The same articled reported that The Sierra Club led the effort to stop these bills with the Humane Society of the U.S., “exerting significant pressure on the legislature” to revise the bills for real change. There was a threat of a ballot initiative. A ballot initiative or popular or citizen’s initiative “provides a means by which a petition signed by a certain minimum number of registered voters can force a public vote.” Evidently the CAFO industry in Michigan wanted none of that because a public vote means a heck of a lot more public scrutiny, an expose of the horrific lifestyle of CAFO animals is more like it.

The combined effort resulted in a new bill that gives”three species of confined animals more room to move.” That would be pigs, egg-laying chickens, and calves. Although the ag industry has 10 years to adopt this bill, it’s a victory over corporate agriculture and I hope a trend for more animal rights within the ag industry that have been non-existent for far too long.

I believe farm animal rights is directly connected to tainted food. Poorly treated animals equal sick animals. That’s why they were given antibiotics for years. If live animals are treated horrendously than the facilities that process the dead carcasses can hardly be any better. The latest recall of half a million pounds of ground beef was a wake up call for many. For a couple of people it was a death toll.

When we have to rush to our freezers to throw out food that may make us ill or even kill us reform is needed big time. Every little step counts. Thanks to those that took the time to contact their reps too. Between organizations like Michigan’s Sierra Club, The Humane Society of the U.S., and hundreds of other organizations that work tirelessly behind the scenes and involved citizens that bother to let their reps know what they want great things can be accomplished one step at a time.

Consumers have been warned about storing food in plastic, especially when that plastic container is also used in the microwave to heat the contents before eating because of BPA. Bisphenol A leaches from the plastic into the food. Baby bottles pose the greatest risk to children. And children suffer the worst from BPA especially the unborn fetus. BPA causes premature births and defects because it is a phthalate and phthalates are endocrine disruptors meaning they interfere with hormones.

I did a blog on BPA and other chemicals in plastics. I even suggested that BPA may be the reason for so much male pattern baldness, which is directly related to overproduction of certain hormones. The reports of defects in male babies from phthalates are horrifying. And it’s not a small percentage. One in three hundred baby boys are affected. Read the blog:
http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/2008/05/plastics-birth-defects-baldness/.

Now we find that cans and food are a bad recipe too. Don’t think frozen food goes unscathed either. I just got home from the supermarket. Passing along the frozen food aisles, I picked up a couple of those entire “ready to cook” meals. You know the ones—in the PLASTIC bags.

And we wonder why cancer is on the rise? We’re gathering far more toxins from the air, earth, water, and food we eat than our grandparents. The FDA is investigating how and why the BPA is in canned food. Hopefully, we’ll soon seen BPA free canned goods.

Please read this article and know what you are eating and what that poor animal goes through in the process. Once you’ve got a grasp of what big factory farms are all about, remember that the Department of Agriculture has been turning a blind eye to them to for years. At a time when many of us are becoming more and more environmentally conscious, we know that not only preserving small farms but also helping them to flourish once again is key to getting healthier food on our plates while allowing animals a lifestyle they deserve.

In my last blog I quoted Dr. Albert Schweitzer regarding compassion for all living things, that it is the root of all ethics. Well there are far too many people in Michigan’s House of Representatives that just don’t get it. Compassion for living things, including other human beings, is drastically slipping in our so-called “Christian” country. It begins with animals.

House Bill 5127 according to the Humane Society of the U.S., grants the Department of Agriculture sole authority to regulate livestock health and welfare, and require the Department to adopt industry standards regarding the treatment of farm animals. They also preempt local ordinances or regulations regarding animal care standards for farm animals. And HB 5128 establishes an industry dominated animal care advisory council to review and establish animal care standards for farm animals.

What? The very people, the USDA, that have turned a blind eye to the abuse of farm animals relative to factory farms for years are to be in charge? After reading the link above, anyone with a conscious could not possibly allow these bills to pass. What happened in S. Carolina’s factory farms resulted in one of the largest fines for pollution by the EPA ever. It was against Smithfield Foods. The USDA knew about it, but Smithfield Foods has deep pockets. If the pollution from that Smithfield Food’s factory farm in the interior of S. Carolina made it all the way to the ocean, what are factory farms even doing in a place like Michigan surrounded by fresh water? All of us know that groundwater eventually ends up in the lakes, yet there are 2200 factory farms currently in Michigan. Now our legislature wants to water down farm animal rights and regulation by granting the USDA complete control of our farm animal’s welfare?

