Tag Archives: animals

5 Reasons to Kick Factory Farmed Meats Off Your Plate

by HungHolub80 Posted on October 8, 2016

These days, just about everything is mass-produced, including our food, with large, factory-style farms churning out a seemingly endless supply ofmeat, chickens,eggsanddairy products. All that mass production equals abundance and lower prices, but if those factory-farmed products are eroding your health, is the savings really worth it? Not in my book. Heres whats really going on with mass-produced meats and why you should steer clear:

1. Factory-farmed animals eat crap. Literally.

To keep production costs low, animals raised in factory farms are fed the cheapest possible grains and feeds containing among other things, by-product feedstuff, which begs the question, whats feedstuff? Its a nausea-inducing assortment of disturbing ingredients, including municipal garbage, stale cookies, poultry manure, chicken feathers, bubble gum and even restaurant waste. So, when you eat factory-farmed animals, youre also getting an unintentional serving of feedstuff.

In short, their bad diet becomes your bad diet which is counter-productive to your health.

2. Bad diets make for sick animals and people too.

Cud-chewing critters such as cattle, dairy cows, goats, bison and sheep were designed to eat fibrous grasses, plants, and shrubsnot starchy, low-fiber grains and feedstuffs. When these animals are switched from pasture greenery to grains, many wind up suffering from a number of disorders and painful conditions. The sickened animals are then given chemical additives, plus constant, low-level doses of antibiotics.

Their drugs in turn enter your system when you eat antibiotic-treated animals, settingthe stage for drug-resistance in your body, particularly if youre a heavy-duty carnivore.

3. Lousy ingredients wont create a nutritious product.

It should come as no surprise that animals fed a crappy diet will make for a less nutritious meal. Compared to grass-fed, factory-farmed, grain-fed meats have less vitamin E, beta-carotene, and little of the two health-promoting fats called omega-3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA.

So whats the end-result of the feed-em-fast-and-cheap factory farmed method? Inferior food with negligible nutrients and more of the unhealthy fats. Small wonder the stuff is so much cheaper than grass-fed.

4. Stress hurts everyone.

If your goal is to sustain wellness, factory-farmed products just dont deliver thenutritionalgoods. In factory farms, chickens, turkeys, and pigs are typically raised in inhumane conditions, tightly packed into cages and pens, unable to practice normal behaviors, such as rooting, grazing, and roosting.

In these conditions, the animals get stressed and wind up producing products that are lower in a number of key vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids talk about empty calories!

5. Factory farming pollutes the earth.

In a conventional feedlot operation, for example, confined cattle deposit large amounts of manure in a small amount of space. The manure must be collected and removed. As it costs money to haul it away, the manure is often dumped nearby, close to the feedlot. As a result, the surrounding soil gets over-saturated with the stuff, resulting in ground and water pollution. But when animals are raised on pasture, their manure is a welcome source of organic fertilizer, not a waste management problem.

Bottom line: raising animals on pasture is kinder to the environment.

In short, though factory farming enables us to have plenty of cheap and convenient food, its food with little nutritional benefit, that can increase your resistance to antibiotics as it pollutes your air, land and water. With so little going for it, doesnt it seem slightly crazy to eat factory-farmed meats? It certainly does to me which is why I strongly suggest that if youre going to eat meat, buy the good stuff, even if it means having to pay a bit more or buy less of it. Choose grass-fed beef, lamb, bison and poultry, to insure that youre eating nutritious and healthy meats, as nature intended.

This article originally appeared onDrFrankLipman.com, and reposted with permission from Naturally Savvy.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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5 Reasons to Kick Factory Farmed Meats Off Your Plate

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We’re Using the Strongest Antibiotics More Than Ever Before—and It’s Terrifying

by DevonSheean Posted on September 19, 2016

Mother Jones

Pretend you found a mosquito in your bedroom. Would your first move be to kill the mosquito or to call in the exterminator to fumigate your whole house? Probably you’d start by killing the mosquito and, maybe, if his friends kept showing up, you’d try a few other things. If none of that worked, you’d eventually call in the big guns.

