Our World and Everything in It

Tomorrow is it for the new Farm Bill I’ve been telling everyone is so important. I just received an e-mail from Defenders of Wildlife. Defenders of Wildlife understand the connection between wildlife and habitat in our world and our policies here in the U.S., among them the Farm Bill. Here is what the e-mail said:

Tomorrow, Congress is expected to vote on one of the most important conservation bills in recent memory: the 2007 Farm Bill.
 
You can help our farmers protect wildlife and the habitat it needs to survive. Urge your Representative to support the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment and other efforts to increase conservation funding.. From wolves to warblers, farmers and ranchers can and do play an important role in protecting wildlife… when they have the resources to help.All across America, farmers and ranchers are participating in programs to restore wetlands, protect habitat, conserve natural resources and reduce agricultural runoff. These programs are funded through the Farm Bill, which, at $4 billion per year in conservation funding, is the nation’s largest source of conservation funding.

The version of the 2007 Farm Bill passed by the House Agriculture Committee takes important strides toward ensuring that conservation programs produce more benefits for wildlife. Unfortunately, funding for these important programs remains insufficient to meet landowner demand.
 
The 2007 Farm bill is our best opportunity this year to support more sustainable, wildlife-friendly farming and ranching practices. Please take action now. The Farm Bill is only debated once every few years, so it’s incredibly important that as many people as possible speak out for wildlife conservation on U.S. farm and ranch lands.

All the ruckus over Chinese imports, especially food, may have caused many of our own food producers to rush to change their packaging to assure the American public that American food is fine. I got a kick out of the packaging on some popular American brands of chicken at the grocery store today. They assure 100% chicken with no antibiotics or additives in big bold letters on the packaging.

Does that mean there were antibiotics and additives in their before? Or is our food industry worried that now that we’re nosey and picky about imports we might be looking over everything with a discerning eye. Like I said, I’ve quit eating pigs and cows until they roam the farm or range as free spirits again, er um, if we have any ranges left. Eleven states are burning now. Up two more states since the last time I blogged about fires.

But chicken and turkey what about them? I’ll tell you, they live horribly in deplorable conditions until they are killed and brought to the store all packaged up with labels assuring us they are without antibiotics or additives. No antibiotics in the conditions I’m going to explain is a little frightening quite frankly. A good dose might go a long way to staving off what might be ailing the poultry we eat after they live their short lives in hell.

Here’s a little excerpt and the website where a lone writer ventured to see for himself what a typical industrial sized chicken farm is like. Brace yourself. It’s not all that much better than the Smithfield Foods expose another reporter from Rolling Stone researched that I blogged about as ” Pig Poo Who Knew?” Michael Specter of the New Yorker said:

‘I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe…. There must have been thirty thousand chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn’t move, didn’t cluck. They were almost like statues of chickens, living in nearly total darkness, and they would spend every minute of their six-week lives that way.’

Lovely huh? I have to thank China for bringing curiosity about the food we eat to millions of Americans—finally.  Pay attention. Boycott if you feel the need. It would go a long way as a wake up call to the meat packing business in this country. I’ve pretty much gone vegetarian and it doesn’t bother me a bit. My grocery bill is cheaper too. And whenever there is a recall on any meat, I don’t have to sweat. I don’t eat any of it.
 
The FDA only has the capacity to inspect 1% of all our imports. And their funding has been cut, the war you know. So where does that leave them with our food? Specter reported about 30,000 chickens in one spot. You honestly think we have enough FDA to inspect all our farms and do it well?
 
We need some big reforms in this country. Chinese tainted food imports are just the start. The last largest 3 recalls were all home produced meat folks, not imports. Get informed. Contact your reps. Some things gotta change. Myself, I’m having Morning Star Farms Prime Grillers for burgers these days. They’re tasty, and it didn’t require that a living thing suffer in hell before the slaughter. Until chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows are allowed a normal life on a farm again where they have a pen, a pasture, are allowed to bear young in livable conditions, and eat normal food, they won’t be on my plate. For more info on chicken farming: http://www.chickenindustry.com/. 