This is not good for farm animal’s lives, Michigan’s food supply, or our fresh water supplies. It just looks like a way to dump responsibility on an already overburdened federal agency because it’s cheaper and/or easier. Granting the USDA the right to decide what happens to cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, etc., is like the fox watching the henhouse again. Big corporations will lobby the USDA as they have in the past and end up with control of everything.

Monroe can call Kate Ebli about voting against these bills in the Michigan House at 517-373-2617. Your call can make a big difference to all the farm animals in Michigan, our food and dairy supplies, and our freshwater. We need to start living more compassionate lives. It’s called EMPATHY, the ability to put ourselves in another’s position, right down to animals. There is no reason for cruelty toward something innocent–ever.

Natural, free range, and cage free poultry is practically a myth in America unless you’re buying from a small farmer and can see how your chicken was raised. Otherwise, what you’re eating is sometimes sick, and/or barely alive no different than the condition of factory farmed animals. And, Green Choices states: ” The Organic Food Production Act of 1990 and the National Organic Program explicitly require that organic meat and meat products must come from animals that have been raised outdoors. However, the USDA has drawn a distinction between chickens and other animals. While ruminant animals are guaranteed continuous access to the outdoors without confinement, chickens are not guaranteed continuous outdoor access and can be confined.” As for egg laying hens, they fair even worse. We need to pressure the USDA to change this, considering many of us have sworn off red meat, and so poultry consumption is at an all time high.

Luckily, I get my eggs and milk from Calder’s Dairy right here in Monroe, but Gig led me to look for a You Tube video about the misnomer of what we believe to be “free range” regarding egg laying hens. At first, I found videos from small legitimate free-range poultry farms, but then I found the one she referred to and others like it. In short we’re being duped by labeling. Like so much of our legislation, it’s full of loopholes for large corporations/lobbies to get away with chicken torture.

The videos are horrible exposes about what we do to the poultry we eat. I knew the horrors of factory farmed chickens and avoid buying any old chicken, but the idea of free range or natural isn’t much better. If you think you’re eating a wholesome product, humanely treated, it must be labeled as such.

Watch the following video thanks to You Tube and Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary:

My mother and father were both from farm families and my mom refers to chickens as “sweet, little hens.” When I saw this video, I wanted to cry. I immediately looked for websites where I could get reputable reports about labeling practices regarding poultry products. I read blogs where bloggers truly believe the law is the law and companies would be sued if they didn’t do what their label said. Suuuuuuuuure. Then I read about a local company, a big farm somewhere, that actually advertised on TV that their chickens loved living there, that is, until someone got in there with a camera and taped the awful conditions.

There were websites that led the reader to believe ALL chicken farms are horrible, and labels are close to useless. But then I found a website that led me to some good sources of info. The first two links I’ve listed below were especially useful and middle of the road to help the busy consumer understand the labels when looking for humanely raised, as well as, additive free poultry.

Bottom line the label should read “Humanely raised and handled.” The next best choice is a “Food Alliance” certification. After that pick “organic” simply because the gov’t. enforces stricter rules on the organic label than “free range” or “cage free,” but it still doesn’t mean the chickens were treated humanely.

Labels that say “free range or free roaming” are misleading because the USDA requires that the animals have access to the outdoors, but it doesn’t say for how long and there’s no verification. What’s more, the rules don’t apply to eggs,” according to a newsletter on shopsmart.typepad.com. No verification—does that mean self-regulating?

The “cage-free” label isn’t much better according to the same article: “It may sound like the chickens were free to peck around in the fresh air, but unless the eggs are labeled Certified Humane, there might be no independent group verifying how the animals are treated. Also, this label doesn’t necessarily mean that the chickens went outdoors. They may have been cooped up inside a screened in porch or a dirty barn.”