Doctors use the same approach when they treat infections with antibiotics: In general, they try to use the weakest possible drug that they know will be effective for a specific kind of infection. If that doesn’t work, they move on to the big guns—broad-spectrum antibiotics that can kill a wide range of bacteria.

But now, doctors are prescribing more broad-spectrum antibiotics than they ever have before—which leads researchers to speculate that first-line antibiotics aren’t working as well as they used to.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Resistance tracked antibiotic prescriptions at 300 US hospitals. Between 2006 and 2012, overall antibiotic prescription rates remained the same. But prescriptions for carbapenems—a class of antibiotics used to treat infections that don’t respond to the usual drugs—jumped by an alarming 37 percent. Prescriptions of the extremely powerful antibiotic vancomycin—one of the only drugs effective against the scary skin infection, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)—increased by 27 percent.

Meanwhile, the use of fluoroquinolones, a very commonly prescribed class of antibiotics that isn’t nearly as strong as carbapenems or vancomycin—dropped by 20 percent.

The researchers think they can explain the rise in prescriptions of super-powerful antibiotic and the decline in use of less potent drugs: As bacteria develop resistance to the most commonly prescribed drugs, doctors have to call in the big guns more often. And if bacteria start developing resistance to the most powerful antibiotics, we’re really in trouble, as science journalist Maryn McKenna explained here.

One way to avoid that dire outcome is to make sure that doctors save the last-resort drugs for bacteria that other drugs can’t kill. The researchers note that “inappropriate antibiotic use increases the risk of antibiotic resistance and other adverse patient outcomes.”

But hospitals are not the only source of superbugs. As my colleague Tom Philpott has reported, an astonishing 80 percent of all US antibiotics go to the livestock industry, where meat producers regularly dose even healthy animals with them. This practice allows farmers to cram lots of animals into small spaces without sickening each other and makes them grow faster. It also spreads antibiotic-resistant genes to humans.

Although the FDA’s rules on livestock antibiotics are pretty permissive, in response to consumer concerns about superbugs, some meat companies are moving away from antibiotics on their own. Read Tom’s story of one company that chose to ditch the drugs here.

The good news: The FDA appears to be noticing the mounting evidence that our antibiotics are losing strength. Last week the agency signaled that it may soon limit how long farmers can use the drugs.

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We’re Using the Strongest Antibiotics More Than Ever Before—and It’s Terrifying

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Climate change is driving fish crazy, literally.

by RafaelaBoard Posted on September 15, 2016

Turns out the largest sea creatures are most likely to go extinct, according to research published today in Science.

The research, led by Stanford’s Jonathan Payne, compared modern marine vertebrates and mollusks to their ancestors in the fossil record, all the way up to the last mass extinction 66 million years ago. Today, unlike in any previous time studied, a 10 percent increase in body size means a 13 percent increase in extinction risk.

This differs from a run-of-the-mill mass extinction, when your likelihood of dying off has a lot more to do with, say, where you live in the ocean or where you fall on the evolutionary tree.

And the biggest-is-not-best pattern has human fingerprints all over it — just think of the mastodon and moa.

“Humans, with our technology, have made ourselves into predators that can go after very large animals,” says Payne. But there’s an upside. Unlike the huge environmental changes that spurred mass extinctions in the past (and perhaps the near future), human activity has been known to do a quick 180.

After all, the oceans have seen very little extinction in the Anthropocene. “We still have a huge opportunity to save almost everything,” Payne says.

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Climate change is driving fish crazy, literally.

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This Is the Most Heartbreaking News About Animals You’ll Read Today

by Jill Tsai Posted on September 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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Africa’s iconic savanna elephants are disappearing—and poaching is to blame. That’s the takeaway of the Great Elephant Census, an elephant count conducted by researchers from an array of conservation and zoological groups in Africa.

Between 2007 and 2014, Africa’s elephant population dwindled by 30 percent, down to a grand total of just over 352,000 elephants. According to the World Wildlife Fund, there were as many as 3-5 million elephants in the early twentieth century.

Over the past 5-10 years, because of mounting demand for ivory, largely in China, elephant poaching has increased dramatically, especially in eastern and western Africa.

