Factory Farmed Meat: Fast Food Beef 'Disinfected' with Ammonia

From Natural News.com comes yet another expose on the perils of factory farmed meat. This time, we discover that ammonia is used to 'disinfect' meat scraps from e-coli so they can be sold to fast food joints. Folks, this is more proof of the USDA's rather warped perspective on food safety. (See my other articles on meat by clicking "Meat/Factory Farming" in the labels section of the bottom of the post).

(NaturalNews) If you're in the beef business, what do you do with all the extra cow parts and trimmings that have traditionally been sold off for use in pet food? You scrape them together into a pink mass, inject them with a chemical to kill the e.coli, and sell them to fast food restaurants to make into hamburgers.

That's what's been happening all across the USA with beef sold to McDonald's, Burger King, school lunches and other fast food restaurants, according to a New York Times article. The beef is injected with ammonia, a chemical commonly used in glass cleaning and window cleaning products.

This is all fine with the USDA, which endorses the procedure as a way to make the hamburger beef "safe" enough to eat. Ammonia kills e.coli, you see, and the USDA doesn't seem to be concerned with the fact that people are eating ammonia in their hamburgers.........

Fascinating. So you can inject a beef product with a chemical found in glass cleaning products and simply call it a "processing agent" -- with the full permission and approval of the USDA, no less! Does anyone doubt any longer how deeply embedded the USDA is with the beef industry?

Factory Farmed Meat: You are what {they} eat

I'm listening to Kevin Gianni of Renegade Health interview vegetarian activist and former cattle rancher Howard Lyman on the perils of factory farmed meat.

Next time you are tempted to chow on fast food or buy some cheapo meat at the supermarket, consider what these animals are FED. It's really eye opening and totally disgusting.

Imagine that humans are fed a low cost 'protein powder'. Justification for the powder is that it's cheap and can feed the planet. Now imagine discovering that this powder contains the remains of diseased hospital patients, recycled plastic, hormones, drugs and fecal material from the city sewer system. Makers of the powder claim that it doesn't really matter where the protein came from and that they are doing the world a favor by inventing something that could feed the planet cheaply. They have a powerful lobby in place to keep that protein powder as part of the nation's food supply. People keep buying the protein powder because the company just lists 'protein byproducts' on the label and they can't believe the government would sell them anything that wasn't safe.

You would be disgusted, outraged and violated. Yet, this kind of stuff is routinely fed to the factory farmed livestock who end up on your dinner table.

Note: if you read the article and are as disgusted as I am please know that there are safer alternatives if you still want to eat some meat and cheese. Chemfree/organic grassfed products are the safest bet and support small local farmers. In Ohio you can find great products like Heini's Cheese, Hartzler Dairy, Snowville Creamery and other small, local operations. Many of these can be found in health or gourmet oriented stores and at local farmers markets.

Material below quoted or paraphrased from a Union of Concerned Scientists Article

Same Species Meat
Although cows technically can't be fed cows due to mad cow disease it still creeps in. It's perfectly legal to feed dead animals to livestock, (whom God created to be herbivores).

Diseased Animals
Including roadkill, dead deer and your euthanized pets left at medical clinics, and 'downer' animals too sick to stand on their own. Yep, even if Fido had cancer and was pumped full of meds, his body can legally be dumped right back into the nation's food supply.

Feathers, Hair, Skin, Hooves, and Blood
"Rendered feathers, hair, skin, hooves, blood, and intestines can also be found in feed, often under catch-all categories like 'animal protein products.'" Blood is a major carrier of disease. Even back in the Old Testament, Jewish law required the blood to be drained from the flesh of any ritually slaughtered animal. Guess they had more sense back then.

Manure and Other Animal Waste
"Feed for any food animal can contain cattle manure, swine waste, and poultry litter. This waste may contain drugs such as antibiotics and hormones that have passed unchanged through the animals' bodies.

The poultry litter that is fed to cattle contains rendered cattle parts in the form of digested poultry feed and spilled poultry feed. This is another loophole that may allow mad cow agents to infect healthy cattle."

Plastics
"Many animals need roughage to move food through their digestive systems. But instead of using plant-based roughage, animal factories often turn to pellets made from plastics to compensate for the lack of natural fiber in the factory feed." My comment: this is like cheaping out and feeding your Grandmother plastic pellets instead of Metamucil.

Drugs and Chemicals
"...Animals at animal factories often receive antibiotics to promote faster growth and to compensate for crowded, stressful, and unsanitary living conditions. An estimated 13.5 million pounds of antibiotics—the same classes of antibiotics used in human medicine—are routinely added to animal feed or water. This routine, nontherapeutic use of antibiotics speeds the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which can infect humans as well as animals. Antibiotic resistance is a pressing public health problem that costs the U.S. economy billions of dollars each year.

