Milk and Meat From Factory Farming Are Toxic

Factory farming, also known as CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation), is a cruel system used for efficiency and to maximize profits. Driven by the love of money, the meat and dairy industries employ this method to process cows, chickens, turkeys, and pigs at minimum cost. The method follows the pattern of the modern day factory, and employs assembly line techniques. Hence the name, factory farming.

Like the factory, the animals are treated as though they were manufactured, unfeeling, inanimate objects instead of living, breathing creatures. The animals are not allowed to graze as God designed them to. They are removed from their natural environment and confined in extremely tight quarters.

There was a time when chickens, pigs, and turkeys were raised on farms. They were allowed to move around and graze. Not any more.

Instead of being farm raised, it is more accurate to say that they are factory-raised. Factory farming is how today's mega-meat packers operate.

Cows are used for one of two purposes: meat or milk. Their purpose dictates to an extent in what manner they are treated. Neither treatment is good. If the cow is to be used for meat, they are typically allowed to spend the first year of their lives grazing. Prior to 1950, all cattle had the luxury of grazing in the open. By the early 1970s, this practice was a thing of the past.

Seventy-five percent of America's cattle are caged in factory-farms. In 1951, the year I was born, almost all of the cattle grazed in open pastureland.

Cows to be used for meat often freeze to death in the winter and others fall victim to heat stroke in the summertime. Veterinary care for them is scarce, if at all. The cows who survive this ordeal are auctioned off. Factory farming allows no compassion.

They are then shipped to huge feedlots where they are crammed together like sardines in a can. The journey, however, leaves many of them crippled while others die. Cows are shipped to feedlots in trucks.

Out of every 100 cows shipped, one dies from a form of pneumonia known as shipping fever. To fight this disease, the animals are given an antibiotic called chloramphenicol. This is a powerful drug which can kill humans who are susceptible to it. Trace or residual amounts of this deadly drug remain even after the animal is slaughtered. It thus enters the human food chain.

Cow's natural food is grass. However, pesticide-laced grain forms the major part of their diet. These poor creatures are also fed sawdust mixed with ammonia, shredded newspaper, processed sewage, and other unspeakable inedible garbage. This trash is mixed with insecticides, antibiotics and synthetic hormones!

This toxic trash causes the cow severe digestive pain. Some internal organs become ulcerated and actually burst from the trauma. As much as 32% of cows �groomed� for beef develop potentially fatal liver abscesses.

Trace amounts of deadly antibiotics and insecticides are stored in animals. Only a handful of animal carcasses are ever tested for chemical poisons. A very small percentage of the known poisons in America�s meat supply are actually tested for. The majority of meat destined for consumers fall through the USDA�s (United States Department of Agriculture) cracks.

Cows raised in a factory farming environment for their milk get no better treatment than those raised for beef. They are treated as though they were simply money generating machines. Cows which are destined for milk production are constantly sick and diseased just as those used for meat. This is due to their unsanitary environment. The odors of their urine and feces in which they have to stand in are stifling.

Milk cows are continuously impregnated. The calves are taken away from their mothers within a day of their birth. The female calves will share the same fate as their mothers. The males are destined to wind up as veal.

Immediately after birth, the mother cows are connected up to milking machines. Injected with bovine growth hormone (BGH), these cows produce up to ten times the milk as is natural! (By the way, BGH has been banned in Canada and Europe due to concerns of human health and the cow�s welfare. America doesn�t care). This tortuous process causes a painful inflammation of the cow�s udder known as mastitis. According to the dairy industry�s own statistics, approximately 30% to 50% of milking cows fall prey to mastitis.

The average life span for a cow is 25 years. Dairy cows however live only 1/5 that time. You have to keep in mind that the hamburger meat or veal or milk that you consume don�t come from healthy cows. Their abusive treatment and grossly unsanitary environment prevents good health from being even a remote possibility. Only the meat and dairy industries profit from factory farming.

What does this mean to you the consumer? Before slaughter or death, the cow is diseased and has been fed what no one in his right mind would call food. It is certainly not what God created it to eat. To combat their disease and other crippling health issues, cows are pumped full of antibiotics. They are also injected with the hormone BGH. This is not to mention the insecticides and herbicides which they ingest.

Traces of the hormones, insecticides, herbicides, pesticides, and antibiotics remain in the meat and in the milk that is marketed. Factory farming is contributing to America�s health crisis, and the rise in various cancers.

You are literally playing Russian roulette with non-organic meat and milk products. Remember the saying you are what you eat. This is literally true. You are eating meat from diseased cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys. You are drinking milk from diseased cows. You are also feeding your body synthetic chemical compounds.

80% of salmonellosis (caused by salmonella and resulting in fever, malaise, and intestinal disorders) in human beings originate in diseased animal food. This is a formula for disaster, not for building a healthy, body.

�. . .Dr. Egger reminds us that low concentrations of antibiotics are measurable in many of our foods, rivers, and streams around the world. Much of this is seeping into bodies of water from animal farms. . . � (Death by Medicine; Specific Drug Iatrogenesis: Antibiotics.)

The only way that you can be assured of meat from healthy animals is by buying organic. Factory farming leaves harmful, toxic chemicals in the animal's fatty tissue. Organically raised animals assures you that the animal is not given hormones such as BGH, or antibiotics. The animal's food is pesticide-free. There is one caveat though, most organically raised animals are fed grain!

When you buy meat, look for 'Grass-Fed' on the label. You will avoid the health risks associated with factory farming. It may be difficult to find though. Even stores like Whole Foods sell grain-fed, though organically raised meat. The problem with grain-fed animals is that grain is unbalanced as far as omega-6 to omega-3 is concerned. Read...
Further reading...
FDA allows a chemical to be used in livestock which is banned in 160 countries!
Where's the beef?
The latest danger - super glued meat