Eat **** and Die: Contaminated Veggies Are the Meat Industry's Fault
By Allison Kilkenny www.alternet.org/authors/9574/
Buffalo Beast <http://buffalobeast.com/>
Posted June 24, 2008.
The latest salmonella scare shows that even vegetarians are still at the
mercy of the meat industry.
Despite being one of the most grotesquely overfed populations in recent
memory, Americans remain preoccupied only with the quantity, not the
quality, of their food. They don't mind if scientists inject their french
fries
with high-fructose corn syrup as long as McDonald's super-sizes their
order for a nickel.
Yet, the attitude toward vegetarianism is changing in the United States.
While it's difficult to quantify how many vegetarians live within our
borders,
it's easier to observe the attitude toward vegetarians. Twenty years ago,
"What're you, a Commie?" was a typical response to a confession of veggie
brotherhood. Nowadays, despite the occasional stink eye, meat eaters at
least understand that vegetarianism is healthy, if not a lifestyle
particularly
suited for them.
Even though the United States is more veggie-friendly these days, it's
still
difficult to avoid crappy food, even if one chooses to become a vegan, as
I did six years ago. Despite my decision, I found myself projectile
vomiting into my toilet last week. Diagnosis: food poisoning. Suspect:
tomatoes. Unfortunately, becoming a vegetarian or a vegan doesn't ensure
healthiness. Sure, vegetarians enjoy many health perks (low rates of:
heart
disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc.) but we're still at the mercy of
the
meat industry in many ways.
For starters, the meat industry poisons the environment. A 2006 United
Nations re****t described the devastation caused by the meat industry as
"one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most
serious
environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." Aside from
global warming, meat production is a large factor in deforestation, wasted
land, and air and water contamination.
Water contamination may play a large part in increasing re****ts of
vegetable
and fruit contamination. In 2007, a California produce company recalled
bagged fresh spinach after a sample tested positive for salmonella. Nearly
a
year before, an outbreak of E. coli in fresh spinach killed three people
and
sickened 200. The recent tomato salmonella outbreak has affected at least
145 people, resulting in 23 hospitalizations, and many believe water
contamination is the cause of the affected tomatoes.
It's not the veggies that are to blame. The problem is the meat.
Salmonella
is an animal pathogen, so it doesn't originate from tomatoes. Most experts
agree that the bacteria probably come from groundwater contaminated with
animal feces.
You read that right: Cow **** is in your tomatoes. Actually, cow **** is
in
everything: the water, hamburgers, other plant life, and if one ascribes
to the
hippie New Age belief that we are all one pulsating organism upon Mother
Earth, then cow **** is in all of us.
But in a realer, more concrete sense, frenzied production lines coupled
with
lax management have resulted in a dramatic increase in food poisoning. The
****y (literally) food is so prevalent that it's affecting
non-meat-eaters. While
salmonella prefers fleshy fruit like tomatoes, our friend E. coli prefers
leafy
greens like spinach.
The problem is prevalent. A recent census of produce outbreaks between
1996 and 2007 counted no fewer than 33 epidemics from salmonella-
contaminated fruits and vegetables.
Some scientists claim the cure for salmonella and E. coli contamination
isn't
scrubbing clean the fruits and vegetables because doing so could remove
the good bacteria humans rely upon for survival. The solution will come
from the government and outraged citizens demanding that the meat industry
clean up its practices so fresh produce doesn't suffer.
The outrage has already exploded in other parts of the world. While cows
poison groundwater and otherwise healthy plant life here at home,
Americans
remain mute about the diseased slabs of meat they're consistently forced
to
choose from at their grocery stores. Meanwhile, angry mobs took to the
streets of South Korea when their government resumed im****ting beef from
the United States. This wasn't some kind of fervent anti-American protest,
but rather concerned citizens protecting themselves from potential mad cow
disease.
In America, the only way citizens can protect themselves is to grow their
own food or to buy their food from local, trusted farmers who don't use
chemicals or unethical farming practices. But many poorer, urban citizens
have no choice but to buy whatever food is cheap and readily available.
Still, all of this isn't cause for concern. Unless, of course, citizens
are
worried about the expanding legion of rotund American children who
despise vegetables, binge on bagged chips and walk only if the landscape
slopes downhill. The obesity rate is so wildly out of control that
Americans
collectively celebrated this year -- not when the child population began
to
lose weight, but when they ceased to get fatter and obesity rates finally
plateaued for the first time in 20 years.
Unfortunately, Americans can't fix their unhealthy eating until supposedly
"healthy" food is clean of bacteria originating in diseased cows. Of
course,
the crazy practices of the meat industry shouldn't concern citizens ...
unless
they're worried about global warming. The Environmental Defense Fund
re****ts that if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and
substituted it with vegetarian foods, the carbon dioxide savings would be
the same as taking more than a half-million cars off U.S. roads.
In fact, the crazy practices of the meat industry probably won't rock
citizens at all until they find themselves knelt over their toilets,
hurling.
Right about then, they'll understand how cow **** affects them all.
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İ 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>
Judy Reed
AnimalVoices
Speaking For Animals & Their Environment
This is distibuted for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.
[Ref.http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html]
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