While channel surfing on Sunday, I happened to catch 60 Minutes with Andy Rooney. He claimed no one drinks real milk anymore. He wondered if it still came from cows. He thought he would read the label and show it on TV. There it was, high fructose corn syrup. Andy wanted to know what that was doing in his milk, along with the usual preservatives. It seems a lot of people are reading food labels these days and there is high fructose corn syrup in absolutely everything.

Our food supply was doused with the stuff in the early 1980s, and now virtually everything has HFCS in it. But how did it get into everything?  In the 70’s, American farmers started losing profits to imports. Our government needed to come up with something that would use up the corn surplus because Americans didn’t want to pay more for their groceries. The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture allowed the development of HFCS, a new kind of sweetener, that would keep corn from American farmers in demand and drive the price up. And, the HFCS in foods had a super long shelf life. Perfect. We’re eating the overload from corn production. Too much corn; so why not just switch crops? Farmers can’t very well switch to the crop of their choosing when subsidies are involved.

The environment suffered recently when the budget was cut and subsidies to farmers to use part of their land for alternative energy sources like solar and wind power fell to the wayside. This is one of the problems that arises when we don’t pay enough attention to the Farm Bill. The Farm Bill is about all of us, not just farmers, or just about what we eat. No one would have to worry about the surplus of corn, if the time, effort, and subsidies relative to corn went toward something new, something green. Instead we have had a huge rise of Type II Diabetes in this country that’s pointing toward the overuse and abuse of HFCS.

New studies are beginning to show that our body processes HFCS differently than real cane or beet sugar. The fructose is processed in the liver and the liver turns around and dumps more fat into the bloodstream. The brain doesn’t register the feeling of being full because of fructose. There are nay sayers about this of course, just like the debate on global warming. They can debate all they want. Something is causing people to eat out of control so much that our whole system is set to swamp us with food. Order fries and get a plateful, not a handful. I think frozen french fries have HFCS on them. Canned chili has it also. I was surprised about milk.
There are more studies with male rats where large amounts of HFCS halted the full development of testicles. Hmmm? And the hearts of female rats swelled until they burst. This is disgusting to begin with. I’m against animal testing, even rats (another story). But there are many, many things we are just now finding out about. Lets see, it’s been almost 30 years since someone decided it’s OK to power load high fructose corn syrup in all of our food and look at the statistics. What? Everyone in the last 30 years just went berserk and lost control? Combine HFCS with a gadget for anything and everything that keeps us sitting all the time, and we’ve got a lethal mix.
 

“Fast Food Nation” may not be a Michael Moore documentary, but it is a movie about some timely topics like why more and more of our food is showing up tainted with E Coli. It covers quite a few subjects, many of which I’ve already written about. I witnessed a lot of true facts in this star studded movie about eminent domain, migrant workers, industrialized farms, and greed in exchange for our healthy food supply. Oh, and yes a lot of mention about the machine that’s at work in this current, less than ethical, administration of ours that is at the core of much that is wrong today.

 Watch it. It is poignant, sometimes funny, sometimes disgusting, but done well and worth seeing. For a public that’s always whining about not getting the truth, this is in your face with it. Just be prepared.

Aha, another beef recall and this one originated in Michigan. The Michigan Department of Community Health was doing a routine investigation and found the E. coli. Davis Meats and Seafood out of Kalamazoo shipped the meat to Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin and West Virginia. It’s not the largest recall, however, at 130,000 lbs. There were bigger recalls by other meat packers before this and quite often. I was a little amazed.
 