Some of the antimicrobials used to control parasites and promote growth in poultry contain arsenic, a known human carcinogen. Arsenic can be found in meat or can contaminate human water supplies through runoff from factory farms."

Unhealthy Amounts of Grains
"While grain may sound like a healthful food, the excessive quantities fed to some animals are not. This is especially true for cattle, which are natural grass eaters. Their digestive systems are not designed to handle the large amounts of corn they receive at feedlots. As a result of this corn-rich diet, feedlot cattle can suffer significant health problems, including excessively acidic digestive systems and liver abscesses. Grain-induced health problems, in turn, ramp up the need for drugs."

Resources
Eat Wild: Organic Grassfed Meat (essay on byproducts fed to factory farmed livestock
This is a great site because it allows you to find local sources of organic grassfed meat. Cows and sheep were designed to be herbivores so organic grass fed livestock is as close to nature as you can get. Because the animals are out grazing in the pasture they are also able to enjoy their natural God given environment.

Technical Article on animal byproducts and other nasties in feed

American Grassfed Association

S.O.L.E. Food and Ethical Values

Interesting article here about one family's attempts to eat conscientiously on the cheap:

SOLE Food: Eating Organically and Responsibly on a Food Stamp Budget

For the past three years, following the typical Michael Pollan-fueled, now-I've-seen-the-locavore-light conversion experience, I've been trying hard to feed my family good food. It's more difficult than it sounds; the supermarkets are full of tempting, affordable foodlike products that ultimately owe more to industry than agriculture, once you start reading the labels. It took me an embarrassingly long while to figure out that buying foods so basic that they don't have a label is the key.

I found myself shopping less and less at the grocery store and instead buying directly from the farmers who actually produce the food, sometimes at the farmers market, sometimes at the farms themselves. Thus it is always local and usually also organic--in practice, if not formal certification--and, helpfully, affordable. I tracked down these farmers, and know about the food I'm buying, because I'm interested and I ask. In doing this I am, as Pollan urges, voting for systemic change with my food dollars, though in my case that's sort of a side bonus. This kind of conscious buying has come to be known as SOLE food, for Sustainable, Organic, Local, and Ethical.

In case you've been living under a culinary and environmental blackout for the past couple years, here's why SOLE food is worth investing in: Our current meat-centric diet, with its reliance on highly processed fats, refined grains, and industrial inventions like high-fructose corn syrup, is literally killing us. This diet is the main reason why one of every three adult Americans is now overweight, and obesity--which parties with its morbid pals diabetes, cardiac disease, and high blood pressure--is drowning ever more of us every year. (A study in the January 2008 issue of the International Journal of Obesity estimates that, if current trends continue, 86.3 percent of Americans will be overweight or obese by the year 2030.)

Handing over our nation's nourishment to agribusiness companies that earn more from processing the food than by growing it is not only making us fatter and sicker, it's also degrading the environment. Monocultures of corn, wheat, and soybeans can thrive only on massive inputs of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, the manufacture of which requires massive amounts of fossil fuel. Once applied, these chemicals don't go away--the ones we don't consume directly in our food aggregate in our soil and water supply along with the antibiotics and hormones used in factory-farmed livestock production. Meanwhile, the industries doing this to us receive billions of dollars each year in taxpayer subsidies.

I couldn't have said it better.

Unfortunately the author, who tried to eat according to S.O.L.E. principles on a foodstamp budget, received some downright ugly comments, insinuating that she was an elitist yuppie playing poor.

Sorry, but I don't buy it. Because eating ethically is an investment and a sacrifice. And when it comes to sacrificing our vices for the sake of health, most of us aren't willing to make hard choices.

It hit me hard reading an article about Snowville Creamery, a local dairy offering minimally processed milk. They treat their cows well. They do everything right. Their milk costs $3 for 1/2 gallon.

But it wasnt' the article but one of the online comments that really made me think - this individual noted that many of the individuals criticizing the notion of spending that much for milk wouldn't think twice about plunking down the same amount of cash for a Red Bull.

Bingo.

When it comes to our vices and addictions, even the most financially strapped among us seems to open our wallet and roll out the red carpet. I have a friend who cites her husband's semi-employment as a reason she can't eat healthy. But I've had to point out to her that I've seen her plunk down over ten bucks on a fast food meal just because she wanted it. Being on foodstamps doesn't stop many people from smoking cigarettes, eating at McDonalds or getting cable TV. In other words, we all have financial blind spots that we can use as excuses to cheap out on healthy choices.

