Factory Farms | Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health

Will Congress Protect Your Right to Know Where Your Meat Comes From?

Tue, 19 May 2015 17:24:23 +0000

The World Trade Organization wants to keep us in the dark. And what exactly is inside the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement? Action Alert!
The United States currently has had a mandatory country-of-origin labeling (COOL) law in place since 2009. It requires meat to be labeled to indicate where it was born, raised, and processed—even when the meat is exported. Seafood labeling has been covered since 2005.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) previously ruled that this law unfairly discriminates against meat from Canada and Mexico and is an infringement upon international trade obligations, and now an appellate panel has upheld the WTO rulings. As a result, Canadian and Mexican officials could take retaliatory measures against US exports to cover what they argue are billions of dollars in lost revenue as a result of the food label. To forestall this, Congress may cave and rewrite our law.
Some Republicans in Congress have indicated a readiness to amend or repeal the law to avoid a trade war with Canada and Mexico. The top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, Collin Peterson (D-MN), said he would oppose a repeal of the law. Two of the largest trade groups for beef and pork issued statements urging Congress to act swiftly to amend or repeal COOL before economic retaliation from Canada and Mexico begins.
The COOL law, like mandatory GMO labeling, is popular with the public. One poll found that 92 percent of Americans support COOL. Any decision to alter or remove COOL is to surrender to large industrial pork and beef producers in the US, Canada, and Mexico.
Perhaps even more troubling is the precedent this ruling sets. If the WTO can override our law, couldn’t it act similarly against other country-of-origin laws, and then against any future GMO labeling laws? From there it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for WTO to be telling us what can be on other food labels—or even supplement labels.
The WTO is hardly a democratic institution, either: WTO dispute panels consist of three trade bureaucrats who meet in secret, do not take any input from the public, and are not screened for conflicts of interest.
This isn’t the first time the WTO has made a ruling that undermines consumers. In 1997, the WTO ruled that a European Union (EU) ban on US beef treated with hormones was illegal. Because of that ruling, the US was allowed to slap high retaliatory tariffs on a number of European exports like pork, cheese, chocolate, jams, and fresh truffles, which cost the EU $250 million annually until an agreement was reached in 2011.
This also isn’t the first time that meat industry trade groups have tried to keep consumers in the dark. As we’ve pointed out previously, until 2007, it was illegal for private beef producers to test their own cows for mad cow disease. Larger meat companies feared that if smaller companies tested their meat and could advertise it as safe from mad cow disease, they would be forced to test all of their cows—so they persuaded the USDA to block individual producers from doing the test, until a federal judge stopped this in 2007.
The bottom line is this: consumers should have access to health and safety information about their food so they can make informed choices about what to feed their families. Congress should preserve COOL and not let the WTO eliminate laws made in the public interest.
This story further illustrates how carefully we need to scrutinize the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), when and if the language is released. So far, even members of Congress have been able to see it only in secure rooms, with staff present, and without being able to take any notes! There are rumors that the agreement could shift sovereign decisions about many things—not just labeling—to organizations like the WTO, but nobody knows for sure yet. President Obama should be ashamed about keeping the American public in the dark about this.
Action Alert! Please write your legislators in Congress and urge them NOT to repeal COOL, which gives consumers important information about their food. Also indicate your concern about the secrecy surrounding the TPP. Please take action immediately.

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The Topsy-Turvy Logic of America’s Food Cops

Tue, 17 Sep 2013 20:00:18 +0000

Mass-produced CAFO food is becoming more dangerous than ever, yet US authorities seem obsessed with destroying small farmers and distributors of raw and organic foods.

The USDA has ended a ban on Chinese chicken imports to the US by authorizing four Chinese plants to process chickens that were slaughtered elsewhere. There will be no USDA inspectors on hand at the plants to verify the origin of the slaughtered chickens or to enforce US standards. There is no labeling requirement, so consumers in the US will have no way to know which chicken products were processed (that is, cooked) in China or what their origins were.

China has a terrible track record for food safety. Bloomberg News reports:

China has earned a reputation as one of the world’s worst food-safety offenders. In just the last year, consumers have been confronted with a bird flu outbreak, news of sales of 46-year-old chicken feet, and reports of poisonous fake mutton. These are not isolated incidents, but rather the most spectacular instances of a crisis that has become so severe that some consumers now smuggle quantities of infant milk formula from foreign countries into China.

Introducing unlabeled Chinese cooked chickens will just make a bad situation in the US worse. We reported in July that USDA has proposed new poultry regulations to speed up line speeds and reduce the number of federal inspectors by 40%, relying more on inspectors paid by the poultry producers, and in particular allowing the use of more, stronger, and dangerous chemicals to sanitize the filthy birds that have lived in overcrowded squalor.

