On Going Vegetarian?

I normally try to ensure there are VERY good reasons for most things I do. And on the subject of eating (which I love) and especially meat which up until now has occupied a very soft spot, close to my heart - one might well ask : "What the hell happened?", when I tell you that maybe - just maybe - I am seriously considering a vegetarian existence from henceforth (eugh - I hear you say?).

And believe me - there has to be a compelling push for me to decide to steer clear of meat.

The answer to "what happened" is that we found out some rather nasty truths about the meat industry - purely by accident of course. But it's the kind of thing that, once you know, you're inclined to do something about it if you value your health.

There are 3 things that bother me now about eating meat :

1. My health.
I gather that up until the present time, the meat industry in America has seen nothing wrong with selling meat to the consumer which is contaminated by pathogens, antibiotics and hormones. In fact it has been perfectly permissible to sell meat contaminated by "The Big 6"  toxin producing e-coli strains O26, O111, O103, O121, O45 and O145. These sicken or kill twice as many victims as e-coli O157 (up to now, at least...). Food safety and consumer watchdogs have for years fought to ban the sale of these contaminants in raw meat, in vain. All their efforts have been countered by meat industry lobbying. And in the 1990's a ban was put on the sale of meat contaminated by e-coli O157  - which the meat industry opposed.

Excuse me - am I hearing right? The meat industry cares so little for its clients that it is prepared to sicken and /or kill them to be allowed to continue selling their contaminated products? They are so lacking in integrity that they oppose a ban on selling contaminated meat? Whose body are we talking about here?
Click : Meat Industry Opposes Ban



I wonder if the captains of the meat industry in America eat their own products?

Here's a description of a little girl of three, who died from O157 poisoning :

“The pain during the first 80 hours was horrific, with intense abdominal cramping every 10 to 12 minutes. Her intestines swelled to three times their normal size and she was placed on a ventilator. Emergency surgery became essential and her colon was removed. After further surgery, doctors decided to leave the incision open, from sternum to pubis, to allow Brianna’s swollen organs room to expand and prevent them from ripping her skin. Her heart was so swollen it was like a sponge and bled from every pore. Her liver and pancreas shut down and she was gripped by thousands of convulsions, which caused blood clots in her eyes. We were told she was brain dead.”
Up until a week ago, the meat industry continued to fight against being barred from selling meat contaminated by the other "Big 6" pathogens though. I'm delighted to report that they lost, and henceforth a ban will be in place - at least until they appeal and the ban is rescinded....

2. Animal Cruelty
I'm not talking here about Maggie the cow who ambles round her pasture and lives an idyllic life, before one day being shot in the head and dying instantly. I'm talking about cows, pigs and sheep being hit over the head with steel bars and beaten to death for fun. I'm talking about them being hooked onto the overhead hook on the conveyer and skinned alive, or being dissected while alive. I'm talking about them being beaten off the backs of trucks into corralled chutes en-route to their destruction. They're not stupid - they know what's happening to them. I'm talking about visitors to these "factories" having to put on special clothing to enable them to wade through rivers of blood. I'm talking about cows being jabbed in the udders with pitchforks for fun.

And it's always "a few isolated instances", where the employees are at fault. Not the management who pay no attention to what's going on - or worse still - condone it. You beat the animal - how else will you get it to its feet? Lift it yourself? It's not management's fault for hiring the dregs of humanity to come and do a soul-destroying job (if anyone who is capable of working in such a place could be described as having "a soul" - or feelings at least). It's not the employees fault that the bins of excrement are emptied "every fall" - we're talking once a year here folks. They are doing what they're told to do. A local cattle farm outside Durbanville in the Western Cape calls their cattle "Fairview Free-Range" (and after inspection are found not to be free-range at all - apparently "Fairview Free-Range" is a trademarked label they have created for themselves and should not be misconstrued to be actually Free-Range). I call it "deliberately misleading advertising". Anyway - they see it as good for cattle to be standing around in their faeces - it keeps them warm in the winter.

Not-so-free Range  (check the label in the picture "basking in the sun...lazing in the shade" - have we entered Alice in Wonderland La-La land?)