Some of the highest carcass ratios—a metric that compares PDF the number of dead elephants to the total number of live and dead elephants in a given area—were found in Cameroon, Mozambique, Tanzania and Angola, which had not been surveyed before.

Other reasons linked to the decline are human-elephant conflict, habitat loss and fragmentation, and the isolation of populations.

The report raises concerns about how the animals are protected. “The clear implication is that many reserves are failing to adequately shield elephants from poaching and human-elephant conflict,” said the study.

While these revelations may bring more attention to poaching and other issues affecting savanna elephants, the problems will likely persist. Poachers are paid handsomely—as much as $1,500 per pound of ivory on the black market—and they don’t serve much time in jail.

“If we can’t save the African elephant, what is the hope of conserving the rest of Africa’s wildlife?” said Mike Chase, GEC principal investigator, in a statement.

A few breathtaking photos of these disappearing majestic creatures:

Imago via ZUMA Press

Imago via ZUMA Press

Imago via ZUMA Press

Imago via ZUMA Press

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This Is the Most Heartbreaking News About Animals You’ll Read Today

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Your Dog Really Does Understand You

by EnidAllingham2 Posted on August 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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You know when you say something and your pooch cocks his head in that skeptical way, and you swear he’s mocking you? Turns out he very well could be, according to new research about how well canines comprehend human communication.

People understand language in two main ways: through words and intonation. When a team of scientists in Hungary ran a series of tests on dogs, they discovered that the animals also used those same two mechanisms to understand language. The dogs even use the same regions of the brain for language processing as we do, according to the researchers’ new study, published in Science.

The researchers had the mutts listen to their trainers saying a combination of words using different intonations, such as praising (“Well done!”) or neutral (“well done”). The trainers also used what they called “neutral words,” words that were commonly not used with dogs and were supposedly meaningless to them, such as “even” and “if.” As the dogs were listening, scientists tracked their brain activity using a neuroimaging processor. They found that the canines could process some distinct words, regardless of intonation; that they processed intonation separately from vocabulary; and that a dog’s “reward center” was activated only when the praising words and intonations matched.

“It shows that for dogs, a nice praise can work very well work as a reward, but it works best if both words and intonation match,” Attila Andics, the lead researcher, said in a news release accompanying the study. “So dogs not only tell apart what we say and how we say it, but they can also combine the two, for a correct interpretation of what those words really meant. This is very similar to what human brains do.”

That means dogs understand, to some extent, what we say AND what we mean. Bask in that while also reveling in another discovery: that dogs remain adorable while being tested for language processing. See a video summarizing some of the research (featuring: dogs!) here:

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Your Dog Really Does Understand You

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Climate change turns birds into cannibals

by MargariBlohm Posted on August 2, 2016

bird brains

Climate change turns birds into cannibals

By on Aug 2, 2016Share

Could climate change be turning some species into cannibals? No, not humans — not yet, anyway. We’ve already seen polar bears and lobster eat their own kind for sustenance, thanks to melting ice and rising water temperatures.

Now, you can add Washington State’s gull population to that list. In the Pacific Northwest researchers have noticed a disturbing trend: As sea temperatures rise, plankton have dropped into lower, colder waters; fish have followed the plankton down. Gulls, which can no longer find enough food in shallow waters, have turned to eating each other’s chicks.

“It doesn’t seem like a lot, but a one-tenth of a degree change in seawater temperature correlates to a 10 percent increase in (the odds of) cannibalism,” said Jim Hayward, a seabird biologist, according to the Associated Press.

In the past 60 years, the Pacific Ocean has been warming 15 times the rate as any measured in 10,000 years.

If the gulls’ food-scarcity situation doesn’t improve, Hayward worries that “super cannibals” could evolve: A bird adapted to feed exclusively off its own species.

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Climate change turns birds into cannibals

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San Francisco Just Passed the Nation’s Toughest Ban on Styrofoam

by Roma772710492 Posted on June 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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San Franciscans, bid adieu to Styrofoam. On Tuesday, the city unanimously passed an ordinance banning the sale of any product made from polystyrene, the petroleum-based compound that’s molded into disposable dishware, packing materials, and beach toys—among other things. Even though it’s commonly known as Styrofoam, that’s just a name-brand owned by the Dow Chemical Company.