The USDA now plans to roll out similar regulations for pork plants nationwide, despite the fact that plants using the new system have failed to stop the production of contaminated meat. Five US pork plants have been using the new USDA program for a decade; three of the five are among the worst offenders in the nation for health and safety violations. Plants in Canada and Australia using the new program have also been plagued with recalls and tainted meat.

Nor can you guarantee a safe meal by getting a steak instead of a pork chop. Large numbers of cattle in the US are fed dangerous fattening drugs that are banned in most other countries: beta-agonists, which can put twenty to thirty-four pounds on cattle just prior to slaughter. Eli Lilly sells Optaflexx and Merck sells Zilmax, which Merck claims is used on 70% of the cattle slaughtered in the US.

Merck announced last month that it is suspending sales of Zilmax while it conducts a new study of the effects on cattle. This may be in response to the largest US meat processor, Tyson Foods, announcing that it will no longer be buying any cattle fed Zilmax, due to health problems. The most common problem is that cattle are rendered unable to walk. As the Wall Street Journal reported, the drugs have taken away one of the feed-lot operators’ key bargaining chips: the ability to time when they send cattle to the packing plant to get the best price. “Now, you only have so many days after an animal has been fed [a beta-agonist] before it’s got to go to slaughter or it becomes so lame it can’t move,” said a cattle producer in Colorado.

Ractopamine, the beta-agonist in Eli Lily’s Optaflexx, is banned in Russia and China, so the US cannot export pork to either country, nor beef to Russia. Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest hog farmer and pork processor, has dedicated half of their slaughter capacity to processing hogs that have never been fed ractopamine so they can meet the demands of exporters.

Americans are eating meat that is increasingly contaminated and full of drugs that have been banned in other countries. Meanwhile, US authorities are more concerned about the so-called “dangers” posed by raw milk and organic produce. A small organic farm in Texas was raided last month by a SWAT team in search of marijuana plants, which they did not find. In an armed raid that lasted ten hours and included aerial surveillance by helicopters, the police seized seventeen organic blackberry bushes, fifteen okra plants, fourteen tomatillo plants, as well as native grasses and sunflowers—after holding residents inside at gunpoint for at least a half-hour! The only person arrested was someone on the property with outstanding traffic violations.

We reported in August 2011 about the armed raid of raw food co-op Rawesome Foods in Venice, California. This was no small-town police action, but a joint raid by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, the FDA, the Department of Agriculture, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rawesome was charged with selling unpasteurized dairy without a proper license, even though Rawesome does not sell to the public but only acts as a distributor for co-op owners, so no license is necessary. Despite there being no evidence whatsoever of contamination, 800 gallons of raw organic milk were poured down the drain, and $70,000 worth of raw organic food was seized.

In Wisconsin, raw milk farmer Vernon Hershberger was raided and accused of committing “dairy crimes” for distributing raw organic milk to a small group of people who were members of a private buying club (much like the Rawesome Foods co-op).

And you may recall our article last month about the war on small farmers. Small farms, and especially raw and organic farms, produce the highest-quality food in America. Yet US authorities seem intent on destroying them through regulation, paperwork, fees, and raids while turning a blind eye on poor meat safety inspections and the drugging of livestock with toxic pharmaceuticals.

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Disappearing Honeybees? That’s Easy—Factory Farm Them!

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 16:30:45 +0000

Instead of getting rid of the pesticides that are killing the bees, the ag industry wants to create a big new market for high-fructose corn syrup. Action Alert!

Since 2006, up to 40% of the bee colonies in the US have suffered Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in which honeybees die, disoriented, far from their hives. The honeybee pollinates a third of all the food we eat and contributes an estimated $15 billion in annual agriculture revenue to the US economy alone. Fresh fruits and vegetables, in particular, would simply not exist without honeybees.

As we reported in April, a study by the European Food Safety Authority has definitively linked CCD to neonicotinoid pesticides. At least 143 million of the 442 million acres—that is, nearly one-third—of US cropland is planted with crops treated with these neuroactive insecticides, which are related to nicotine and are highly toxic to bees. In the US, 100% of corn and canola is treated with neonicotinoids, as well as 65% of soybeans and almost all cotton, wheat, and smaller acreage crops. The pesticide expresses itself through the plants’ pollen and nectar—the honeybee’s favorite sources of food.

A recent Time magazine article notes a number of potential reasons for CCD, including deadly bacteria and viruses—but nearly all researchers agree that the main culprits are general chemical exposure and pesticides (neonicotinoids in particular). A study of honeybee pollen found nine different pesticides and fungicides in it on average.

