Dirty Meat

Frankly, I love meat - but like J.S. Foer, author of Eating Animals said, "When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own." Not only is factory-farmed meat damaging our bodies, but as well as our hydrosphere, biosphere, and our atmosphere. Since the federal government assists factory farmers by subsidizing animal products with our tax dollars, these giant corporations make it their goal to maximize profit while minimizing their costs. The twisted truth inside factory farms is monitored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This government controlled department made factory-farms the standard way of our food system, and decides what goes in the grocery store and is served in schools. I think having someone who wouldn't benefit from deciding what America eats to be in control of our nutritional guidelines, such as National Institutes of Health, would be best for our country.

The distorted truth of how factory-farmed meats effects our personal health is dangerous. Due to added hormones, and the abundant amount of antibiotics used on factory farms, it creates the risk for humans to end up with a chronic disease, obesity, and drug-resistant bacteria. There around about 76 million cases of food-borne illnesses, which were created during factory-farming from contamination. While simple solutions are available, it would increase time and would take profit away from them. Our environmental health is also at risk, in hog factory farms there is almost no waste-treatment infrastructure, which means massive amounts of toxins are released into the environment. The aftermath buried into fields, allow the toxins to run off into waterways, which end up killing off populations of fish.

Issues such as- disposing livestock excrement, health risks, and euthanasia regulations, need to be dealt in our government and should be closely monitored. To summarize, best said on the National Review's website, "...the dairy industry spends more on advertising in one week than the blueberry, mango, watermelon, and mushroom industries spend all together in a year. At a time when we’re being encouraged to enjoy more fruits and vegetables, why does animal-based agriculture get such a disproportionate amount of support from the USDA and Congress?"