Quote:
Originally Posted by jimbo2012
Dr, Campbell’s conclusions that even moderate consumption of animal-sourced foods and refined foods promote poor health in our time, there are a lot references.
He has quite a bit of science to back up his claims but more importantly, he has modern human populations and controlled clinic trials to reference as well.
To be fair read his reply to her blog.
The naysayers here on this forum wish to continue their eating habits and most take drugs to combat the ill effects of their diet.
That's fine, it's your choice but your mileage will vary.
We take NO meds at all (for three years), we certainly don't miss the side effects of those drugs and feel great works for us.
Understand I'm not trying to convert anyone to becoming a vegan, make your own informed decision.
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You've always been informative and not judgemental as far as I can tell.
Being drug free, as far as pharmaceuticals, is a plus ......for sure.
We've always been heavy on the veggies and fruit, but do consume meat and seafood, in moderation. If I were cooking for myself alone, it might be different.
For my own personal knowledge, I looked up "free range chickens" vs. the type sold in supermarkets..........
Organic chickens are quite expensive to purchase (for consumption), but they really taste different and aren't filled with all the junk normally found in the big poultry businesses........it's really scary to know what goes into our food supply.......and the potential for poor health from consuming said animals.........
Antibiotics:
Antibiotics have been used on poultry in large quantities since the 1940s, when it was found that the byproducts of antibiotic production, fed because the antibiotic-producing mold had a high level of vitamin B
12 after the antibiotics were removed, produced higher growth than could be accounted for by the vitamin B
12 alone. Eventually it was discovered that the trace amounts of antibiotics remaining in the byproducts accounted for this growth.
The mechanism is apparently the adjustment of
intestinal flora, favoring "good" bacteria while suppressing "bad" bacteria that provoke inflammation of the gut mucosa. So, the goal of antibiotics as a growth promoter is the same as for probiotics. Because the antibiotics used are not absorbed by the gut, they do not put antibiotics into the meat or eggs.
Antibiotics are used routinely in poultry for this reason, and also to prevent and treat disease. Many contend that this puts humans at risk as bacterial strains develop stronger and stronger resistances. Critics point out that, after six decades of heavy agricultural use of antibiotics, opponents of antibiotics must still make arguments about theoretical risks, since actual examples are hard to come by. All
antibiotic-resistant strains of human diseases whose origin is known originated in hospitals rather than farms
A proposed bill in the
United States Congress would make the use of antibiotics in
animal feed legal only for therapeutic (rather than preventative) use, but it has not been passed.However, this may present the risk of slaughtered chickens harboring pathogenic bacteria and passing them on to humans that consume them.
In October 2000, the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) discovered that two antibiotics were no longer effective in treating diseases found in factory-farmed chickens; one antibiotic was swiftly pulled from the market, but the other,
Baytril, was not.
Bayer, the company which produced it, contested the claim and as a result, Baytril remained in use until July 2005.
To prevent any residues of antibiotics in chicken meat, any given antibiotics are required to have a "withdrawal" period before they can be slaughtered. Samples of poultry at slaughter are randomly tested by the FSIS, and shows a very low percentage of residue violations
Arsenic
Chicken feed can also include
Roxarsone, an
antimicrobial drug that also promotes growth.
Roxarsone was used as a
broiler starter by about 70% of the broiler growers between 1995 to 2000.The drug has generated controversy because it contains
arsenic, which is highly toxic to humans. This arsenic could be transmitted through run-off from the poultry yards. A 2004 study by the U.S. magazine Consumer Reports reported "no detectable arsenic in our samples of muscle" but found "A few of our chicken-liver samples has an amount that according to EPA standards could cause neurological problems in a child who ate 2 ounces of cooked
liver per week or in an adult who ate 5.5 ounces per week." The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), however, is the organization responsible for the regulation of foods in America, and all samples tested were "far less than the... amount allowed in a food product."