Unfortunately, the agriculture industry doesn’t want their profitable pesticides tampered with: there are over 1,200 pesticides currently in use in the US, and many are made by the same companies that engineer the crop seeds. So instead, Big Farma has begun creating CAFO-like conditions for bees! It’s already happening on a small scale; many argue that it may be the only alternative if we don’t reign in the pesticides. “Bees may end up managed like cattle, pigs and chicken, where we put them in confinement and bring the food to them,” said one beekeeper and independent researcher quoted in the Time article. “You…do feedlot beekeeping.”

In these factory farm hives, commercial beekeepers have already begun to feed bees with sugar and high-fructose corn syrup rather than (or in addition to) honey made in the usual way. Some scientists worry that replacing honey with sugar or corn syrup will leave bees less capable of fighting off infections. We think the reality is even worse: the sugar will come from GMO sugar beets, and the HFCS from GMO corn. These, of course, could affect the health of the bees in the long run nearly as much as the pesticides do! You may recall the studies of GMO grains on small mammals in which the offspring became sterile by the third generation. What if all the bees were to suddenly stop reproducing?

Monsanto is working on other GMO “fixes” for CCD as well: they’re developing RNA-interference technology that will kill one of the viruses thought to be killing the bees, the Varroa mite, by interfering with the way the bees’ genes are expressed. In addition, scientists at Harvard are experimenting with tiny “robobees” that might one day be sent out to pollinate—though even if technologically possible, it’s hard to see how this would ever be economically feasible. Besides that, we just don’t know that much; there will always be unintended consequences.

Despite heavy lobbying by Bayer and Sygenta, the European Commission has decided to put a two-year restriction on some neonicotinoids while it gathers safety data. In stark contrast, the US Environmental Protection Agency, heedless of the scientific evidence, released a report on CCD in which pesticides were not even mentioned as a potential cause! In 2011, the agency said it would review Bayer’s neonicontinoid pesticide—a review that still hasn’t been completed.

Recently, however, EPA announced that manufacturers of neonicotinoids must include a label to warn users of the risk to bees and recommend they restrict its use under certain conditions. In other words, while EPA is finally acknowledging that the pesticide can kill honeybees, the agency isn’t suspending or banning its use. Instead, they’re letting manufacturers off the hook by requiring only the barest minimum—labeling.

Action Alert! A new bill, HR 2692, “The Saving America’s Pollinators Act of 2013,” has been introduced in the House by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). It would suspend the use of neonicotinoids until the EPA can prove that the insecticide “will not cause unreasonable adverse effects on pollinators” (a term that includes native bees, honeybees, birds, bats, and other species of beneficial insects). This proof of safety would need to be in the form of published scientific research together with a completed field study. Please contact your representative and urge his or her support of HR 2692. Take action immediately!

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Is the FDA Trying to Destroy the Pastured Egg Industry?

Tue, 13 Aug 2013 19:00:15 +0000

Recent guidance from the FDA will place an impossible burden on farmers who raise true free-range chickens. Action Alert!

The guidance, released last month for farms that have more than 3,000 egg-laying chickens, purportedly aims to prevent salmonella and other foodborne illnesses by isolating chickens from cats, rats, flies, and wild birds—even though no evidence exists showing them to be of significant risk at spreading salmonella. A 2010 article in the Atlantic Monthly stated that all but one outbreak of foodborne illness in the US since 1995 originated at industrial factory farms.

The FDA guidance suggests that farmers must cover their outdoor pastures with either roofing or netting, or use noise cannons to scare away wild birds. Perhaps it has escaped FDA that noise cannons would also scare the chickens? Or that putting a roof over a multi-acre pasture is not only cost-prohibitive, but would prevent rain and sun from reaching the living things in the pasture? FDA also advocates walls around the pasture, to prevent mice, rats, and cats from entering, and then put a roof over it. That’s right—walls and roofing. In other words, they want the chickens to be kept in a building! This completely contradicts what “free-range” is supposed to be about: they can be cage-free, but not outdoors.

The problem, of course, is that FDA is describing the commonplace practice where farmers house their birds inside, giving them access to tiny porches that only 1% to 3% of the chickens can use at a time—if there are any porches. Although eggs labeled “organic” must allow birds outdoor access, these small porches qualify as outdoor access, according to the USDA. Sadly, this is the industry standard free-range hens; the standards for “cage-free” are even less demanding.

“Free-range” in USDA-speak certainly does not mean “pastured.” There is a world of difference between an indoor hen that eats feed and never sees the sun, and an outdoor hen that finds part of its own dinner by scratching in the dirt for bugs and worms.

Pastured eggs are more nutritious. In addition, the Pew Commission has concluded that industrial-scale animal production poses “unacceptable” risks to public health and the environment, while subjecting billions of animals to “severe distress.” Their report states:

Food safety is linked to the health of the animals that produce the meat, dairy and egg products that we eat. In fact, scientists have found modern intensive confinement production systems can be stressful for food animals, and that stress can increase pathogen shedding in animals.