It’s not SF’s first such restriction. In 2007, the city prohibited the use of polystyrene use in all to-go food containers. More than 100 cities, along with Washington, DC, now have similar laws in place. (The first Styrofoam ban was passed in 1988 by the city of Berkeley.) But San Francisco’s new ordinance, part of the city’s goal of “zero waste” by 2020, is the broadest yet. As of January 1, 2017, it will be unlawful to sell polystyrene packing materials (those infuriating foam peanuts, for instance), day-use coolers, trays used in meat and fish packaging, and even foam dock floats and mooring buoys.

Polystyrene’s story begins in the first half of the 20th century, but it didn’t become a staple of our everyday lives until the second half, when world production of plastic resins increased 25 fold. Before long, polystyrene was synonymous with take-out food, barbeque plates, and disposable coffee cups—Americans today still use an estimated 25 billion foam cups each year.

This week’s ban is a victory for environmentalists, who since the late 1970s have been up in arms over polystyrene’s impacts on marine life and waterways. (Recent evidence suggests the resins may be problematic for human health.) Polystyrene breaks down into tiny pieces, easily blown into the sea, where birds and fish often mistake them for food. The nonprofit Agalita Marine Research and Education found that about 44 percent of seabirds have ingested plastic, and 267 species of marine life are affected in various ways by plastic trash. (Witness photographer Chris Jordan’s devastating bird photos.)

While polystyrene is said to never completely break down in landfills, it actually can decompose in the oceans. The stuff eventually sinks, which makes it difficult to know how much of it exists. And polystyrene contributes to the horrifying notion that by 2050, we may have more plastics in the ocean than fish.

Critics of the new ban are quick to point out that polystyrene is recyclable—a judge actually overturned New York City’s ban on to-go containers last year, ruling that the city could make big money recycling the stuff. But while San Francisco residents can bring large pieces of polystyrene to a transfer station free of charge, it rarely gets recycled. The problem, says Robert Reed, a local project manager for Recology, a company that helps cities manage solid waste, is that few people bother to bring in their Styrofoam, and when they do, it’s usually not in good enough condition to be repurposed. (It can be melted down and used as trim or molding for building construction.) “The few buyers who exist demand that the material be very clean,” Reed says in an email. “They don’t even want dust on it.”

The American Chemistry Council, the trade group for chemical makers, opposed the city’s ban, arguing that polystyrene’s light weight results in less carbon emissions when products are transported. The group urged the city to consider the environmental costs of all packaging materials, as polystyrene will likely be replaced with compostable foams. “All packaging leaves an environmental footprint,” Tim Shestek, the council’s senior director, said in a statement.

“Compostables are not the silver bullet,” concedes Samantha Sommer, a project manager with Clean Water Action California, which aims to curb single-use products. Even compostable products, she says, “come from resources; it takes resources to produce, it produces energy and water emissions throughout its life cycle, and then becomes difficult to manage.”

But Styrofoam all the more so.

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San Francisco Just Passed the Nation’s Toughest Ban on Styrofoam

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Will California start drilling deep for water?

by Myrna Posted on June 29, 2016

Stanford scientists find a ‘water windfall’ deep underground; its viability as a resource is problematic, its protection is essential. Source article:  Will California start drilling deep for water? ; ; ;

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Will California start drilling deep for water?

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Why Veganism is the Future

by ForrestWalter Posted on June 14, 2016

Earlier this year scientists celebrated one of the biggest discoveries in physics within the last century. They were elated to discover the first evidence of gravitational waves, which pretty much proved Albert Einsteins last prediction in his theory of relativity was correct. Going down in history as one of the brightest minds to ever have lived and decades later having your work reaffirmed may just be the beginning of his brilliance, however.

There is another prediction Einstein made during his lifeone whose evidence mounts more and more each day: Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. There has yet to be another movement that significantly addressesand even reversesas many of the major health and environmental concerns out there as the vegan movement.


