I'd never even heard of "factory farming" until a few months ago, when a friend of mine who I meet for lunch a lot insisted on only eating at certain restaurants that serve organically-grown meat. It was horrific thinking about the stuff he was telling me, and I wanted to know more.
Over the last few weeks, I've been reading a lot of scary stories about the FDA approving cloned animals for public consumption. It seems to me that there's no way for the FDA to be sure of anything with regard to even the short term effects of humans eating cloned animals, much less the long term effects that, theoretically, would have to be explored in depth before such meat was allowed in to the open market.
So anyway, that's why I'm starting a "Farming and Health" category. This shit's getting pretty frightening, and enough is enough. I don't know what we can really do about it yet, but I do feel that I have to help get the word out somehow.
Then, this morning, another friend sent me this wonderful animation that explains the factory farming situation in great detail. It's funny as hell too.
There's a bunch of good information at the end about what you can do to help fight this stuff. More articles on this soon (and the relationship between factory farming and the cloning stuff).
Posted by Lisa at November 10, 2003 08:33 AM | TrackBackI agree... while I usually feel somewhat comfortable with advanced technology the long term health impact is just NOT understood.
That and the companies making SO much money here just plain purchase laws similar to the RIAA.
At least with Hollywood and the MP3 debate we don't die in 10 years of some crazy form of cancer.
I'm really considering only eating non-antibiotic and cloned meat from now on. It's probably worth it.
Kevin
Posted by: Kevin Burton on November 10, 2003 03:02 PMIt's funny to see someone reading fast food nation on the bus, they're really trying to look studious and not completely icked out.
I've known and eat accordingly, about this stuff for years.
Lisa,
If you're just learning about factory farming then you'll want to read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, as was already mentioned, but even more so read this NYTimes piece by Michael Pollan, Power Steer. He buys a steer in order to follow its life from insemination to slaughter as a learning experience. It's an amazing story.
Posted by: Brian Carver on November 11, 2003 11:37 AMLisa,
If you're just learning about factory farming then you'll want to read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, as was already mentioned, but even more so read this NYTimes piece by Michael Pollan, Power Steer. He buys a steer in order to follow its life from insemination to slaughter as a learning experience. It's an amazing story.
Posted by: Brian Carver on November 11, 2003 11:38 AMSorry for the double post. I got an "Internal Server Error" message.
Posted by: Brian on November 11, 2003 11:39 AM