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Where does your food come from? This may seem like a simple question - sure, you buy your chicken, eggs and t-bones at Hannaford or Whole Foods - but where do these supermarkets get their foods? What have these products gone through before getting to your plate? That chicken breast came from a living, breathing chicken. Where did this chicken live and what kind of life did it have? Better yet, why does this matter?
Your food’s source matters because you take on the characteristics of the food you eat, hence “you are what you eat.” If your eggs or chicken breast came from a farm where the chicken had free range, was able to eat its natural foods like grass and insects and led a stress-free life, those qualities will also be in the meat or egg you are eating. Consider the alternative: a chicken sharing a one square foot cage with another chicken in a dark, disease-infested building that is fed a mixture of grains, mostly commodity corn. According to an article in the New York Times, arsenic, a highly dangerous poison known to cause cancer and other diseases, is added to the feed to promote growth and kill parasites. The chicken’s beak is also cut off when it is a chick so that the chicken, which is naturally territorial, does not peck at its handlers or other chickens. Sadly, these sick, stressed chickens exist in factory farms in the United States, and are living in these conditions to meet the demands of many consumers who want inexpensive food and a lot of it.
Cattle, pigs and goats in factory farms have it no better. They are considered a commodity. They live in terror everyday, are fed nutrient-deficient food, injected with hormones and kept in confined spaces so that they will gain weight and produce more meat or milk. Babies are separated from their mothers almost immediately after birth. Many sick animals are left to die and then mixed in with live animals’ feed. According to former cattle rancher, Howard Lyman, many cattle, animals that were never meant to eat meat, end up being fed their own kind, and this often results in Mad Cow Disease. This food-borne illness can then be passed on to humans eating meat from those animals.
Even if the treatment of factory farm animals are not enough to concern you, consider what you are consuming when eating meat or products from these animals. That food is sick, stressed, contains artificial hormones and antibiotics and lived a life of terror. Eating enough of food with those qualities over even a short period of time will certainly have an effect on your physical and mental health.
Three organizations working to raise awareness of factory farming are The Meatrix, Farm Sanctuary and Peaceable Kingdom. To understand what factory farming is doing to these animals, and ultimately, your food; view this video clip about Peaceable Kingdom.
What can you do as a consumer?
- Find out where your food is coming from. This often means inquiring at the grocery store or reading packaging. Only purchase animal products from sources that you know are using humane, sustainable farming practices. They don’t necessarily need to be organic.
- Buy local. Purchase from your local farmer or farmers’ market. Ask your local farmer if their cows are grass fed and if chickens are free range. Find out about their farming practices. Not only does this ensure you are eating safe food, but it also supports local agriculture, which is being phased out by factory farming.
- Look for packaging with “free range,” “grass fed” and “hormone and antibiotic free.” Be sure grass fed products also have the AGA trademark to ensure the farm has been visited by an auditer.
- Buy organic.
- Inquire at restaurants. Instead of simply ordering the steak off the menu, ask your server if it is grass fed. Find out if the chicken is free range or organic. Ask if they know where the meat came from. Fill out a comment card requesting animal products from local farmers.
- Help spread awareness. Email this article to a friend.
- Visit The Meatrix or Farm Sanctuary to find out what else you can do.
- Join the Factory Farming Facebook group and ask your friends to join.
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Comments
the term "free range" means very little about the quality of life for the animal it describes. It actually means that the animal was given a minimum of five minutes of access to the outside a day, not even that it actually went out. Because i dont think that the quality of my own life woud be dramatically improved by just five minutes of freedom a day i wouldnt assume the life of a chicken or cow would either.
thanks for helping to raise awareness with these issues. it's amazing how poorly so many animals are treated and what the quality of our food has turned into. i'm surprised at the somewhat ignorant comment above - while that may be true of "free range" i think the point is (and i think that the article is making) is that we need to be more conscious of where our food comes from. looking for free range is better than just getting the purdue chicken at shaws. it's a first step for many people who never even thought of how the animal was treated. and even organic trademarks can't necessarily guarantee what happens to the animal once they leave the farm they were raised on...if they were treated with organic standards. that's why buying local, like this article says, and knowing the farmer and their practices is so important.
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