about stem cells. It was a more viable idea to utilize stem cells that were going to be tossed, flushed, buried, or discarded. Now we’re going to end up creating life for stem cells, and eventually allow them to grow to get organs to part out–much worse than using discarded stem cells.  I think there is a whole lotta other expertise involved with creating life anyway. Many scientists concede to a Higher Being when they get so far into something and then can’t figure it out anymore. We haven’t figured out that real animals have emotions, suffer, and more than likely “think,” and we’re onto creating human life? That’s a scary thought, just as I said about meat. We don’t treat real farm animals humanely, what hope do cloned critters have? Ditto for the human clone business.  

The article stated that other doctors agreed that the report was interesting but the ‘real splash’ will about stem cells from cloned embryos. Dr. George Daley of the Harvard Institute and Children’s Hospital Boston said, ‘It’s only a matter of time before some group succeeds.’

There is a really visible push to get cloning in front of people. First, the big announcement about cloned meat being safe, then 10 days later a redundant announcement about cloning human embryos? The only purpose the last announcement serves is to keep cloning in our consciousness–safe cloned meat, cloned humans, cloned, cloned, cloned, until research is cloning away whether we agree with it or not. Real sneaky.

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20080117/478ee0d0_3ca6_15526200801171818674522

I blogged about the Farm Bill and the changes that are needed if we are ever going to get healthy and get the nation turned around so that the small farmer thrives once again. Not going to happen. The November 12th, 2007 issue of Time Magazine had a scathing article by Michael Grunwald called “Down on the Farm” about the farm lobby and the lopsided business of farm subsidies. The article is too long to outline here. But our future for free range chicken, pork, or beef, more fruits and vegetables, and less tainted meat and food supplies in general instead of the top five commodities—corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice is mighty bleak.

The article warns if you “eat, drink, or pay taxes—or care about the economy, the environment, or our global reputation” the Farm Bill is a big deal. We still subsidize farmers billions of tax dollars every year. The trouble is that it is redistributed to millionaire farmers mostly when 60% of small farmers get no subsidies at all. Some of the subsidies even go to farms that are no longer in business!

Besides wasting billions of our money by staying status quo and helping the rich, the way our Farm Bill is laid out:

It contributes to our obesity, and illegal-immigration epidemics and to our water and energy shortages. It helps degrade rivers, deplete aquifers, elimiate grasslands, concentrate food-processing conglomerates and inundate our fast food nation with high-fructose corn syrup. Our farm policy is supposed to save small farmers and small towns. Instead it fuels the expansion of industrial megafarms and the depopulation of rural America. It hurts Third World farmers, violates international trade deals and paralyzes our efforts to open foreign markets to the non-agricultural goods and services that make up the remaining 99% of our economy.

And this description is in the first column of a long article on just how construed our Farm Bill really is. Small farmers get next to nothing in help, and are forced out. This says much about our free market system that conservatives like to tout causes competition and keeps everyone in check. Baloney. I’ve been screaming that there is no such thing as a free market system in America any longer as long as we have lobbies and big interest groups throwing millions at Congress. Again, the wealthy rule and find all sorts of loopholes to get rid of the little guy. Some free market system!

For you and me, that means we will continue to be force-fed high fructose corn syrup in everything we eat. Type II Diabetes will continue to rise. The organic industry will continue to struggle. If you’ve ever complained about the high prices of organic, now you know why. The big guys producing the top 5 crops don’t want you buying that stuff. And you won’t at $1.00 per apple. I’ve walked into the organic section of my store more than once with determination to buy what I know is better for me. The prices drive me out. I look for sales instead and go home with half of what I planned on. Example: If you want to buy cranberry juice, and I mean real cranberry juice, no other fruit juices in it, no corn syrup, no additives, full strength, not from concentrate it’s over $7.00 for 32 oz. Thank the big megafarms and our Farm Bill for that. Or then again thank Nancy Pelosi. As a matter of fact, read the article, then contact Pelosi and tell her what you think of her accommodating the same ole farm lobby once again.

Thank goodness I have fruit trees, a vegetable garden, and know how to do good old-fashioned canning. But if our weird weather keeps up, I won’t be able to do that. If we have a water shortage and hot searing sun, I won’t be able to water like it’s needed. I lost most of my fruits this past season when the trees were in bloom and we had a freeze. By fall, the very few small apples I had also had a black, oily residue all over the skins. We’ve yet to determine what it is and where it came from. I’m leaning toward jet fuel and just peeling the skins before I eat the stuff. This is going to get about survival. People who only buy from major stores, who don’t eat healthy anyway aren’t going to notice until it gets really bad. But for people who are health conscious, and raise the things they plan to eat, much like the small, unsubsidized farmer, we know what can happen, and happen fast in a bad way.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1680139,00.html.

http://www.house.gov/pelosi/contact/contact.html.
 