Eating ethically is about more than nutrition. It's about investing your financial resources in individuals and small businesses who are struggling to make a difference. Places like Snowville Creamery. As opposed to some giant agri-dairy that sells to Wal Mart, mistreats its cows and pumps them full of bovine growth hormone.  You have to wonder if that extra $1.50 is such a big deal, especially when there's other stuff that can be sacrificed like cans of soda or a movie rental at Blockbuster. It's all about choices.

So check out the sidebar (I've got a ton of links for local Columbus resources). Check out a farmer's market or a local food coop. Do something. You'll be pleasantly surprised at the positive connections you'll start making. Knowing your grocery money went to a good cause that keeps you healthy is a really wonderful feeling :)

Evil Food Additives: MSG

There are so many evil food additives. What I am getting from reading is that much of what passes for 'food' in the grocery store is a bunch of cheap junk like corn and soy (genetically modified) with a ton of chemicals thrown in. Then they put in some vitamins, fiber or whatnot and make some kind of health claim.

Ask youself when reading a label, is this ingredient something God created? If man created it through some complex chemistry chances are you are wasting your money and endangering your health.

The problem with foods God created is that they simply aren't all that sexy or profitable. Much of what passes for food in the grocery is cleverly packaged pseudofood designed to titillate the tastebuds and get the consumer addicted.

I could rant forever but I wanted to focus on MSG - Monosodium Glutamate - it's an excitotoxin found in many products. It amps up you taste buds making you want to eat more and more. Unfortunately it's often disguised with other names, a lot of which can be found in health store products.

MSG is an excitoxin - a fancy word for something that kills brain cells - check this out:

Like aspartame, MSG is an excitotoxin, a substance that overexcites neurons to the point of cell damage and, eventually, cell death. Humans lack a blood-brain barrier in the hypothalamus, which allows excitotoxins to enter the brain and cause damage, according to Dr. Russell L. Blaylock in his book Excitotoxins. According to animal studies, MSG creates a lesion in the hypothalamus that correlates with abnormal development, including obesity, short stature and sexual reproduction problems.


OK, there's the problem - MSG is squirreled away in practically all processed foods and disguised under various labels, some of which sound perfectly harmless. You have to get knowlegeable and recognize hidden sources of MSG.
Truth in Labeling - Hidden Sources of MSG
 
Glutamate
Glutamic acid
Gelatin

Monosodium glutamate
Calcium caseinate
Textured protein
Monopotassium glutamate
Sodium caseinate
Yeast nutrient
Yeast extract
Yeast food
 Autolyzed yeast

Hydrolyzed protein (any protein that is hydrolyzed)
Hydrolyzed corn gluten
Natrium glutamate (natrium is Latin/German for sodium)

Food and Hormonal Balance

I never realized food, water and skincare products have a major impact on hormones. The first clue I got was from reading Gillian Michael's book Master Your Metabolism. She outlines all sorts of foods that affect different hormones and in particular emphasizes the destructive effects of chemically laden processed foods. There's also a bit about skincare products and plastics in the book.

She mentioned this awesome site - Skin Deep - this is a free site that rates the contents of various bodycare and cosmetics products. Every ingredient is listed along w/a safety rating - really eye opening as most beauty care products you see on the shelves rate pretty poorly. I started getting rid of a lot of off the shelve products after reading this. I mean who really needs it anyway? I mean a lot of the stuff we buy is just stuff we are conditioned to think we need. Skincare products are full of questionable chemicals and this stuff is being absorbed right into your skin. I found out that natural stuff like sesame oil or coconut oil works great as a moisturizer. Also stuff like Tom's of Maine deodorant which doesn't have aluminum and other harmful chemicals.

Kevin Gianni of Renegade Health has a nice article by Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo on balancing hormones naturally...one thing she mentioned was plastics. Apparently plastics can contain an estrogen-like material that can mess w/your hormones:

Avoid plastic drinking and food containers. These contain what’s known as
xenoestrogens, which are estrogen look alikes that bind to estrogen receptors.
Xenoestrogens can cause endometriosis, ovarian cysts, breast cancer and fetal
abnormalities. Other sources of xenoestrogens are detergents, some skin lotions
and soaps, commercially raised meat and dairy, spermicides, and herbicides. The
xenoestrogens leach from the plastic food containers into the food or water.
Heat increases the amount of xenoestrogen that gets into the food or water. Use
ceramic or glass as much as possible, NEVER heat anything in a plastic
container,and use only pure, chemical free body and home care products.

BTW, if you still think soy is a superfood, think again. Apparently soy contains estrogen like substances as well. They are putting soy in almost everything these days, much of which is genetically modified. From what I have read, Asians use mostly small amounts of fermented soy like Miso, tempeh, etc. because the fermentation. Here's a site w/a short video that goes into some of this information.