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Why do we have to pay so much more for healthy food (fruits, veggies, whole grains, and safe dairy/poultry/fish/meat) when junk food is so cheap?
Why do we have of go out of our way - and pay extra - for fresh food without added chemicals?
At the ice cream shop, they charge extra for fudge sauce.
You don't have to pay extra to get your two scoops of french vanilla "fudge-free".
Why do you have to pay more to get two gallons of milk "hormone free" or "pesticide free"?
Because - of course - the Beltway says so.
To clean up our plates, our Federal pols would have to do some belt-tightening: they'd have to step away from the gravy train of bribes contributions from Cargill, ADM, BigPesticide, and BigAg.
Yeah, right.
Since they'll never do that, we'll have to drag 'em away by their hind trotters.
Messy business - but worth the fight.
Here's why. The most enduring Federal investment in our farmland, food security, and farm families is known as ta-da The Farm Bill - TFB to its pals.
The Farm Bill touches all aspects of our lives: what we eat, where we live, and how long we live.
In the days and weeks to come, I'll be exploring TFB's massive impact on our lives and what we can do about it. We'll look at how this one bill - and the hundreds of billions it sluices into corporate agriculture - weaves a powerful spell over the Air, Fire, Water, and Earth in all of our lives.
And we'll learn how to break the spell and invoke protection for our families, pets, fields, rivers, and skies.
But before that piece of magic, we have some preparation.
We'll start with an overview of TFB.
Ever since 1933, we the taxpayers have been paying farmers to take care of America's lands - and America's food security - while they took care of their own families.
A good idea - then and now.
In the 1930's one in four Americans lived on farms. Today only one in 70 does. . .and only around one-tenth of them live on full-time commercial farms.
Yet almost half the Continental US is comprised of farmland.
And all of every American is comprised of someone who must eat - or perish.
Nearly three-quarters of a century after FDR's first Farm Bill, we Americans have compelling reasons to invest in our food security and our nation's lands.
And we have even more compelling reasons to stop pissing away Farm Bill Federal dollars - our Federal dollars - as subsidies to:
Cargill [America's second largest private company - they try harder for our "free-market" subsidies]
the price-fixing cartel known as Archer Daniels Midland,
the vertically integrated tumor producers known as BigPesticide/Ag Pharma,
the factory hog farms dumping pig shit in our drinking water and rivers,
and a host of other tapeworms on the body politic which have crept up the orifice of the Money Party and infested the body of the Farm Bill over the last few decades.
Hey - I'm all for aid to seniors. Social Security just isn't enough for many seniors.
But this is over the top:
James R. Cargill, in Forbes' list of richest Americans with a net worth of $1.5 billion, is the 79-year-old grandson of the founder of Cargill, William R. Cargill. James R. Cargill inherited this wealth. The family no longer runs the company but is thought to own about 90% of the stock. [2]
[snip]
Political contributions
Warren R. Staley, Chairman of Cargill, is a Bush Ranger having raised at least $200,000 for Bush in the 2004 presidential election. [3]
Cargill gave $223,000 to federal candidates in the 2006 election through its political action committee - 21% to Democrats and 78% to Republicans. [4]
Lobbying:
In a weekly review of lobbying in various industries The Hill said, "Privately held Cargill is a behemoth in ag circles. The company's revenues nearly reached $63 billion in 2004. That left plenty of money to lobby. The company spent $240,000 in the first part of 2004 to lobby on such things as the Clean Air Act, the energy bill and corporate tax modifications." "Business & Lobbying", The Hill, December 8, 2004.
The company spent $400,000 for lobbying in 2006. $100,000 went to two lobbying firms with the remainder being spent using in-house lobbyists.[5]
Wow - $63 billion in revenues - $57 billion of the revenues (before whatever the privately-held costs are) for the Cargill family. The vast majority from our heavily subsidized Industrial Ag.
On a lobbying investment of $400,000... plus at least $450,000 in reach-around for the Bush, Rethugs, and slect (Ag Committee) Dems.
So for every dollar Cargill spends massaging the Bushies and Congress...