I wrote a blog called “Pig Poo Who Knew” about the meatpacking business and CAFO’s when I read Rolling Stone’s incredible expose by Jeff Tietz called “Boss Hog.” It was such an eye opener about the cruelty of industrialized farming that I took a look at the horrid conditions in which chickens are raised too. http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=100.  We seldom see any documentaries about the plight of farm animals on network television in the U.S. I presume it’s because of the food industry lobby. But in Great Britain it’s another story.

I ran across an article on Reuter’s online that states: “McDonalds sees animal welfare gaining ground in the UK.” McDonalds is anticipating that a British documentary airing on TV over there will really make a difference to farm animals particularly poultry. Admittedly, 91% of all the British know nothing about their food farms. In that case, insight into how the hens are raised should arouse quite a lot of concern. We don’t know all that much over here either and probably don’t know that chicken outsold beef at US McDonalds last year. So much for the Big Mac, and Quarter Pounder. The Reuter’s article stated that: “McDonald’s in Britain has served only free range eggs during the last 10 years,” and that “the company was currently looking at providing canopy cover for chickens to encourage hens to range more.” UK McDonalds is also looking into pig-rearing practices. It seems the poor pigs are confined, and distressed in such close proximity all the time they chew each other’s tails. The tails end up getting docked. There are infection issues I imagine, and all would be unnecessary if the pigs were raised humanely in the first place. Concern for their tails is a start. This is an intelligent animal also remember?  McDonalds UK said they don’t mind the added costs of humane farming if it served the public well. Everything comes back to the consumer. It’s our responsibility no matter how hard we try to shrug it off because if we don’t buy, things change. It’s that simple.

The actual UK documentary about the horrific way chickens are raised was highlighted in “The Independent” UK news and showcased on a website called “Chicken Out, Campaign for a Free Range Future.” “Chicken Out” is kind of catchy isn’t it? The covert filming for the documentary was done by an animal welfare group called “Compassion in World Farming” or CIWF. The article said it was about the grim life inside a chicken coop for 25 to 50 THOUSAND chickens. Imagine the ammonia stench? That would knock you down. It also stated: “Britain’s RSPCA called on supermarkets to quit selling the mass produced chickens.” Go RSPCA!

The British documentary will air on mainstream British television and be given a boost by chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver. They want to highlight what food animals go through in order to keep prices down and mass production up, and that free range chickens and organic birds are the way to go if the industry is ever going to change. Imagine some of our stellar chefs hosting a show on NBC or Fox that would air the extremely bad conditions of farm animals perpetuated by one of our big, national food suppliers? Yeah, that’ll happen. 

So what’s wrong with our media? Sure I’ve caught many articles in magazines and documentaries on PBS, and subscription TV channels about the horrid conditions for our farm animals, but 20 million Americans don’t have subscription TV. The rest that do aren’t getting-in-your-face documentaries. Let’s face it, our news media is not going to upset a major lobby like big meatpacker, Smithfield Foods, unless it’s Rolling Stone magazine of course. So I have to say kudos to the UK and the spirit of revealing the unnecessary cruelty of the food business to the mainstream public in an effort to change, whether their food industry takes a hit or not.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL0447565920080104
http://www.chickenout.tv/news.html?newsid=67.

Whether or not cloned meat is safe is not an issue. It’s not a good idea based on what the meatpacking business does with real animals on industrialized farms and CAFO’s, the fact that Americans disregarded health warnings and boosted our obesity quotient some 30% last year, and our propensity to waste half of our food supply to begin with. Do we really need to clone animals for food?

It’s highly doubtful looking at these pictures of dead hogs stacked sky high that lived from birth to death confined in a box, chewing on metal bars out of distress, then died for no good purpose whatsoever:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters.

As you look at this stack of pigs, remember that science has declared them to be highly intelligent animals. If we do this to regular farm animals, what will we do with clones? Our cruelty quotient will go up and it’s not all that good now. We turn our heads to all types of cruelty already.

We don’t need to fuel obesity either. Type II diabetes is on the rise and linked with obesity from pounding down too many burgers, 20 oz. steaks, and slabs of ribs. Producing more food from cloned animals is contrary because we’re already stuffed on only half of what we produce. The average family throws away 14% of all their food. If beer and pop counts, I’m surprised it’s not higher. Rounding up cans and bottles from party aftermath is a little unnerving. There are always a bunch of them half empty and a few completely full.

So the push for cloning for more food doesn’t make sense, but the push for cloned animals for research does. We’ll be off and running in that direction all too quickly and with little recourse because we didn’t protest cloning animals for food in the first place. The FDA stated they wanted to get public opinion about cloned animals for food. So let them know.