In addition, researchers reported that workers at Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are more likely to harbor multi-drug-resistant MRSA in their noses than workers at antibiotic-free, free-range farms.

An example of the public health risk posed by industrial scale farms is the recent outbreak of the rare foodborne illness cyclospora. Since late June, 466 people in fifteen states have taken ill. The FDA announced on August 2 that the illnesses in Iowa and Nebraska were linked to bagged salads from a Mexican subsidiary of Taylor Farms, which were sold to Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants. Many experts believe that the infections in the other thirteen states must also come from Taylor Farms, since cyclospora is rare in the US. Most of the 1,100 annual cases of cyclospora in the US afflict US residents returning from overseas.

Not only are industrial scale farms less healthy for workers, consumers, and the local environment, but the mass production of food that is widely distributed makes it very difficult to trace the cause of foodborne illnesses, as food may change hands many times between the farm and the dinner table. In the case of the cyclospora epidemic, investigators still don’t know the cause of the illness in thirteen states, and the investigation may “take months.”

The New Zealand dollar dropped after the world’s largest dairy exporter, New Zealand-based Fonterra, reported on August 3 that it had shipped products contaminated with botulism. The dairy products were exported to Australia, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia in sport drinks and infant formula. If left untreated, 60% of botulism cases are fatal.

The organic, locally grown model that ANH-USA advocates does not pose these problems.

Despite the evidence that CAFO farms make outbreaks of foodborne illnesses inevitable, there is no move to limit or reform them. Instead, as we recently reported, the USDA is proposing an “overhaul” that would reduce the number of inspectors by 40%, process more chickens in less time, and use more and stronger chemicals to wash filthy chickens who lived in too-crowded conditions with thousands of other birds.

The USDA is now reviewing research that indicates that these new and stronger chemicals are actually masking the presence of salmonella, essentially outwitting the testing process. Although USDA records show that salmonella rates in tested chickens have dropped by half, the number of consumers sickened by salmonella has remained the same. And poultry inspectors have reported suffering from asthma, severe respiratory problems, burns, rashes, irritated eyes, and sinus problems, in reaction to the new chemicals.

The new guidance from FDA about “free-range” chickens and the new regulations proposed by the USDA, however absurd, come as no great surprise. It fits the pattern we told you about last week—that the government is waging war on small farmers, in direct violation of the intent of the Tester-Hagan amendment that Congress passed just three years ago.
Action Alert! The FDA is accepting comments on its proposed guidance on the prevention of salmonella in eggs. Write to the agency today and explain that their proposed food safety measures are making unwarranted assumptions about the way egg-producing chickens should be kept, and for organic farmers to follow these guidelines would mean reversing all the benefits their methods provide. Show them that the threat is not from small organic chicken farms, but from filthy industrial CAFOs. Please write to the FDA today!

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Ag-Gag Bills: Proof Your Activism Brings Results!

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 18:00:03 +0000

The fight isn’t over yet. Some states want to ban filming of factory farm abuses—and fracking operations as well! Action Alerts!

As we reported last February, nine “Ag-Gag bills”—that is, bills that suppress freedom of speech when it comes to exposing the abuses at factory farms—have been introduced in 2013, more than in any previous year. Thanks to your activism, none of them became law. Bills have been defeated in Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Wyoming, California, Vermont, and Tennessee. (In Tennessee, the law passed the state House and Senate, but the governor vetoed it!) This is proof that the messages you send to your legislators have a profound impact on which bills become law—and which do not.
Happily, Ag-Gag bills are attracting a great deal of media attention—much of it either well-placed outrage at the laws, or, as with the Daily Show, a good dose of satire.
Currently, dangerous Ag-Gag bills are pending in two states:

In North Carolina, SB 648 targets “fraud” in job applications (i.e., undercover journalists who pose as employees), and imposes up to $50,000 in fines. The bill would make it mandatory to turn any recording over to authorities within twenty-four hours, and bans photography at any place of employment! It should be noted that North Carolina is no stranger to animal cruelty. In 2011, a two-week investigation into a Butterball turkey farm revealed major animal abuses. Police raided the facility and charged five workers with criminal animal cruelty. A state Department of Agriculture official was convicted of obstruction of justice in the case.
In Pennsylvania, HB 683 would ban the recording of agricultural operations, posting any such recording on the Internet or sending it via any other medium, obtaining access to an agricultural operation under false pretenses, obtaining employment with the intention of recording agricultural operations, or trespassing on such operations.