Almost 75,000 dollars of revenue come in - the vast majority floated in on Federal subsidies to Commodity AG (crop subsidies); fossil fuel (used in fertilizer/farm equipment/transport); the ethanol scam (net energy-loss); and the Federally subsidized barge canals AKA the Mississippi and Ohio River basins (Corps of Engineers - oh, and the Ninth Ward).
Where can we sign up for almost $75,000 revenue for every buck our business invests?
Oh - that's right - The Farm Bill.
American agriculture depends on massive fossil fuel inputs for diesel, fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides. This core requirement of industrial agriculture allows TFB to directly impact US energy use - and adds to the demand for imported fuels to fire US Big Ag policies. TFB's impact on American agriculture is so massive that the Bill literally affects Air, Fire, Water, and Earth for hundreds of millions of Americans.
TFB is one of the Mothers of All Compromise. TFB directs massive Federal subsidies to several different purposes (Food Stamps, school lunches, Industrial Ag, Export Ag, land conservation) with very different constituencies. Just like the Pentagon nudges useless weapons projects through Congress by scattering defense war plants across key Congressional districts, TFB has a village of recipients who benefit from all that Federal juice.
And - just like other worthy New Deal and/or Progressive Era programs - TFB was diverted and perverted by the same megacorps it was built to defeat.
Of course, parts of the TFB do great things for the poorest Americans. Even before the Bushies, Food Stamps and Federally subsidized school lunch programs saved young minds and lives: with Bush's Bust looming, the programs are even more precious.
TFB's "Title IV" - the Nutrition Programs - include food stamps, emergency food assistance, school lunches, Women, Infant and Children Program (WIC) and the Farmers Market Nutrition Program. These programs take up nearly half (48.4%) of total TFB spending, and rightly so - they serve the neediest in our society.
Even here, the programs are perverted, skewed so that purchase decisions are best for industry, not Americans. Thus the foodstuffs directly purchased by Federal TItle IV dollars and provided as US Govt food assistance are high-calorie industrial foods and processed foods: the worst possible food choices for low-income Americans, seniors, and Native Americans already dying from diet-induced obesity and Type II diabetes.
TFB's "Title I" - the Commodity Programs - hides the biggest prizes for the megacorps and Big Ag. Title I sucks up one-third (33.2%) of TFB money. The direct support payments for just five crops: cotton, corn, rice, wheat, and soybeans - amounted to nineteen billion dollars in 2006 (or 92% of the commodity crop payments under Title I). And - just the rest of our winner-take-all Federal programs under the Bushies - the big boys at the top get the goodies:
According to the Congressional Research Service, 84 percent of commodity support spending goes to the production of just five crops: corn, cotton, wheat, rice, and soybeans. Half of that money currently goes to just seven states that produce most of those commodities. The richest ten percent of farm-subsidy recipients (many of whom are corporations and absentee landowners who can hardly be classified as "actively engaged " in growing crops) take in more than two-thirds of those payments.
A few other broad brushstrokes:
* Almost 50 percent of all commodity subsidies went to 5 percent of eligible farmers in 2005.
* Subsidies help the largest farms to acquire the best land and squeeze out smaller growers.
* The growth rate for jobs trailed the national average in nearly two-thirds of counties receiving heavy subsidies between 2000 and 2003, according to a recent report.
If When we take that endless river of cash from the likes of ADM's execs (and their criminal defense attorneys), Monsanto, Cargill, et al, we'll have billions to bring healthy food to the neediest Americans.
The 2007 Farm Bill has passed the House and is scheduled for mark-up in the Senate starting around October 23.
You can start by planning to bug your Senator - and lots of other peoples' Senators - to make the Farm Bill safe for Americans and America's small farmers. The good people at Organic Consumers' Association can help you contact the Senate - and we'll be discussing what to "learn" our Senators about.
Bon Appetit!
(photo by Philocrates)
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kirk!
Hiya!