The USDA recalled 1.1 million pounds of ground beef in 2000 for E-coli contamination. Anyone wondering how some beef gets contaminated in the first place? In this instance, the USDA claimed cows were eating the feces of other cows and thus making them sick with E. Coli. That following year it happened again. In 2001, 280 pounds of fresh ground beef possibly contaminated with E. coli were recalled. In 2002, approximately 63,000 pounds of ground beef products may have been contaminated with E. Coli. Cows eating other cow’s feces must be happening in very close quarters. If cows were in a pasture grazing, it’s doubtful that this would occur. Lock thousands of food animals together (CAFO’s) in one huge barn and the poor animals have no choice. When they can’t move or turn around and food and excrement get mixed together what do suppose happens? Add the fact that most of these places are surrounded by open air lagoons filled with waste, blood, bacteria and who knows what, it’s no wonder contaminated meat products keep popping up.
 
Another problem is that we have many, many agencies that check on our food, but none that trace it all the way from the farm to our table. These agencies are not integrated. Plus, as quoted in a speech from a group called SafeTables, “Most Americans are shocked to learn that all food recalls are voluntary and that the agency charged with that food product’s oversight does not have authority to force a recall, even when scientific testing conclusively establishes the presence of deadly bacteria in food that is on its way to our kitchens. Our government can only ‘request’ a recall, while food producers retain the right ‘to refuse to comply.’” Read more of this speech and what they propose are the 4 cornerstones for food safety at:
http://www.safetables.org/Policy_&_Outreach/Speeches/speech_barb_kowalcyk_pc_9_2004.html.
 
Please remind yourselves the meat we eat was once an animal. Most households in America have more than one animal per house. How is that animal any different than any other, because you love it? Try to care about all living things. If you have no empathy for living creatures than at least do something about the food you and your children eat. Start e-mailing and calling our representatives first about overhauling our food checking system to one that is integrated, so that someone is responsible from farm to table for our food. This will probably cut a lot of needless expense and mistakes. Secondly, call about the new Farm Bill that’s in front of congress right now or conditions for the animals are not going to improve. The Farm Bill needs to support farmers for being good stewards of their land and to practice ethical and humane farming habits. The number one thing to state emphatically to our politicians is to end industrialized farming once and for all. It’s time to bring the small farmer back. It will take a huge effort to do so, but our lives are at stake, or um should I say steak.

So there is a beef and seafood recall in Michigan and everyone is up in arms about imported food from China. Their catfish is full of antibiotics. This is laughable because ours is full of PCB’s from its food source. That was on the news years ago. I know. I love farm raised catfish and remember well my options: farm raised equal PCB’s, ocean caught equals mercury. Now I have a third choice. With China’s catfish I get antibiotics. I guess our concern is what quantity of harmful substance is in our food. Is this not a pitiful situation? It never occurs to anyone that these things shouldn’t be there at all? I’m waiting for a national expose on our industrialized farms. I feel like a hypocrite so many times when I watch the media get in a dither over substandard imports while ignoring our own shortcomings. We’re throwing stones a lot lately.

As far as China’s use of antibiotics, our industrial farm raised meat is full of it along with hormones. You don’t honestly think a baby cow or pig ripped from their mother as soon as possible and confined for the rest of their life in a bin where they can’t turn around or scratch themselves, while standing above fumes from the cesspools below where all the droppings, afterbirth, babies that have fallen through the slats, and pesticides that have doused the animals are drawn upward by large exhaust fans, isn’t sick? Heck, they are traumatized and many are barely alive before they become our food. They have to be shot up with antibiotics in this environment. And we think Korean’s are barbaric for traumatizing dogs as meat before eating them. We do it all the time.

Our poor food animals chew on the metal of their bins out of frustration. This is a hell we allow animals to live in; the same lovely farmyard animals we like to introduce our kids to on petting farms. If those kids only knew the hell sweet little “Charlotte the Pig” endured before being slaughtered … This is not right. It’s very hypocritical especially when on the other end of the media it’s been reported that pigs are up on the intelligence scale with dolphins and elephants. They are beyond the intelligence of the Korean dog evidently but are next weeks sickly pork chops anyway. But then again we shouldn’t expect much, we don’t treat each other well either, another whole spectrum of hypocrisy.