And finally, the “natural” label, well it just means no artificial ingredients were used during processing. It doesn’t mean the poultry wasn’t given antibiotics along the way, which leads me to ask: “Why do you think antibiotic use was so widespread in the meatpacking industry to begin with?” The animals were sick. How many years did we eat that? Nothing seems to have changed. We’re still eating sick animals only now they don’t get antibiotics—and are probably in worse condition.

This blog repeatedly says poultry but it’s about chicken. Turkey is another story I found. Most turkey has been genetically altered so badly they have to be artificially inseminated. What? That’s right. Look it up on the Internet. That info is everywhere. Some turkeys are so heavy that they are literally crippled by the weight and can’t walk.

I went shopping at a regular grocery store today. I found “organic” along with the “free range” logo and immediately didn’t trust it. The “free range” threw me. I did buy some Miller Amish Country brand. I looked up the Miller website last night, and read their testimonial, then tried to find a You Tube expose on Miller. So far there are none. The only problem is that Miller relies on smaller Amish farms collectively. Who is checking those farms? I read one blogger who lives near some Amish poultry farms and says they are not organic or humane.

I’m one step closer to vegan at this point. We really do need truth in advertising in America, at least truth in labeling by our own USDA. BTW, 30 states exempt farm animals from their humane legislation.
http://www.ehow.com/how_4503432_chicken-thats-organic-humanely-raised.html.

Goto page 46 on http://shopsmart.typepad.com/shopsmart_mag/files/food_labels.pdf

Watch this video about the organization that established the “humanely raised and handled” logo: http://www.certifiedhumane.org/video

http://www.bornfreeusa.org/articles.php?more=1&p=377

http://www.causecast.org/member/jsong/blog_posts/1133-farm-sanctuary-reveals-truth-behind-free-range-products

http://www.animalwelfareapproved.org/index.php?page=standardsforchickens

http://www.greenerchoices.org
/eco-labels/program.cfm?LabelID=200&searchType=Program%20Index&searchValue=&refpage=programIndex&refqstr=

The article “Boss Hog” in Rolling Stone Magazine was the biggest eye-opener I’ve ever read. Since reading that article and blogging about it, I have not touched red meat except for buffalo and/or organic free range beef only once in a blue moon. The poultry I eat is free range. I will not be a part of a system that does what we do to food animals. I’ve since joined American Farmland Trust, FACT, and Farm Sanctuary.

I’ve said this before. We have cute little movies about cute little talking pigs like “Charlotte’s Web,” but if we showed our children what we do to what we’ve deemed “highly intelligent” animals before we eat them, they would have nightmares forever. Heck, after reading “Boss Hog,” I had nightmares.

CAFO’s are nothing but cesspools. Ever wonder why we see “No antibiotics” on meat packages now? It’s to make the meat appear as more wholesome, when in fact the animals were given antibiotics to keep them healthy in CAFO’s in the first place. The animals are so stressed they literally chew on the steel bars, cannot lie down, and even have to give birth that way. They are often sickly like the “downed cow” every one witnessed being shoved to extermination on video. This is what this big, moral country allows, while we’re obese, and continue to consume more meat than any other nation.

That aside, large corporations like Smithfield are in the pocket of legislators and literally get away with big time pollution. Huge open-air lagoons of waste, after-birth, blood, pesticides, fatty residue from the slaughterhouses, and what used to be antibiotics run over into groundwater, wetlands, and streams. Heck they spray this mixture on surrounding fields and call it “nutrient loading.”

There are over 200 CAFO’s in Michigan, mostly owned by Dutch companies. We had a chance to limit them not long ago. Members of our congress wanted to stop any more from coming here, and to set up stricter guidelines by citing what happened in N.C. as a result of Smithfield Foods. But our illustrious senate decided that CAFOs brought too much money to Michigan (AG lobby), and that Michigan’s stance would be business as usual allowing CAFO’s to basically self-regulate because we have few inspectors left. And that Michigan would deal with a bad CAFO situation if and when it happened.

Well, now this has happened. According to an article in Huff Post, “Last year, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production issued a lengthy report on factory farming that included research on emerging forms of avian-swine-human influenza viruses.” The Pew Commission stated that pig or avian flu seldom transmitted to humans. However, the commission also warned:

The continual cycling of swine influenza viruses and other animal pathogens in large herds or flocks provides increased opportunity for the generation of novel viruses through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human-to-human transmission of these viruses. In addition, agricultural workers serve as a bridging population between their communities and the animals in large confinement facilities. This bridging increases the risk of novel virus generation in that human viruses may enter the herds or flocks and adapt to the animals.