When the government gives a subsidy for beans and rice and stuff, is that the same food they use for school lunches? Is the cotton the same ones they use to make army uniforms?
pretty educational post and I would like to get an educated, non corporate, non agenda, opinon of pasteurization
I have of course heard and read how much safer milk is once pasteurized but I have also heard advocates of raw milk telling us pastuerization has no place in a healthy source of milk
so what is the real deal?
please no sermon about the health of milk in general, I know the pro’s and con’s but I do not know the pros and cons of pastuerizaion vs raw milk
Why is fruit more expensive than junk food?
In the graf beginning “Ever since 1933″ there is the following:
Which my guess is should be take care of America’s lands…
Kirk says “Even here, the programs are perverted, skewed so that purchase decisions are best for industry, not Americans. Thus the foodstuffs directly purchased by Federal TItle IV dollars and provided as US Govt food assistance are high-calorie industrial foods and processed foods: the worst possible food choices for low-income Americans, seniors, and Native Americans already dying from diet-induced obesity and Type II diabetes.”
Just inexcusable on the government’s part, in a “what are they thinking?” way.
Kirk! Kirk Murphy!
great post. why do I glow in the dark after eating an apple? ;)
do-si-do @ 7
For real????
SnarKassandra @ 9
Nah, but I can “spark” with the best of them…do you know what sparking is?
Kirk, I am posting this from Union of Concerned Scientists, without having read through all of its associated links.
Food and Environment
Hope it is helpful.
do-si-do @ 9
Nope.
Another brilliant expose.
We already know that we have a bought and paid for congress which serves their paymasters.
This won’t be changing no matter how many times we jump up and down, because money runs politics and politics runs money. It’s an endless loop and we get the droppings.
Whether it’s education, agrabiz, MIC, Pharma, Health, Insurance, our congress is owned by these lobbyists.
How can you explain the fact that the polls shows the will of the people and we are continually ignored?
Answer: the will of the people does not matter except to get their votes by Kabuki performances. Once ensconced most of the congress critters are inaccessible, except to lobbyists.
Ever try to meet with your senator or congress critter to do some lobbying?
Hi pups - thanks for reading…
Marion, thanks for your your sharp eyes!
OMG - I’d correct my comment typo - but that’s what my fingers do :{
{when I was a high school year book editor, I had to proofread by reading each line “upwards” from the end…)
Off to fix - back in a flash!
SnarKassandra @ 12
1. go to the junk food/candy aisle.
2. purchase Lifesavers Wintergreen mints. They must be wintergreen ;)
3. find the nearest, darkest place
4. unwrap a mint, place in mouth
5. with lips parted, crunch the mint between your teeth
6. sparks!
you need a partner to witness the fun of sparking. Contests usually held in closets.
Thanks for this important post. Who among the electeds are the powers behind this perverted system?
kirk, I’ve always been flabbergasted by how much cereal costs. It’s in outer space, pricewise. We don’t buy it and have toast or bagels for breakfast instead, or fruit.
When I do buy the rare box, I’m hovering over my kids so they don’t spill any of the “gold”. Finish that! That’s not healthy.
Farming is industrial now.
Factory farming is pretty scary stuff.
And now we have GM foods.
It’s all about money and not nutrition now.
We’ll be eating sawdust soon with artificial flavors.
do-si-do @ 19
Corn flakes are cheap.
do-si-do @ 18
omg, too funny — I’d forgotten about that!
Corporate America, voraciously feeding at the taxpayer trough and posioning the breadbasket of America.
Anyone know how much of a “wind-fall” big agra gets from the ethanol fuel scam?
Ok, everyone - hard-refresh and all comments will be restored.
thanks.
And of course there is Big Soy:
Vegans and animal rights people are pretty informed on what industrial food is all about.
Once you learn about factory farms it’s pretty hard to consume animal products and actually think about what you are eating.
One company recently had to recall millions of pounds of ground beef.
Mad Cow disease is the result of feeding animals to animals. It’s only a matter of time before the shit hits the fan. And they cover up by not inspecting and when they do find out they hush it up.
We’re screwed again.
Clearing out the corner of my shop where the potatoes, carrots, cabbage and beets are stored. Organically grown, with compost and fish fertilizer. This evening we’re making the last batches of salsa, pesto and tomato sauce. One HUGE praying mantis has survived. The ladybugs are all gone from the greenhouse.