One study that made its rounds earlier this year explored an idealized shift toward plant-based eating and predicted that between 6 and 10 percent of the planets mortality rates and 29 to 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions could be cut if the world went primarily vegan. Luckily, if we consider some recent trends, it seems we are already headed in this direction.

Animal Welfare

When it comes to animal suffering, eating meat, dairy and egg products are the biggest culprits worldwide, hands down. It might feel nice to exercise our outrage about dog and cat abuse we see in the news, but when 70,000,000,000 (yes, thats billion) land animals are slaughtered globally each yearbecause our diet demands itour outrage is severely misplaced.

Mercy for Animals, an animal rights non-profit organization, is known for its undercover investigations exposing the public to what goes on behind carefully concealed slaughterhouse doors. Because of their hard work people have seen the horrors of both business-as-usual practices and horrendous abuse by workers at big names such as Perdue, Tyson, Butterball, Seaboard Foods, Maple Lodge Farms and countless others.

And the public is not liking what its seeing. The power of the documentary has shown how businesses can have the wind knocked out of their sails from customers taking a glance at whats behind the curtain. The explosive momentum of Blackfish and SeaWorlds journey from scoffing denial to announcing its end to orca breeding programs is enough to see how an informed public can create real change. Ringing Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circuses are also feeling the heat from activists and have decided to retire the elephants who have lived in abuse as entertainers (yet, some of the majestic creatures will face a future in cancer research experimentation, so we still have work to do).

The Environment

With climate change becoming harder and harder to denyeven though a few still cling desperately to their snowballs and lack of critical thinkingthe impact of animal agriculture on the planets fate can also no longer be overlooked. One report from earlier this year revealed that some of the top meat and poultry producers, including Tyson and Perdue, have a much larger pollution footprint than Exxon Mobil. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that livestock and their byproducts create 51 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Even if those numbers are too big to fully comprehend, seeing what animal agriculture is doing to our planet with our own eyes can change hearts and minds in an instant.

Our Health

There are tiny awakenings blossoming into bigger and more impactful movements in the health and medical fields, as well. This year the first plant-based medical center opened up in Washington, D.C. and other medical programs are offering residents training to help patients treat chronic health conditions with plant-based eating.

As much as it pained bacon-loving Americans to hear it, processed meat was rightfully demonized as contributing to rising cancer rates by the World Health Organization this yearadding to the knowledge we already have about its relation to heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome and other chronic conditions. And just this month the American Osteopathic Association released a study of 1.5 million people revealing how meat-eating raises mortality rates across the board.

The Future

So, with all this knowledge about the overwhelming impact of animal product production, how much are we really changing? The word vegan has become a household name in recent years as restaurants add it to their menus, grocery stores carry more veg-friendly alternatives and web surfers Google the term more and more.

In fact, vegan meat sales, specifically, are expected to skyrocket over the next few years. The growing success of companies such as Hampton Creek and Beyond Meat (and the anxiety-laden attacks by companies afraid of losing customers) illustrate a shift toward more conscious consumerism. Other countries have also experienced a dramatic shift toward plant-based fare. Germanys vegetarian options have increased 600 percent in the last four years and one-third of Canadians now admit to eating less meat.

A Chatham House survey even found that people are open to the idea of taxing meat to combat its harmful effects on the environment and our health! In a world where mens magazine GQ named a veggie burger its best burger of the year the industries who depend on consumers buying animal products are shaking in their boots. The proliferation of ag-gag laws all over the U.S. show how insecure these industries are feeling. Not only will they advocate the criminalization of recording what goes on behind their closed doors, but industries are also releasing advice on How to Avoid Hiring an Animal Rights Activist. Seriously.

Consumers are already demanding more humane animal products, mostly by looking for labels such as cage-free, pasture-raised, grass-fed, etc. Walmart joined the ranks of Costco, Wendys, Starbucks, Dennys, andMcDonaldsby announcing its eventual switch to cage-free eggs, showing how these humane demands are reaching the mainstream.

What the public will realize in time is what the industry deems humane is far from what we may envision as causing no harm. All of these trends indicate one thing: a shift toward compassion. Rather, it is a shift back toward compassion. As we grow up we are taught that empathy is sweet and admirable if it is through a childs eyes, but weak through an adults.

