Our World and Everything in It

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.