Reassortant influenza viruses with human components have ravaged the modern swine industry. Such novel viruses not only put the workers and animals at risk of infections, but also potentially increase zoonotic disease transmission risk to the communities where the workers live. For instance, 64% of 63 persons exposed to humans infected with H7N7 avian influenza virus had serological evidence of H7N7 infection following the 2003 Netherlands avian influenza outbreak in poultry. Similarly, the spouses of swine workers who had no direct contact with pigs had increased odds of antibodies against swine influenza virus. Recent modeling work has shown that among communities where a large number of CAFO workers live, there is great potential for these workers to accelerate pandemic influenza virus transmission.

I’ve always wondered how the first CAFO got into Michigan in the first place? Since many of us in Michigan believe we are the main caretakers of the Great Lakes, and are therefore, responsible for the nation’s largest fresh water supply, how on earth could anyone allow CAFO’s and their open-air lagoons of waste to operate here? We know where most of our groundwater runoff is going to end up. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that out.

Read “Boss Hog” for a real eye opener as to what you’re eating:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_
secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_
worst_polluters/print

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/swine-flu-outbreak—-nat_b_191408.html

I’ve read estimates that from 7 to 12 billion animals per year are eaten in the U.S. I’m assuming the difference in the spread is whether or not poultry is included. Anyway, the U.S. has 300 million people. That means on the low end, the estimated 7 billion, every man, woman, and baby eats 23.33 critters each. It’s an assortment of course, but nevertheless, do we think this is good for us? The high end puts us at 40 animals each.

I don’t know if these estimates like the 7 billion from Cornell include pet food either. Funny, we raise animals to feed our animals, and we kill animals like wolves that seek to keep a balance among wild animals also. As a result, we throw things out of balance. That imbalance is hurting our health and the environment.

Cutting out 1/5th or 20% of our food animal intake would be the equivalent of replacing our cars with a hybrid. The pollution of raising the poor critters in horrendous conditions, the resources used for that same purpose, and the pollution from slaughter is phenomenal. So 20% less food animals does indeed make a dent with 1.4 billion less animals in the equation.

And that’s food we can simply do without. Think eating 4 instead of 5 meatballs with your sgetti, or eating a 6.5-ounce steak instead of 8. As for the 16-24 ounce steaks, come on!

There is a draft of new FDA consumer guidelines regarding mercury in fish floating around Capitol Hill that the EPA says it simply will not endorse. The EPA is heads up on this one for a change. They accuse the FDA of being closer to the fishing industry than concern for consumers. The new draft as seen on CNN, states specifically that eating over 12 oz. of fish per week has more advantages than disadvantages for the consumer regardless of mercury content. The EPA questions the science behind this draft.

Pregnant women should play it safe and follow former guidelines for them that limit the consumption of larger fish like albacore tuna to less than 12 oz’s. per week. Mercury poisoning can have adverse affects on the human fetus.

This is an offering by the exiting Bush Administration to the fishing industry. It’s another instance of science being tossed and replaced with ideology hell-bent on helping business regardless of the harm it does to the air, water, earth, animals, plants/trees, and humans.  So consumer beware until we have a real FDA again and agencies that we can hopefully trust.  

“Strange Days on Planet Earth” series from the National Geographic channel previewed the North Pacific Gyre, a swirling clockwise vortex, of ten million square miles. We wonder where all the debris goes that gets into the water.  It ends up where it’s ashamedly known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Among other things tons of plastic has accumulated here. Some argue plastics do eventually bio degrade, well, not so much. Plastic photodegrades, which means it gets smaller and thinner, and thinner until it is in micro pieces.

Most people are not aware of this gyre. Others know to avoid it’s swirling outer perimeter and the dead calm center. So many haven’t actually experienced the mess. In the series “Strange Days,” a boat decided to motor across the gyre to cut down on time on its way to another environmental study. It would only take a week to cross. But once the boat entered, the captain could not believe what he encountered day after day. He said it was literally a cesspool of large items and what appeared to be floating flakes. The captain decided to lower a skim for plankton that pretty much looks like a cheese cloth wind sock meant to gather plankton. What he gathered were small plastic particulates in the millions. According to Wikipedia: “These pieces, still polymers, eventually become individual molecules, which are still not easily digested.^[1] Some plastics photodegrade into other pollutants.”

