I once heard a comedian joke that if animals weren’t intended for us to eat, then why would they be made out of meat? Pretty funny. However, you can make decisions about whether you want to eat animal flesh or
I once heard a comedian joke that if animals weren’t intended for us to eat, then why would they be made out of meat? Pretty funny.
However, you can make decisions about whether you want to eat animal flesh or not. And if so, then decisions should be based on where that meat is procured from.
“The Jungle,” a best-selling novel by Upton Sinclair published over a century ago, described the horrible, unsanitary and unsafe conditions in meat packing plants and helped inform the public about the appalling suffering of animals in the slaughter houses as well.
The upshot was that the book helped get the Pure Food and Drug and Meat Inspection Act of 1906 passed. Even still, over 100 years later, slaughter plant work is still one of the most dangerous jobs in America and most animals raised for human consumption suffer not just at the end of their lives but throughout their entire lives.
Erik Nicholson of the United Farm Workers reports that most often animals raised for human consumption spend their lives in indoor cages that are so confining they are unable to move more than an inch or spread their wings. The statistics are that less than 1 percent of all animal products sold in the United States are from animals that spent their lives outdoors in pastures or barnyards instead of warehouses.
When cages are stacked row upon row, the excrement from above falls down to the animals below, polluting their food and falling on their bodies. Same with farmed fish, they are so confined that they are swimming in fish sewage. Most farmed fish are fed GMO feed since there is a limited amount of verified non-GMO fish feed. Most factory produced meat and dairy is GMO as well, as the animals are fed GMO grain, including soy, corn and alfalfa.
There is a limited amount of non-GMO feed for these types of operations. Therefore, if it is not wild or grass fed, it is likely genetically modified.
Not so long ago, people actually knew where their food came from. Most of it, including meat, dairy eggs and produce, came from backyards, neighbor and family farms.
Nowadays, after decades of consolidation, 95 percent of our meat, eggs and dairy come from industrial factory farms otherwise known as “confined animal feeding operations.”
These operations generate 220 billion tons of agricultural waste, including blood, dead animals, chemicals, antibiotic and growth hormone residues and sanitizing chemicals into the environment.
The other well-known issue with consuming a meat-heavy diet, as most Americans do, is that meat production is resource depleting. It takes massive amounts of water, land, fertilizer, oil and other resources to produce meat.
These scarce and precious resources could be used more effectively to produce more nutritionally dense, plant-based foods to feed more people globally.
The farming practices used nowadays to produce meat contribute directly to global warming by releasing huge amounts of greenhouse gases. According to a 2006 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.
We need labels on food to let us know where and how the food was produced so that we can make compassionate and thoughtful decisions as to whether we wish to consume a food item or not based on its method of production.
Eating less meat and other animal products and more plant-based food is a good start to improve your health and the health of the planet.
However, better labeling will help inform us to make the right decision, and of course eating local and organic, or wild, is always best.
• Jane Riley, M.S., B.A., C.P.T., Certified Nutritional Adviser, can be reached at janerileyfitness@gmail.com, 212-1451