If you think, I’ll just eat chicken and turkey; think again. Poultry doesn’t fare any better. Many birds are crammed into one little cage, where they can’t stand or spread their wings, and peck each other horribly out of sheer frustration. The cages above pollute the cages below. The visions we have of farms where animals are in a yard, a pen, or pasture to roam have all but disappeared. The petting farm is a facade of what America’s farms used to be. It will take a monumental movement by people to stop the way our food is raised or should I say tortured to death. Industrialized farming is so wide spread the idea of reversing it is daunting. We’ve used up quite a lot of farmland at a rapid rate with urban sprawl and congress of late has decided bio fuel should be the front-runner for alternatives to gasoline. So available land will go to corn and we will deal with imports.

Pay attention to the new Farm Bill. Call our congress people often. The movement for change must start somewhere. Congress is presently involved with this bill so it will be a timely e-mail or phone call if you do so now. Act out, for a change or nothing will improve. The farming conditions we have in this country are deplorable, immoral against living things, harmful to our environment and us, and shameful for this nation. 

I got a kick out of the controversy over cloned food that made the news this morning. The FDA is ready to make a new ruling. They say meat and milk from cloned animals is as safe as any other meat. More than likely, our other meat is pumped with hormones. Our other meat is fed food that is filled with additives and fertilized with the hormonal animal manure, blood, and bacteria. Our other meat is doused with pesticides while breathing the fumes from the cesspools below them.  Our other meat is sickly and then pumped with drugs to keep alive. Where is the Center for Food Safety for these conditions? They are voicing their concern over cloned meat.

So to say cloned animals are as safe as any other meat is not saying much at all. I wonder if some of the medical conditions we suffer are from eating meat like this? Kids suffer Attention Deficit Disorder. Adults suffer ADD also. There are conditions out there that go undiagnosed after years of tests. Autism is growing. Girls reach puberty earlier. Boys go bald sooner.

We need to pay attention to our food industry. We’ve had a preview of tainted food already. Not a terrorist to blame but ourselves. We’ve allowed industrialized farming and they are terrorists of a different sort according to the small farmers they’ve put out of business.  And we’re worried about cloned animals? I suggest if we take up the fight against cloned animal meat do it also to discontinue industrialized farming. Read my “Pig Poo” blog. The future of our food and freshwater depend on our petitioning our representatives to stop monopolies like Smithfield Foods and other industrialized farmers.

45% of Americans polled thought cloning animals is morally wrong. Industrialized farming is the most immoral act I’ve read about yet. The pollution from them is overwhelming. The animals live a life of hell. They are literally traumatized from birth to slaughter. And this is on the heels of science that declares pigs have a high degree of intelligence. Oh how I loved pork. I don’t eat it anymore. Red meat is an occasional treat.

You might say animals have always been foodstuff. The act of slaughter is not pretty. But I like to think we at least allowed the animal to have a life first, grazing, and procreating. It’s called kosher.  A decree by God for his animals. They are to be treated with care and decency. The slaughter should be clean and swift. Our idea of morality and the animal kingdom is like the fickle finger of fate that points and misses more than not. We’re concerned about cloned animals while the suffering of those given us by God goes ignored.

The next time you receive “junk mail” that is from Farm Sanctuary, or a Farm Animal charity, read it. They exist for a purpose. We not only need to watch how much we eat for our health, but what that food went through to get on our plate.

I just read the most disgusting article about pollution I’ve read in a long time. And I read a lot of pollution articles. The article, “Boss Hog” by Jeff Tietz in Rolling Stone magazine took me on a tour of the pork meat packing business that got me thinking of hell, torture, something out of Revelations in the bible, to disgust, outrage, mistrust of the EPA, USDA and other governmental organizations. A lot of thoughts for one little article about Smithfield Foods.

Joseph Luter III owns Smithfield Foods. It is the largest meat packing business in the world. Smithfield killed 27 million hogs last year. Hogs weigh 50% more than people so it was the equivalent of processing, (a decent term), the entire human populations of 33 of America’s largest cities. Hogs also produce 3 times the poo we do.