Birds and other mammals are feeding on this stuff. Birds feed it to their offspring. Industrial plastic pellets are washing up near shorelines also, and look like fish eggs. Baby albotross’ dead on the beach showed exposed stomachs filled with plastics of all kinds. There is more polymer in the N. Pacific Gyrate than there is plankton. According to Wickipedia: “Besides ingestion and entanglement of wildlife, the floating debris absorbs toxins in the water which, when ingested, are mistaken by the animals brain for estradiol, causing hormone disruption in the affected wildlife.” This is evidence of more hormone disruptors that affect the genetics of young life. We’re seeing gender bender fish, wait until we start finding gender bender birds and mammals. That’s food for thought. Right now we’re eating into this polluted animal chain, and will more than likely suffer the same consequences in the future if not already. So keep using and throwing out plastic of all kinds and keep saying man doesn’t have an affect on his environment and that recent rapid changes in climate are happening naturally. Sure. 

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/oceans/pollution/trash-vortex

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7312777.stm

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/the-plastic-killing-fields/2007/12/28/1198778702627.html?page=fullpage

Cuts are going to happen. We must pay for the war.  But we just don’t know all the things that have been cut, until it’s too late that is. Just last year around this time, the Bush administration planned to cut some $500 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s budget and was met with fierce opposition in congress. The complaint was that it would shortchange vital environmental programs and was unacceptable. Do ya think?

Now it’s the FDA. The cover of the April 2008 Reader’s Digest asks “Can We Trust the FDA?—Must Read Special Report,” and reveals the Food and Drug Administration is in crisis. Most of the article is about the drugs we take, but the department is responsible for regulating $1.5 trillion in food, as well as, animal feeds and drugs. The article stated that insiders say, “it’s [FDA] woefully underfunded, dangerously understaffed and fractured by bitter internal tensions.” I immediately suspected feuding within the department exists because some people have ethics. In 2004, the FDA came under fire for silencing a staff scientist about antidepressants causing suicidal tendencies in teens. Ditto for the EPA, when scientists testified before congress last year that they were tired of being suppressed, and their findings/reports compromised.

The FDA receives only $2 billion in funding, which sounds like a lot but as the article says “is about what Fairfax County, Virginia, pays for its public schools.” It’s really frightening to read words like “chilling new report” in reference to the department in charge of our food and medicine. Worse yet the “chilling” report was commissioned by the FDA’s own advisory Science Board that also describes it as “nearly out of control.”

Congress has just begun to help shore up the FDA, increasing their funding by $145 million, but hey compared to billions, that’s a drop in the bucket. Of course about a quarter of that went to the drug review branch, another reason to read this story to see how much conflict of interest there is within the FDA relative to the drug industry. But special interests and conflict of interest on the food side of this equation cause an equal amount of damage. We start seeing problems like tainted food, beef, and chicken recalls, lax inspection of CAFO’s and runoff from them that may make its way into our tributaries, and of course really lax inspection of imported food. I watched a program where farm raised shrimp in an Asian country were swimming in polluted water with feces from farm animals. I check what I buy now. I steer clear of imports. I know the FDA isn’t checking.

The article said the public needs to weigh in. Weigh in? Scream for Pete’s sake. This is our bread, this is our health and it’s being handled shabbily. This type of decision-making and ethics is repetitive in the EPA, and more than likely throughout our federal agencies at this point. As I read the five key problems in this industry, they were similar to the EPA’s problems:

· The FDA suffers pressure from industry to speed decisions, and soft-pedal problems.
· Safety of New Drugs. Safety decisions are many times based on inefficient industry studies.
· Sloppy Record Keeping
· Conflicts of Interest
· Muzzled Experts

This list just about says it all doesn’t it? From the looks of things, we’re on our own.

Read the article: http://www.rd.com/national-interest/special-reports-and-surveys/problems-in-the-fda/article55513.html

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