Especially disturbing is the fact that the Pennsylvania bill, if the language is interpreted broadly, could prevent filming of fracking operations. Most fracking—that is, hydraulic fracturing, a method of natural gas extraction employed in deep natural gas well drilling—occurs on leased farmland. According to the language of the bill, anything that takes place on that land would be similarly protected.
This broad interpretation may not be far-fetched. Pennsylvania does a great deal of fracking, and former governor Ed Rendell now works as a consultant to a private equity firm that is heavily invested in the natural gas industry.
As we’ve noted previously, fracking causes toxic chemicals to be released into the air and water, causing widespread pollution. Scientists have identified volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, which even in low levels can cause drowsiness, dizziness, rapid heart rate, headaches, tremors, confusion, and unconsciousness, and in high concentrations can cause leukemia and death. The water is also often laden with barium, which is found in underground ore deposits and can cause high blood pressure, breathing difficulties, muscle weakness, swelling of the brain, and kidney damage; radium, a naturally occurring radioactive (and carcinogenic) substance; and strontium, which is necessary in trace amounts for bone development, but in too large amounts can disrupt it and cause cancer.
Unfortunately, in previous legislative sessions, Ag-Gag bills became law in Iowa, Missouri, and Utah. In Utah, the first Ag-Gag charges have already been brought against a whistleblower, though prosecutors decided to drop the charges—this time. With this new law on the books, it will almost certainly be enforced in the future.
As we noted in February, CAFOs, or Confined Animal Feeding Operations, are responsible for foodborne illnesses such as salmonella and listeria; are notorious for their use of antibiotics for nontherapeutic uses, and for exacerbating the “superbug” problem in which organisms become increasingly resistant to antibiotics; and ruin rural economies. In addition, there is the inhumane treatment of the animals themselves. Ag-Gag laws prevent consumers from making truly informed choices about what they eat.
Action Alert! If you live in North Carolina or Pennsylvania, please contact your legislators immediately and urge them to vote NO on these dangerous Ag-Gag bills!
North Carolina Action Alert!
Pennsylvania Action Alert!

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How Safe is Our Food?

Tue, 08 May 2012 18:17:20 +0000

More and more countries are banning imports of American food products for safety reasons.
Last week, Indonesia became the first country to halt imports of US beef following the discovery of an American dairy cow infected with mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The disease is fatal to cows and can cause a deadly brain disease in people who eat tainted beef.
“We will lift the ban as soon as the US can assure us its dairy cows are free of mad cow disease,” said Rusman Heriawan, Indonesia’s vice agriculture minister. “It could be one month or one year. It depends on how long it takes to resolve this case.”
One would think the US government would immediately test beef to make sure it’s safe. But the USDA, which regulates the test, administers it to less than 1% of slaughtered cows. Worse, until 2007 it was illegal for private beef producers to test their own cows for the disease! Larger meat companies feared that if smaller producers tested their meat and advertised it as safe from mad cow disease, they too might be forced to test all their cows—so they persuaded USDA to block individual producers from doing the test. In 2007 a federal judge said this practice could no longer stand.
The highest risk occurs if animals or humans eat infected brain or nerve tissue. Meat unconnected to bone, milk, and hooves are supposed to be safe, but who knows for sure? The ultimate source of mad cow, of course, is the filthy and disease-ridden (not to mention inhumane) conditions in CAFOs, or concentrated animal feedlot operations.
In February, Taiwan began refusing meat products from the US because they contain ractopamine, a leanness- and growth-promoting drug used widely in pork and beef production in the United States. Taiwan has a zero-tolerance policy for the drug.
Ractopamine is banned in 160 nations including Europe because it is responsible for hyperactivity and muscle breakdown in pigs, and a 10% increase in their mortality rate. It was banned in China after more than 1700 people were “poisoned” from eating American pigs that had been given ractopamine. The drug bears the warning label, “Not for use in humans. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask’’—yet somehow it is considered safe in human food. How is this possible?
Most of the world’s developed countries ban, or have at least placed limits on, genetically modified organisms. The European Union and its member states, as well as Switzerland, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Brazil, and Paraguay all have restrictions or outright bans on the use or importation of genetically engineered seeds, plants, or foods. A detailed map with the specific products banned in Europe is available here.
This is one reason the California Right to Know 2012 Ballot Initiative is so important. If California requires labeling products containing GMOs, it will be difficult for most manufacturers to create separate labels for their products sold in other states, so the labeling will become national. This is why we are trying to help the Right to Know Campaign raise one million dollars to drop a “money bomb” on Monsanto—to combat the anti-GMO propaganda and get this proposition passed in November. If you haven’t done so already, please make a donation to the Right to Know Campaign—and please give generously!

Click here to donate today!