By choosing foods and products that defy the status quo of violence and destruction we are casting a vote for kindness and conservation. We are reconnecting with the innate sense that all living things deserve a happy life. We are reminded to share with others, to not be mean to others, to clean up after ourselvesthe basic lessons we learn in the most early stages of our lives. Veganism is a return to these ethics. And veganism is most certainly the future.

Photo credits: Thinkstock

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Why Veganism is the Future

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What Do Meat Labels Really Mean?

by RamonitaPalladi Posted on June 5, 2016

If you’re a meat eater and want to get the healthiest, tastiest cuts, how do you know what to buy?

Most labels today carry some kind of certification from the USDA (US Department of Agriculture), which basically acknowledges that the meat came from a facility that is supposed to meet the USDA’s standards for health and safety. But you might see other words on the label as well, such as “natural,” “fed vegetarian feed” or “no hormones or added antibiotics.” Some of these terms are significant, but others are essentially worthless.

Here’s a guide to the most common labels you’ll see on packaged meat and what they mean.

Grain-fed: These words indicate that at some point in its life, the animal was fed grain. The animal may have been raised in a factory-farm type operation or on a small family farm. Grain-fed doesn’t tell you that information. It only indicates that the animal ate corn, soy, brewers grain or another grain-based feed.

Grass-fed: Rather than being cooped up in a barn eating grain, grass-fed cows roam outdoors eating nothing but grass from the time they’re weaned until the time they go to market. The term does not guarantee that the animals weren’t treated with antibiotics nor confined. Grass is closer to the actual native diet of cows than grain, but that in and of itself might not be a reason to buy meat labeled this way.

AGA-Certified Grassfed: This label has some teeth to it. It says that the cows verifiably ate only grass, that they were not confined in a feed lot, and that they’ve never been given antibiotics or hormones. Unlike other grassfed meat, that which is AGA-Certified Grassfed is guaranteed to have been born and raised in the U.S.

Grass Finished: According to American Grassfed, this label is completely meaningless. It does not meet any standards set by the USDA and is used primarily for marketing purposes rather than to indicate superior quality.

Natural: In this context, “natural” does not refer to how the animal was raised, but rather how its meat was processed and packaged. According to the USDA, describing meat as “natural” means that it contains no artificial ingredients or added color and was minimally processed (such as ground into beef or trimmed into steaks). The word natural does not refer to the animal’s diet or how it was raised.

Naturally-raised: An animal that is “naturally raised” was not fed animal byproducts (like ground up parts of other animals), nor was it administered growth hormones or antibiotics. Other than that, the animal could have eaten either grain or grass and could have spent its life outdoors roaming or confined in a factory-type feedlot.

Organic: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has established a set of standards that farmers must meet if they are to label their meat organic. Those include that the animal was given no antibiotics or synthetic hormones, ate a pesticide and herbicide-free vegetarian diet, and was was fed or ate no food that was tainted with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Cows may either be fed organic grain or eat organic grass, and they may be confined rather than allowed to roam free.

Pasture-Raised: This is a term that sounds nice, but like “natural,” means essentially nothing. There’s no federal definition for what pasture-raised means, and not much industry cohesion behind the term either. Any producer can put it on any package at any time.

Certified Humane: This label primarily attests to how animals were treated as they were raised. It says that “Livestock must have access to fresh water and a diet formulated or assessed to maintain full health and promote a positive state of well-being. Feed and water must be distributed in such a way that livestock can eat and drink without undue competition.” It prohibits treatment with hormones and antibioticsother than to selectively treat disease and mandates that feeding and watering troughs be kept clean. This label also requires that calves be able to suckle for 24 hours after they’re born and not be weaned for 6 months after birth.

Of all these labels, the ones that mean the most are Certified Humane, Organic and AGA-Certified Grassfed. Don’t waste your money on “natural” or “pasture-raised” beef.

Related:
Five Myths About Grass-Fed Beef
With These Veggie Burger Ideas, You’ll Never Crave Beef Again

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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What Do Meat Labels Really Mean?

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