Chapter 18
Chapter 18
Dirty Little Secrets of the Animals – Part 1
© Copyright 2009
by Dahni
Most of us have heard the horror stories and some of us have had personal experiences with animal cruelty. There is perhaps, some animal rights activist group, for nearly every species of animal upon the planet. It is the animals used for food which should be more of a horror to us and the alarm here should sound.
The dynamics of farming and the plight of farmers come down to this. How can they increase their yields?
Once upon a time, animals grazed in the fields. The fields stopped producing as much because the soil was depleted of its nutrients and became pH imbalanced. Over fertilization with just three primary nutrients of potassium, phosphorous and nitrogen made matters worse as did lack of crop rotation and growing crops closer and closer. Herbicides were nor only further destroying the soil, but other life forms as well. Hybrid plants were followed by chemical alteration and genetic engineering. With animals used for food, the same would follow.
Increasing yields of animals for food seemed to be answered with the same thing people had a ‘taste’ for. What makes meat taste good to those that like it? Fat! How can you increase your yields? Increase the fat content and you increase the weight, as meat is sold by weight.
Feed, chemicals and drugs which could increase animal fat content, would increase weight. And this would increase the farmer’s profits. This is what was done and still is.
Please do not misunderstand. U.S. farmers are some of the hardest working, nature conscious, self-reliant and self-sufficient people to be found anywhere. Their work has fed millions for years with quality food. But when government sets the price it is good for the rest of us and usually not so good for the farmer. Often the government pays them not to grow stuff. The bottom line is that they must survive and they must make a profit. They turned to anyone and anything that could promise them higher yields.
Just like farmers turned to the chemical companies to help make it so more of their crops could make it to market, they depended on the same for their animals. Preservatives and food coloring were added to the meat, to keep the products so called ‘fresh’ longer or to make it seem so. Come on now, this is not so difficult to believe. After all, we have food grade dyes injected into our otherwise ugly fruit and edible wax on many of our fruits and veggies all nice and shiny. Why not the same kind of edibble stuff for meat?
Farming left the fields and went into more corporate barns. Animals became overcrowded, stressed and full of fear. All of these conditions lead to a pH imbalance and combined with the lack of nutrients in the soil, the plants and the altered seed, this all leads to sickness, disease and death. Even animals not sick became contaminated by animals that were. Antibiotics would be used in feed and administered to animals on a regularly basis. It is conditions like these which draw the concern of the animal rights activists, but the most important thing is that they are UNHEALTHY! These conditions are unhealthy to the animals and they are unhealthy to meat eaters, other animals or humans that consume animal products or use animal by-products.
The attempts to weed out weaknesses of plants with hybrid technology would also be used with animals. If more fat would make the meat taste better, increase their weight and in the end, increase the farmer’s profits, what else could they do by crossbreeding?
What is more docile than a horse? A donkey! What is stronger than a donkey? A horse! Why not cross them? So they did and produced a mule, a sterile animal that cannot reproduce. This is but one of many examples.
It used to be that farmers would raise their own crops and make their own feed for their animals. But most of them did not have their own mill.
” I grew up on a farm in W. St. Louis County, back in the ’50’s. We started out with beef cows, and if you raise livestock, the only way to make money is if you raise your own feed (for those of you who don’t have that experience). And so we raised our own corn, and our own soy beans, and our own hay, and we had a truck come out from the mill. This truck would come out from the mill, they would grind up the corn, and the soy beans, and the hay, and then we would add sacks of vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, and we would make pellets out of it, and this is what we would feed…”
Dr. Joel Wallach
The primary reason for adding vitamins and minerals to animal feed was because it was the ONLY HEALTH INSURANCE available to the farmers to protect their investment.
This ‘Dirty Little Secret‘ is that if it is not in the soil; if it is not in the plant, and if it is not in the animal, it had to be supplied. This is eaxctly what vitamin and mineral supplements are, to supply that which is lacking! And farmers used this as health insurance protection for their investments.
WOW, this stuff is really getting dirty! We are not done. There is much more to come and more ‘Dirty Little Secrets‘ to share next time.
Dirty Dahni
Dirty Little Secrets 