Our World and Everything in It

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

“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.