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Flawed Red Meat Study: You Are What Your Food Ate

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:56:37 +0000

Are beef eaters doomed to an early death?
A recent Harvard study, accompanied by some unduly alarmist articles in the press, found that the consumption of red meat is associated with higher mortality rates from cardiovascular disease and cancer. The study recommends substituting “healthy” protein sources such as fish, poultry, nuts, and legumes to reduce mortality.
We see a number of big problems with this study.
First, the study was conducted over a very long period of time (28 years for women, 22 years for men) by sending out food questionnaires every four years. Self-reporting, much less every four years, is not a reliable method of data gathering.
Second, and even more importantly, the study did not differentiate between organic, grass-fed beef, and non-organic, CAFO-raised beef. As Dr. Joseph Mercola points out, the nutritive value of the each is very different!
Because of the conditions and the grain-based feed used in factory farms, conventional beef may contain over twenty times the amount of omega-6 fatty acids (associated with arthritis, chronic inflammation, and cancer) than healthful omega-3 fatty acids (which help blood circulation, reduce inflammation, and strengthen the heart). By contrast, grass-fed beef typically has nearly seven times more omega-3s than omega-6s.
In fact, eating moderate amounts of grass-fed beef for even four weeks will give you healthier levels of essential fats, according to a 2011 study in the British Journal of Nutrition. Healthy volunteers who ate grass-fed meat increased their blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids and decreased their level of pro-inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids.
Grass-fed beef is far healthier than grain-fed beef for a number of reasons. For example, it has four times the amount of complete complex vitamin E than grain-fed beef. Complete complex vitamin E deficiencies have been linked with diabetes, immune disorders, Parkinson’s disease, eye diseases, and lung and liver diseases, so eating grass-fed beef would help prevent that deficiency. And this is just one factor among many. Grass-fed beef is lower in total fat, higher in beta-carotene, thiamin, riboflavin, calcium, magnesium, and potassium, and higher in CLA, a potential cancer fighter.
To make no distinction between grass-fed and grain-fed beef in the study is just absurd. But it is not unusual. Indeed, the whole thrust of USDA policy is to treat all farm commodities as identical and to deny any differences. Not surprisingly, this also reflects the views and wishes of major food producers who do not want competition from differentiated products and who look to government to outlaw claims of differences or even outlaw pricing differences.
When we write about “grain-fed beef,” please understand that this is shorthand. One of the feedlot practices involves feeding cattle grain that has been laced with chicken litter, cattle blood, and restaurant leftovers—to boost the nutritive content. In the UK and Canada, the feed may be laced with meat and bone meal, blood meal, and meat scraps, and this proved to be the vector for mad cow disease: it comes from eating brain and other nerve tissues of already-infected animals.
So far as we know, mad cow disease is not yet a widespread problem in US, but we wouldn’t count on the USDA to find it. And the disease is propagated through the very same feed practices that our CAFOs currently use. As John Stauber, co-author of Mad Cow USA, notes, “The entire US policy is designed to protect the livestock industry’s access to slaughterhouse waste as cheap feed.”
In short, if you eat meat, you’re not what you eat—you are what your food ate!
A third problem with the study is the authors’ simple recommendation to “eat more fish and chicken.” In fact, a lot of seafood is contaminated with mercury, as well as carcinogenic PCBs. So eating too much fish can be hazardous to your health as well.
Chickens in factory farms are also fed slaughterhouse waste. This is one of the factors believed to account for the high salmonella rate: 28.8% of eggs from chickens in factory farms have salmonella, whereas cage-free chickens’ eggs have only a 4.3% salmonella rate. The latter are also higher in vitamins and lower in cholesterol.
The conventional food supply is dominated by animals raised in unhealthy conditions, and the government is creating a system that supports factory farms. You may have read about the “lean, finely textured beef”—bovine connective tissue and beef scraps, finely ground and washed in ammonium hydroxide and formed into a paste known as “pink slime” which has been used as a low-cost filler for ground beef— that is reportedly on its way out at McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Burger King. But according to Mother Jones, the USDA plans to keep ordering pink slime for use in its National School Lunch Program, which serves low-income students.
If ammonium hydroxide, a chemical also found in household cleaners, is unfit for the fast food industry, how is it safe for our school children? Fifty years ago, the USDA was an agency doing its best to make things better. How did it go so wrong?
Many human populations following a natural diet—particularly hunter–gatherers—have led remarkably healthy lives feeding predominately on red meat. For example, Native Americans amazed explorers and colonists with their remarkable health even though their diet consisted mainly of animal meat, organs, and fatty parts. But that was organic, free-range, grass-fed meat, not factory farm beef.
The Harvard “red meat” study was not only fatally flawed from the outset, it offered reckless (and scientifically unsound) advice.