Lets go back to point 1 above : the source of all e-coli infection is (can I have a chorus here : all together ): FAECES!!!! Yep - feacal -oral contamination.  (see one of the pics in the above link) Gee I wonder how that animal feed got contaminated? May have something to do with the fact that all these animals are standing around in shit, then browsing the food that is dropping to the ground.

Gee - it's a mystery how other vegetables can pick up an e-coli strain. Might it have something to do with the fact that tons of the faeces and filth are dumped on the land/ diluted and sprayed onto crops, and /or now buried in pits, thereby contaminating ground water sources? Am I getting warm? Or is this all "activist propaganda"?

Do I want to eat the meat of animals which have been treated in this way?

But I hear you say "how can you get so emotional about dinner"? It's a food source - that's all it is. Yes - and once upon a time it was an animal, with feelings like myself. And what goes on in "factory farms" and abattoirs is carefully concealed from the public for precisely the reason that if any of this stuff gets widely known, it might cause a backlash against the meat industry - and they're petrified of that.

Did I forget to mention the millions of chickens who are kept crammed up in misery until they are big enough, before being turned upside down, and have their feet put through metal grooved bars, carrying them along in fine style before being dunked head first into boiling water to remove their feathers? Up to that point they are all still alive. After this point, horrifyingly many of them are still alive - at least until they are dissected. Or the pigs who are the product of AI (artificial insemination) so that they are all genetically almost identical. It's very important that they are all the same size, so that the cutting blades strike them all in the same places - you can't have a leg being severed in the wrong place, can we? It's bad for business - loses product value.

3. Support for the Mega- Industry
OK - so this particular industry condones filthy conditions, (unsuccessfully) tries to counter illness with antibiotics, administers growth hormones and antibiotics to reduce body fat content in pigs *1, sees nothing wrong with selling contaminants to customers, and enjoys huge support and growth worldwide. It runs hand in glove with Big Pharmaceuticals and presumes to dictate to the public what is and is not good for them. It employs doctors, vets, scientists*2, managers, and a host of low-level labour who learned their sensibilities in the gutter. It employs spin doctors to put a humane and caring face on the industry, and it donates to many humanitarian causes to provide it with sound social credentials.

*1 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2332392 , also Bromocriptine & Weight loss  (see section on side effects, and the effect on the immune system).  And Dispute over Ractopamine

Did you know the highest consumer of Pork annually is China? Did you know that this years Chinese Olympic team have decided not to eat pork before the games? I wonder why? Might it contaminate their urine test?

*2 It's far easier these days being a research scientist if you're employed by a large conglomerate who doesn't quibble about giving you sufficient funding for your research. In exchange, you are free to publish "scientific results" which show your employer in a good light. In circumstances where there is controversy over findings and method, I'd be more inclined to adopt results of science which has no vested interest in the outcome. In other words "independent". No conflict of interest.

The mega-meat manufacture clearly doesn't give a tinker's cuss about humanity, so there's no surprise that it's unimpressed with the plight of the animals it "processes". Today's beating victim is tomorrow's Steer Burger and french fries order - what's the fuss if it gets a "prod and a poke" before it shuffles off this mortal coil?  I won't tell you how McNuggets come into being... 

And Hey! We're in South Africa - that's America and Canada - and China, and Australia, Russia and the EU. 

Hello! We import meat, don't we? Oh yes we do. And the local food industry is far too opaque for my liking - disclosure does not appear to be a strong point in South Africa. "Yes really - we care for our animals. Really!" Yeah yeah. And I am expected to take your word for that? 

Do I want to continue to pay money to perpetuate the status quo, support these meat and pharma producers and potentially endanger our family's lives? The answer is clearly a no-brainer - but I will need to be careful to find out what's been sprayed on the fields before the veg has been harvested. 

By the way - how many upmarket gourmet chefs do you know who are prepared to overcook steak (as it would need to be cooked if we are to believe the meat producers' denial "as long as it's cooked properly...")?

Have a look at Earthlings - powerful, informative and award-winning. For anyone who cares. And if that doesn't impress you, you can find the deleted scenes on YouTube. It's truth - and truth is absolute. Pull your head out from under a rock and be brave - I dare you.

Would I deem it appropriate to dictate to anyone else though? Of course not. What the reader does with this information is not my concern - I have no responsibility for anyone else's health, conscience or anything else. Be my guest. Bon appetit.