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Do you know where your meat and animal products come from?

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.

 

 

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