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Big Farma Once Again Walking All Over Your Safety—and the Constitution

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:00:03 +0000

The agriculture industry is trying to make it a crime to be an undercover investigator at a factory farm. Goodbye, whistleblowers! Farewell, freedom of speech!

Last year, “ag gag” bills were introduced in a number of states. Happily, most were defeated due to overwhelming opposition from our grassroots activists, concerned citizens, and organizations of all political stripes. Unfortunately, many of these bills are back this year, and the dangers are even greater.
The bills introduced last year would have made it illegal to videotape or take a picture on a factory farm—even when an an illegal act was occurring. This is obviously unconstitutional; Iowa’s attorney general even told their legislature so.
This year’s bills would make it a crime to be an undercover investigator. A bill in Nebraska, for example, intends “to create the offense of obtaining employment at an animal facility with intent to disrupt operations.” Imagine if such bills were passed—think of all the industries that would line up with similar bills to protect their illegal or unethical operations from your prying eyes!
The conditions in these facilities breed disease. Animals are preemptively fed a constant stream of antibiotics to prevent disease, which creates “super bugs”—bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. Moreover, the antibiotics then get into the water table, which we also use and consume.
Both the animals and the people that work there are subjected to what can only be described as atrocities. Moreover, confining so many animals in one place produces much more waste than the surrounding land can handle. As a result, factory farms are associated with various environmental hazards, such as water, land and air pollution, and people who live in close proximity to factory farms often complain of high incidents of illness.
For years, undercover investigations have revealed conditions on some factory farms that result in extreme animal suffering, and the few safety mechanisms that exist for CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) were created when conditions in these places were exposed and people took action. People have the right—and the responsibility—to know where their food comes from and under what conditions it was produced.
Though the language has changed somewhat in this year’s bills, they have the same intent: to shield agribusiness from public scrutiny by punishing whistleblowers.
In Iowa, SF431, referred to as the “Whistleblower Suppression Bill,” might be brought up for a vote at any time in the Iowa Senate. SF431 is an attempt by the factory farm industry to criminalize basic watchdog functions at factory farms: the bill would make it illegal to produce or possess a video or audio recording of the facility without prior consent of the facility owner. In addition, the bill defines a broad range of already illegal activities—such as trespassing, theft, and fraud—as “animal/crop facility tampering” and would place harsher penalties on these crimes than if they are committed anywhere else in the state. If you are an Iowa resident, take action now!
Nebraska’s LB915 is a new bill that forces CAFO employees to make a report within twelve hours of witnessing animal abuse, and tightens other requirements to make the reporting process more difficult—and ensures that only legitimate employees (who perhaps can ill-afford to lose their job) can make such a report by banning whistleblowers: “Any person who obtains employment at an animal facility with the intent to disrupt the normal operations of the animal facility is guilty of a Class IV felony.” If you are a Nebraska resident, take action now!
In Utah, HB187 would make an investigator “guilty of agricultural operation interference if the person, without the consent of the owner of the operation, records an image of, or sound from, an agricultural operation.” If you are a Utah resident, take action now!

The post Big Farma Once Again Walking All Over Your Safety—and the Constitution first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Healthy Milk: What Is It?

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:00:08 +0000

And what’s standing in the way of your getting it?