The hogs are compartmentalized in cubicles from birth to slaughter in large buildings. The slats in the floor allow droppings, stillborn piglets, small piglets, and afterbirth to fall through to open air pits that flow into lagoons around the massive buildings. Large ventilation fans attempt to take the stench out but the animals breath  bacteria and methane gases. Coupled with the trauma from living in hell, the pigs immune systems weaken. They have to be shot up with drugs and antibiotics continuously. They are also doused with pesticide. Much of it falls into the pits and out to the open air lagoons.

Lagoons are lined, but liners can break.  Lagoons can cover an area as large as 120,000 sq. ft. and be 30 ft. deep. One slaughterhouse can have as many as 100 open air lagoons. The stench is described as putrid and fetid.  The lagoons are the color of Pepto Bismal from blood.  Dead pigs are piled up in areas of the premises. It’s a sewage horror story and I haven’t stated the worst yet.

When the lagoons get too high, workers suck the stuff up and blow it into the air to land on the ground that grows the feed for the hogs. Pig poo hangs from the surrounding trees and covers everything. Industry people call this over-saturation and act as if this stuff is a nutrient. At this point, picture grease in a pan of cold water, the slimy crust floating on top a mix of blood, pig parts, afterbirth, chemicals, drugs, fertilizer, bacteria, and poo. Pour something like that on the ground. That slime is going to lay on top and draw more bacteria, and flies, before it seeps in. Raise a flag to the recent outbreak of bacteria tainted veggies? Smithfield has operations in 20 states.

The lagoons overflow into subsidiaries when it rains too much. When hurricane Floyd hit N.C., and one of the largest hog farms, entire counties became cesspools. Fish died within minutes of touching lagoon water. There were dead fish along the ocean shore at the mouths of the subsidiaries that swelled with lagoon overspill. People who come in contact don’t fair too well either. The stench cannot be inhaled for long or a person blacks out. A worker repairing a lagoon in Michigan inhaled too much, blacked out, fell in, and immediately died.

That’s right. Smithfield is in Michigan. All of our  lakes, streams, and rivers run into our Great Lakes, the world’s largest freshwater supply. If a Smithfield farm was dead center in our state, I wouldn’t rest easy. I don’t think this is the wave of the future at all. It is unnecessarily inhumane. Many states are fighting it as a monopoly because Smithfield sucks up all the small farms. Dead pigs piled up is nothing but waste and overkill. The pollution is uncontrollable, affecting our groundwater and soil, and eventually our other food and water supplies. The pigs are sickly. Many are pumped with drugs and kept alive long enough to kill and serve as our food.

While organizations are forming to keep Smithfield out of their state, and to stop industrialized farming, Smithfield Foods made the Fortune list, was honored by a leading meat packing industry magazine, and the EPA honored them for following ISO 14000 standards. These standards are a joke. The 14000 program is a pilot that only encourages active environmental management. None of the standards hold force so a company is not required to improve its quality control. Most significantly, the standards do not require sufficient public disclosure of a firm’s environmental impacts. What’s wrong with this picture? The EPA, not long ago, handed Smithfield the largest fine in history. 
Pollution is a political issue. Luter is a major contributor to politicians and part of the growing problem with lobbyists. Lobbyists like Smithfield Foods get the government to look the other way and dump their pollution on us when we don’t fight back. We don’t fight back when we don’t know about it. We don’t know about it because of flimsy, voluntary standards s like the EPA’s 14000 ISO’s.  
Smithfield Foods is not only killing off America, they are in Canada and have spread like a virus to Poland and Romania.  Search the article under Boss Hog by Jeff Tietz. One of the first urls brings up the entire article. E mail Senators Levin http://levin.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm, Stabenow http://stabenow.senate.gov/email.htm, and Representative Dingell http://www.house.gov/writerep/  to stop Smithfield Foods and industrialized farming.  Global warming isn’t the only threat to our environment.