Roxarsone, a controversial arsenic compound used as a nutritional supplement for chickens.
Growth hormones
Hormone use in poultry production is illegal in the United States.Similarly, no chicken meat for sale in Australia is fed hormones.Several scientific studies have documented the fact that chickens grow rapidly because they are bred to do so, not because of growth hormones.A small producer of natural and organic chickens confirmed this assumption:
“Using hormones to boost egg production was a brief fad in the Forties, but was abandoned because it didn't work. Using hormones to produce soft-meated roasters lasted into the Fifties, but the improved growth rates of normal, untreated broilers made the practice irrelevant--the broilers got as big as anyone wanted without chemicals. The only hormone that was ever used in any quantity on poultry (DES) was banned in 1959, and everyone but a few die-hard farmers had given up hormones by then, anyway. Hormones are now illegal in poultry and eggs.”
E. coli
According to
Consumer Reports, "1.1 million or more Americans [are] sickened each year by undercooked, tainted chicken." A
USDA study discovered
E. coli (Biotype I) in 99% of supermarket chicken, the result of chicken butchering not being a sterile process.However, the same study also shows that the strain of
E. coli found was always a non-lethal form, and no chicken had any of the pathenogenic
O157:H7 serotype.
Many of these chickens, furthermore, had relatively low levels of contamination. Feces tend to leak from the carcass until the evisceration stage, and the evisceration stage itself gives an opportunity for the interior of the carcass to receive intestinal bacteria. (So does the skin of the carcass, but the skin presents a better barrier to bacteria and reaches higher temperatures during cooking). Before 1950, this was contained largely by not eviscerating the carcass at the time of butchering, deferring this until the time of retail sale or in the home. This gave the intestinal bacteria less opportunity to colonize the edible meat. The development of the "ready-to-cook broiler" in the 1950s added convenience while introducing risk, under the assumption that end-to-end refrigeration and thorough cooking would provide adequate protection.
E. coli can be killed by proper cooking times, but there is still some risk associated with it, and its near-ubiquity in commercially farmed chicken is troubling to some. Irradiation has been proposed as a means of sterilizing chicken meat after butchering.
Avian influenza:
There is also a risk that crowded conditions in chicken farms will allow
avian influenza (bird flu) to spread quickly. A
United Nations press release states: "Governments, local authorities and international agencies need to take a greatly increased role in combating the role of factory-farming, commerce in live poultry, and wildlife markets which provide ideal conditions for the virus to spread and mutate into a more dangerous form..."
Efficiency
Farming of chickens on an industrial scale relies largely on high protein feeds derived from
soybeans; in the
European Union the soybean dominates the protein supply for animal feed,and the poultry industry is the largest consumer of such feed. Two kilograms of grain must be fed to poultry to produce 1 kg of weight gain, much less than that required for pork or beef. However, for every gram of protein consumed, chickens yield only 0.33 g of edible protein.
Economic factors
Changes in
commodity prices for poultry feed have a direct effect on the
cost of doing business in the poultry industry. For instance, a significant rise in the price of corn in the United States can put significant economic pressure on large industrial chicken farming operations.
World chicken population
The
Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations estimated that in 2002 there were nearly sixteen billion chickens in the world, counting a total population of 15,853,900,000. The figures from the
Global Livestock Production and Health Atlas for 2004 were as follows:
- China (3,860,000,000)
- United States (1,970,000,000)
- Indonesia (1,200,000,000)
- Brazil (1,100,000,000)
- India (648,830,000)
- Mexico (540,000,000)
- Russia (340,000,000)
- Japan (286,000,000)
- Iran (280,000,000)
- Turkey (250,000,000)
- Bangladesh (172,630,000)
- Nigeria (143,500,000)
In 2009 the annual chicken population in factory farms was estimated at 50 billion. With 6 billion raised in the European Union, over 9 billion raised in the United States and more than 7 billion in China.
The poor cows /cattle in the slaughterhouses are another story......