Am I smug? No. Happy that we’re able to grow so much of our food organically? Yes. Harvest time is great - the days we’ve been doing it went by quickly. I just realized, I hadn’t been in a Fred Meyer store for two weeks, and that was to buy a headlight for my car.
The pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer companies are totally evil. Dr. Murphy is totally awesome!
Most people in this country don’t know a thing about what they are eating or what is a balanced diet.
For years we had that BS food pyramid. Our foods are loaded with preservatives, dyes and chemicals. Most Americans don’t even care. This isn’t France where eating is about food. Here it’s about empty calories.
Look at all the obesity. It’s from the type of food we are eating.
SnarKassandra @ 19
Outside of slappin’ something on the grill, I can cook… Chex Mix. Period. That’s pretty much it.
And while it draws raves, it *has* gotten to be an expensive treat…
SanderO, do-si-do, perris, jml..thanks so much - I’m blushing.
Great questions, Cassie.
I don’t know about the sourcing of cotton for US militaty uniforms, but the vast majority of (crop commodity payment) subsidized US cotton gets
threefour more subsidies:1) water - pumped though/with Federally subidiszed water projects. For the US cotton crop not directly irrigated by Federal water projects, much of the irrigation water comes from irreplaceable undergound water (like the Ogalla (?sp) in the arid Plains states). So we pay to piss away irrepalcable water on subsidized commodities fo rexport (more on this later).
2) Transport - cotton is transported by bulk carriers dependent on the massive Cirps of Enginers projects.
3) Transport energy - artifically low costs don’t reflect the war machine that grabs it or the gloabl warming it costs us all.
4) Pesticides - feedsotcks from petroleum (see above for subsidies); health care (cancer, infertility., devleopmental disorders, “birth defects”, senility) costs covered by We the People.
_–
Why do fresh foods and veggies cost lest than junk food?
Most US junnk food uses corn (specially high fructose corn syrup).
The farm bill’s artifical subsidies make artificail food ingredients carried in tanker trucks cheaper than fresh food.
raven @ 24
Brasil’s voracious appetite for E-85 is decimating the Amazon Basin to plant sugar cane…!!!
Drive by-ing:
Read Oryx and Crake if you havent.
Bucket O’ Chickin Nubbins!
Look at all the obesity. It’s from the type of food we are eating.
Obesity comes from what we eat? Amazing!
Ed Teller has the right approach, but we all can’t grow the food we eat. We are forced to buy what’s on the grocery shelves.
Slowly, there are appearing some healthier choices. But look at what choices you find in poor neighborhoods or in urban ghettos. Junk Food!
The preference for high-fructose corn syrup over cane sugar amongst the vast majority of American food and beverage manufacturers is largely due to U.S. import quotas and tariffs on sugar. These tariffs significantly increase the domestic U.S. price for sugar, forcing Americans to pay more than twice the world price for sugar, making high-fructose corn syrup an attractive substitute in U.S. markets. For instance, soft drink makers like Coca-Cola use sugar internationally but use high-fructose corn syrup in their U.S. products.
Large corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland lobby for the continuation of these subsidies.[17] Since local and federal laws often put a limit on how much money one particular lobbyist can contribute,[18] ADM’s contributions are often given by numerous smaller entities under the authority of ADM. This is commonly called bundling political contributions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.....corn_syrup
We’re drowning in high fructose corn syrup. Do the risks go beyond our waistline?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....4VKMH1.DTL
perris, your question on pasteurization is quite trenchant.
here in the Bay Area where foodies enjoy small (closed) herds raised on open land (grass-fed, not grain-fed), I know lots of folks who “sponsor” a sheep or cow or goat on an organic farm. The foodies know (and usually go see) the animals - raised in low desnities so infections aren’t an issue, and hence antibiotics aren’t required just to keep ‘em alive.
I drink that non-pasteurized milk - but I wouldn’t drink non-pasteurized milk from factory farms or even grain-fed “organic” diaries.
TO clarify - I’m just describing what I do to answer yor question, not suggesting anyone follow my path.
