Eat Local, Eat Organic, Eat Free Range, Eat Grass Fed, Eat Antibiotic & Hormone Free

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You must watch Food Inc. If you have Netflix you can watch it on demand as part of your subscription. Here’s a quick summary of the movie:

It’s a myth that our food is coming from farms.  Unknown to the McDonald’s Brothers at the time, their business strategy of bringing the assembly line into the restaurant has set off a devastating set of events. Our food is now coming from a factory, not a farm.

Just like in any market where there is demand, the supply will be met. But when the demand is only coming from one major player, or only a small few, the result is a monopoly of that industry. In the 1970′s the top five Beef packers only controlled 25% of the meat market, now the top four control over 80%.  Pork is now well on its way to the same unfortunate strategy.

Chickens are raised and slaughtered in half of the time they were just 50 years ago but now they are twice as big. People want more white breast meat so chickens were altered to have larger breasts.  WHAT??? They grow so fast that they can’t support their own weight and can only take a couple of steps at a time. There are antibiotics put into the feed, but as bacteria builds resistance, the antibiotics are losing their ability to fight illness. What happened here?

Corn, oh the horrible story of corn. 30% of our land base is being planted with corn. Mainly because government pays farmers to overproduce so that the big guys can purchase corn below the cost of production. We’ve all heard of high fructose corn syrup, but you will be shocked at all the other substances science can create from corn: Maltodextrin, Cellulse, Calcium Stearate, Ethl Lactate, Saccharin, Xanthan Gum, Sorbital, Sucrose, Gluten, Ethal Acetate, Citrus Cloud Emulsion, Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid, Di-Glyerides, Baking Powder, Fructose, Sorbic Acid, Vanilla Extract, Starch, Margarine, Semolina, Zein, Fumaric Acid, Fibersol-2, Xylitol, Alpha Tocopherol… Okay so more Laymans Terms- here are some products I bet you didn’t know contain corn; Ketchup, Cheese-Its, Batteries, Salad Dressing, Coke, Cheese, Twinkies, Peanut Butter, Jelly, Sweet and Low, Charcoal, Diapers, Motrin and many, many more.  I dare you to give up corn for one week. Any takers? I’ll do it if you do it.

So how does corn relate back to our meat? Well, we now feed our animals corn because it makes them fat and it’s cheap.  But the impact comes from a dangerous strand of E. Coli that evolves from feed and feed-lot life.  The recalls keep growing. Beware, E. Coli 157H7.  I support Kevin’s Law! Give back the power to the USDA to shut down meat plants that consistently produce contaminated meat. Duh! The main idea is that cows stand in their own manure all day and then go to slaughter, and the plants are so huge that it is nearly impossible to keep the contaminated hides or intestines from getting into the meat supply.

But the more we advance in our technology to prevent these deadly bugs from getting into our food sources the more we move away from anything natural to everything engineered. The more efficient we become the more problems arise.  If we took cattle off their corn-fed diet for only five days and put them back onto a grass-fed diet they would shed 80% of their E. Coli in their gut. But instead of doing that we look to technology.  Our food looks more like Frankenstein rather than nature.  The meat industry now washes meat in Ammonia because that is supposed to kill the E. Coli. Mmmm, Yummy.

It all comes back to the Dollar Menu.  If a hamburger is cheaper than a head of brocoli, we are never going to win the battle. Let’s not even talk about the epidemic of diabetes that is the result of this way of life. Or the animal and human cruelty.

The thought of eating fast food now absolutely makes my stomach churn. Did you know that your burger is made up thousands of cows, that they all get mixed up together? And the slaughter-house factories are so industrialized that the manure on their feet gets mixed right into the bat of meat that makes your burger, with or without e-coli.  Gross. Let’s not talk about the chickens. Or the inhuman living conditions. If we leave out animal cruelty all together, the meat in your burger is simply awful.

Somebody please explain to me how Monsanto can control over 90% of the soybean seed in this country with their round-up ready patented gene? Well I know how, but why? Farmers used to save their best seed for the next seasons’ crops. Now that is illegal. Meaning once a farmer buys seed from Monsanto, they cannot save their seed because that is stealing.  Forever stuck in the cycle of avoiding patent infringement. Has it occurred to anyone else that variety is what has kept humans alive. Survival of the fittess? Not the survival of one type or strand. I am fearful of Monsanto taking over the rest of agriculture. It would take one bad season, one new mega bug, to destroy a crop an affect the entire worlds food supply.

But the good thing is that the Organic Industry is growing over 20% annually.  So take charge of your health, your family’s health and the health of the earth- buy Organic- buy Grass Fed.