I kinda feel like maybe I haven't made clear WHY I want to eat locally sourced food, so imma take a few minutes here (instead of doing homework!) and break it on down for ya. One, two three, get loose now!
Factory farming is BAD, mmmkay? It is horrifically cruel to animals, horrific for the human beings who have to work in them, and horrific for the environment. I am not going to link any websites that show videos and photos and such, because I don't have the stomach for that, but they are out there if you are the type who needs to see that stuff to believe it.
The animals are packed in horrifically cramped warehouses, HORRIFICALLY cramped, chickens are often "debeaked" (beaks ripped off with pliers) to keep them from pecking each other. The animals are not given room to sit or lay, the noise and stench and chemical build up is, again, HORRIFIC. The conditions are, to put it mildly, stressful for the animals. This makes it difficult to keep them healthy.
Then the animals are force fed an unnatural diet. Imagine if all you got to eat was bamboo, how sick you would become. Well that is what happens to the cows, chickens and pigs in factory farms. They are fed the cheapest possible things, not necessarily even 'food', often the rotting body parts of the sick animals that died next to them; ash is common. Certainly not the grass (cow's natural diet), bugs and seeds (chicken's natural diet), that their bodies are made to digest. And so to keep them alive long enough to slaughter, they are pumped full of antibiotics, growth hormones and other drugs.
So the package of Purdue chicken in your hand may say, "absolutely no antibiotics or hormones", but that only applies to the finished product. That is, no ADDITIONAL antibiotics or hormones were added to the meat, but tests of such meat show that it does have those chemicals in it. And recently Purdue changed their packaging to say, "cage-free", which just means that technically there was an opening in the cage. It is NOT THE SAME AS FREE RANGE! Free range is when chickens walk around an outdoor area, pecking and eating bugs and seeds and whatever else looks tasty to them, while having access to a shelter.
See the difference?
Ok, now imagine working in a factory farm! Imma get REAL up close and personal here and tell you about a boyfriend i had (a LONNNGGGG time ago). He was on work release, and the only place where he and many other work release inmates could find jobs was at a chicken factory near the prison. He quit after a few days, and never ate chicken again (as long as i knew him). Yes, he PREFERRED to be in PRISON full time, than have to work in that factory. And even a hard hearted criminal like him was UNABLE to eat chicken after working there for only a couple of days.
Now, you may say, 'well maybe he was just lazy and didn't feel like working.' If you say do say that, then I must assume you have never worked with a work release inmate, because if you ever had you would know that they are the BEST workers in any workplace! They will come in early and stay as LATE as you want them! They will work Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Easter, Mother's Day, any shift and any position. And they work hard because they want to keep the job, so they don't have go apply for other jobs (which is what they make work release inmates do) because it is humiliating for them to go fill out applications and write down the fact that they are currently incarcerated. Also, pretty much ANY JOB outside the prison is ALWAYS better then being in prison!
And factory farms are bad for the environment because they use all those HORRIFIC chemicals which leach down into the environment and into your body. The chemicals don't magically disappear once the animal has ingested them. They just go into the animal's flesh, which you then consume; and into it's waste which is often fed back to the animals (no joke folks), or set off on a journey into the ecosystem. Factory farms are also NOTORIOUS for their excessive production of greenhouse gasses.
Feel free to look all this up.
And when our food comes from these farms (often from Mexico where laws governing sanitation regulations and chemical usage are lax) it must be IRRADIATED to kill the dangerous bacteria that thrive in those inhumane conditions, in order to last through the trip to your grocery store, and into their packaging, and then into the case, where you will buy it, keep it in the fridge for a couple days, and finally cook and eat it. That takes a long time. You do the math, put 2 and 2 together and decide if that makes sense to you.
Oh and don't forget that the average food item travels 1500 MILES to get to the consumer!!! How many gallons of gas do you think that is? And how do Big Food Companies pay for all that gas? By using the CHEAPEST, WORST production methods possible, that is how!!! Think about it: how much of each dollar you spend do you think can go into producing the actual FOOD, if the food has to be shipped 1500 miles to get to you? Do you think the B.F.Co's just pay for that shipping out of their own pockets, out of the kindness of their hearts???? NO! YOU ARE PAYING FOR IT TO BE SHIPPED! The food is the CHEAPEST PART of the whole operation!
And now, good night. I will continue my rant another day, cuz believe me folks, I didn't decide to go local/sustainable/natural for my own entertainment (or yours!) lol;P
No comments:
Post a Comment