Organic Food and Animal Welfare

Reason #2 to Eat Organic: Animal Welfare

                So your health is not the only reason to choose organics; it’s for the health of the animals you’re consuming! Now this could easily be related to wild animals in terms of biodiversity and such, but for the purposes of this blog, we’ll stick to farmed animals.

So let’s jump into and point we discussed in the first blog: hormones. If they are bad for your children, then obviously they are bad for the animals. They are injected into the animals at the earliest possible times—before they are even born! Hormones are fed to the mother and sub sequentially, her offspring. And of course the pattern continues at birth, the hormones being fed directly to the calf, chick, etc. So how do they affect the animals? Well, they are growth hormones, so they grow faster! Chickens grow approximately 400 times faster than natural. FOUR-HUNDRED! For one, it is simply not natural. Then comes in the fact that the chickens routinely suffer from broken legs, become immobile, and also choke, literally suffocate to death under their own weight.

Another effect of hormone injection is marbleizing. As discussed in the first blog, factory farmed meat has tons more fat than organic meat. It’s called intramuscular fat, which is what gives the extra weight that weighs the animals down. Industries do this in order to have more products to sell, higher quantities. So really, you’re getting ripped off! They sell you a bunch of fat, marbleized meat that is horrible for your body. I eat only organic meat and I can tell you firsthand that there is an ounce or less of grease per pound of beef. The trend continues: what is better for you is better for the animals too.

Improper feeding is another issue with inorganic meat and dairy. Cows on factory farms are fed grains, corn—another factor in “beefing them up.” They do not naturally eat corn and that’s for a reason. They cannot digest it. In fact, they don’t even see it as food and will not take it into their mouths. How do industries deal with this? No other way than, of course, cutting a hole in the cattle’s side. Yup, you read it right, and then they keep it open with a short wide tube insert big enough for a hand to fit through. This is how they are fed, through this hole by a human hand sticking into it to drop grain in, forcing strain upon their digestive tract to digest the foreign material. Not to mention the lack of nutrition in corn.

Animals are also fed other animals, even of their own kind. Yes, this would be fine for some animals, the one’s that eat meat normally and some animals do naturally cannibalize. But domesticated animals used for farming are not. Cattle are herbivorous, meaning they maintain a plant only diet and especially cannot digest meat. However, factory farming saves money by feeding the remnants of other animals that died of poor condition or parts of slaughtered animals that will not sell to the still living animals. Remember mad cow disease? That happened as a result of feeding cow brains to cattle. They actually went insane from eating each other! Now chickens are omnivorous. But that simply means that they eat both plants and animals. But bugs are actually part of the animal kingdom and that is actually the kind of meat that chickens eat. They are not meant to eat cattle or pigs or other chickens. Could you actually imagine a chicken killing a cow in the wild? I think not.

Organic Food And Your Health

Why is it important to choose organic and natural foods over synthetic and inorganic products?

Well, there are several reasons, and here I will try to state and explain them as quickly and simply as possible over a series of blogs.

Self-health: Your personal health is impacted greatly by the foods you eat, both physically and mentally. First, let’s discuss the physical effects of inorganic substances. When you consume unnatural foods, you give your body things that it naturally would not digest, things that are not found in nature. To understand this, one must step back and realize that once upon a time our world was not as it is today. We never used to have electricity let alone the ability to make it light at 2AM. We did without long distance communication, movies, or travel. And if that seems archaic to you, remember that we also once had no houses or any structures for shelter, stoves, and even the knowledge to use fire for cooking. Now, I am not saying that we should not use this element; I am simply narrowly outlining what natural is as there are many applications of the word. For the purposes of this blog, natural is defined as things occurring outside without any human influence, meaning that these additives and synthetics that are in nearly all our food products today (unless otherwise marked) are not natural.

So you might be thinking, “What’s wrong with things all because they’re not natural? How much bad can it really be doing?” Well, bad is an understatement, and not just in my opinion. I’ll tell you my story: when I was about 13, I began getting severe abdominal pains. Over time, several different kinds of pains from widespread aches to crippling stabbing began in various areas throughout my torso. At first, doctors thought it was problems in my reproductive system, then crone’s disease and a list of other digestive issues all of which were cleared by tests done when I wound up in the hospital once because the pains were so intense. Upon moving to my college, where they do what they can to serve us natural foods, the pains became less and less. Then, when I arrived home for the season, they started again and this pattern continued. I decided to make as much organic as possible my permanent lifestyle, and have never and will never go back.

Next, let’s discuss what I consider to be the most important product to get organic: meat. I will now lay out for you the realities of the meat industry. One may choose not to believe them but you can find evidence all over the web, just do a simple search.

1. The first factor here is the way the animals are slaughtered: it’s not in their natural environment, it’s around hundreds of other animals that are being killed, and it’s painful for them. This all leads to them being frightened at the instant they are killed. When animals (think of how you react when you are scared) are afraid, the brain sends a signal to the endocrine system to release a chemical that causes the muscles to tighten. In simpler terms, when something dies scared, the meat is tougher and filled with excess substances that the body need not process.
2. The second is the fat content in meat: in organic meat there is a miniscule amount of it, less than an ounce of grease per pound of beef. In factory farms, to save money, they feed the animals growth hormones to enlarge their body size, to make more product to sell. This is not to be confused with more meat because instead what is happening is the formation of intramuscular fat, or basically, layers of fat within the meat they sell. That’s what makes for more: fat not meat; they only care about quantity not quality. So, really, you’re being ripped off. Plus, it’s self-explanatory why ingesting fat is not good for you—extra fat is unhealthy.
3. A third and very important piece here are how those hormones directly affect our bodies when we consume the meat. Well, they do exactly the same thing to us as they do to the animals originally: they make us grow; mature faster. Seriously, research it. This isn’t just speculation; this is proven by scientific research that they teach us in high school Health class. Children are hitting puberty years before they should be. For example, 70 years ago, girls would begin their menstrual cycle at age 16 at the earliest. Now, girls are getting theirs at 12 and that number is still dropping. That, for me, is an EXTREMELY disturbing fact. This is changing our bodies like this. Ew. Gross. Sick.
4. Corn: bad to be fed to cows and not only does it add to the fat on their bodies, but in a single day of feeding a cow grass instead of corn, that cow would lose 80% of the E-coli that forms in their gut because of the corn. This is why people get E-coli poisoning, not to mention contamination in non-meat products.

While these are the most noticeable effects that I have been educated on, there are many other things that these chemicals are doing to your bodies. So do your own research when you’re bored and have nothing else to do. I also recommend watching FOOD INC. which you can rent for free at your local library. Or, you could ask me for more detail!

Thanks for reading,

Peace,

Charlene