A report from Harvard suggests that milk from factory farms may be associated with hormone-related cancers because of the industrial agricultural practice of milking a cow throughout her pregnancy. The later in pregnancy a cow is, the more hormones appear in her milk. Milk from a cow in the late stage of pregnancy contains up to 33 times as much of a signature estrogen compound (estrone sulfate) as milk from a cow following pregnancy, as well as much higher levels of other hormones.
The very healthiest milk would therefore be raw, grass-fed, organic, and from a cow that is only milked for the first six months after giving birth (which would include the first four months of a new pregnancy).
Why can’t we get milk that even remotely resembles this ideal?
It’s because federal regulatory policy, controlled by special interests like the dairy industry, is making our milk even more unhealthy—and shackling consumer choice.
Congress is set to introduce the 2012 Farm Bill, which will set the course of federal agriculture and food assistance programs for the next five years. It will have a major impact on farmers, consumers, rural communities, and global agribusiness—a primary beneficiary of US federal agriculture programs.
Current federal regulations are designed to encourage farmers to take dairy cows off pasture and put them into CAFOs (see our article on factory farms in this issue). The regulations, called the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance, are written for stationary systems to increase milk production per cow; this is known as the Total Confinement Dairy Model—that is, the huge dairy factory farms. This practice, however, cuts the productive life expectancy of the cow in half or even more, creates unmanageable disease (not to mention an environmental disaster), and hurts smaller organic dairy farmers. The real solution is to find the most cost-effective models specific to a region’s particular environment, and balance that with the health of the cow and the best possible milk product. For example, what works in the arid climates of the western US (evaporative systems to keep cows comfortable) will not work in the more humid climate of the southeast.
The federal government seems to feel that “all milk is the same,” whereas the nutrient content (such as butterfat and protein) varies greatly between different breeds of cows. According to our sources, the 2012 Farm Bill may contain provisions to outlaw “component pricing” of milk, in which a producer is paid more for higher protein, or higher butterfat milk. Component pricing tends to incentivize higher quality milk and better agricultural practices, because healthy cows put to pasture will produce more valuable milk than sick cows in stalls. Some states have tried to create better policies for milk. California, for example, has higher standards for components of 1% and 2% milk than the government requires—higher protein content, more calcium, and so forth. Yet the government is trying to stop shut down California’s standards.
The federal government is also fighting local, organic, and small dairy producers, mainly because of its cozy relationships with Big Dairy (the USDA’s Dairy Industry Advisory Committee). And then there’s the pseudo-independent Dairy Management, Inc. (DMI), which owns the trade names American Dairy Association, National Dairy Council, and US Dairy Export Council. DMI claims to have been “created by farmers, for farmers, and is funded by America’s dairy farm families—and only by dairy farmers. It does not use any government or taxpayer dollars to promote dairy products in the United States.” What DMI doesn’t reveal, but the New York Times does, is that DMI is not a private business consultant. It is a marketing creation of the USDA—the same agency at the center of a federal anti-obesity drive that discourages over-consumption of some of the very foods Dairy Management is vigorously promoting, as we discussed last year. Conflict of interest, anyone?
You may recall that there is a new proposal afoot to merge USDA’s food safety wing with FDA’s food safety unit. As we noted last month, the real issue is that USDA is in the pocket of the agricultural industry (“Big Farma”)—the administration instead wants to shift food safety over to the FDA, where both Big Farma and Big Pharma rule the roost.
As you know, the FDA has a vendetta against raw milk. Raw milk (which is far more healthful than pasteurized milk) is allowed in some states, though the FDA is shutting down raw milk production whenever it can. Just this month, the FDA shut down an Amish farmer who was selling fresh raw milk to eager consumers in the Washington, DC, region. A judge banned Daniel Allgyer from selling his milk across state lines, which resulted in the closing of his dairy operation—a decision that enraged Allgyer’s customers, some of whom have been buying from him for six years and say the government is interfering with their parental rights to feed their children. These customers owned “cowshares” and therefore were part- owners of the cow, but the judge ruled that this was a subterfuge.
As Dr. Joseph Mercola reminds us, there have been no deaths in 38 years from consuming raw milk—ever since the data started being collected. There have been over 80 deaths from pasteurized milk during that same time period, including 50 people who were killed in 1985 alone by cheese from pasteurized milk.
If you have not done so already, please contact your representative and ask him or her to support HR 1830, the Unpasteurized Milk Bill. This bill would allow the shipment and distribution of unpasteurized milk and milk products for human consumption across state lines. This legislation removes an unconstitutional restraint on farmers who wish to sell or otherwise distribute—and people who wish to consume—raw milk and milk products. Also ask your senators to introduce and support similar legislation in the Senate. Take action now!

The post Healthy Milk: What Is It? first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

State Action Alert: New York Says “Stop Exposing Our CAFOs!”

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:00:08 +0000

Pending legislation in New York State wants to send investigative journalists to jail for photographing factory farms. A new State Action Alert.

According to the Humane Society, a recent investigation at New York’s largest dairy factory revealed shocking images of animal abuse, and the state’s agribusiness industry is now attempting to shield its inhumane practices from any further public scrutiny and debate.

S5172 aims to curtail free speech by prohibiting whistleblowing at factory farms, though the bill deceptively claims to be fighting “unlawful tampering with farm animals.” Of course, it’s all a matter of how terms are defined. According to the bill, “unlawful tampering” includes “unauthorized video, audio recording or photography done without the farm owner’s written consent”!

Rather than stop cruel treatment of animals, this bill will simply ensure that the public never learns about it. Rather than sending perpetrators of animal cruelty to jail, agribusiness wants to send those who expose the cruelty to jail.

Don’t let New York get away with the same censorship tactics other states have tried. If you are a New York resident, please contact your legislators immediately and ask them to oppose S5172!

TO SEND YOUR MESSAGE TO THE NEW YORK LEGISLATURE

Click THIS LINK to go to the Action Alert page. Once there, fill out the form with your name and address, etc., and customize your letter. We have a suggested message for you, but please feel free to add your own comments to the letter.
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The post State Action Alert: New York Says “Stop Exposing Our CAFOs!” first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.