FWIW
Well, hey, CT!
If we can grow rice in the mojave desert….don’t get me going about the myth of the self sustaining farm!
Dr. Murphy, I am fortunate to have a rather brilliant and well read sister who lives in Florence Italy and is a vegan and animal rights activist. She has given me many books, videos, personal lectures and I have met many in the animal rights movement who are fighting against what industrial foods are doing to the planet.
Agra and Oil are hand in glove.
We raise and slaughter something like 30 billion animals a year for human use. And the conditions which these animals must live their lives is one continuous torture and suffering from birth till slaughter.
The operation of these factory farms, feed lots and slaughter houses is kept out of the media so people cannot see what ends up in plastic wrappers on their grocery shelves and eventually on their plates and in their stomachs.
People would revolt if they knew.
SanderO @ 27
Yep - the consequence of our commodity subsidies is to make the foods with high “glycemic index” values the cheapest food.
The higher the glycemic index, the more likely the food will lead to obesity, diabetes (Type II), and all the predictable health consequences.
Ed*ard Teller @ 26
That’s so cool. How much land does it take to grow enough for your family? My hubby loves to grow food, but we do it kinda sporadically. He grew up in the OC when it really was filled with orange groves. He’s very sentimental about citrus. So we planted a lemon tree which grows very well even here in NoCal.
Antibiotics and Food
snip: ~~~~An estimated 70 percent of antibiotics and related drugs are used for nontherapeutic purposes on animal factory farms, rendering these drugs ineffective when doctors need them to treat sick patients.~~~~
Valley Girl @ 40
Why do they give it to the animals?
OK, just read these comments. Wow what a knowledgable bunch of foul mouthed…
I drove from Amarillo to Dallas a few weeks ago…looking at the “feed lots” along the way; it is obvious why “grain fed beef” makes a person sick. The cattle are packed together, standing and laying in cow shit. Because its is an unhealthy environment, they are given latest generation antibiotics so they don’t get sick but they make resistant bacteria. We then eat cow shit in our burgers. It’s truly amazing that more people aren’t made sick or die.
do-si-do @ 36
Hydroponics works…!!! I’m enjoying the ALCS now…!!!
And we are drowning in antibiotics which are poured into feed lots as preventative measures against disease.
Imagine trying to do a Frontline expose on PBS about big Aga with ADM as the underwriter of the PBS system? hahaha.. never gonna happen. Nevah
Kirk James Murphy, M.D. @ 35
I am not an expert but this is exactly my “gut” guidance on this as well. If you know where the milk came from, great. If not, pasteurized milk, please.
Is it true babies can get sick if their mom eats food that’s bad for them?
SnarKassandra @ 47
Do you mean before they are born or when they are nursing?
That’s it. I’m buying my meat from the 4-H kids at the fair next year.
A good book to learn about the horror of the American food industry is:
John Robbins: Diet for a New America
raven @ 48
nursing
SnarKassandra @ 51
Yes,actually yes to both. My wife is a lactation consultant and she has informed me greatly.
Haven’t you heard of babies born crack addicted?
A pregnant women’s diet will affect the birth weight and health of her baby.
Sander O @ #33 - But look at what choices you find in poor neighborhoods or in urban ghettos. Junk Food!
Many ghetto or low income neighborhoods abut neighborhoods with ethnic markets, where, in season, you can find better deals that at any food store. More and more neighborhood markets are featuring organic foods. We found organic basil in Des Moines WA this summer for about $5.00 for a huge bag.
Dosido @ #39 - if you count our two greenhouses, the berry patches and the main garden, we have almost a half acre on which we grow food. If we used an acre, we would have a small surplus - for about three people. The kids come and go.
Breakfast “cereals” are a great example of “value-added” processed food. Compared to the cost of ingredients, the shelf price is a total rip-off: hence the “value” for Big Kellogg/General Mills.
The least expensive breakfast cereals I know come from natural food stores’ “bulk” section.
The leat expensiv eway I know to have cereals (grains) on hand is to buy 6 or 12 half-gallon Ball Jars and a case or two of quart jars - then go to the natrual; foods/health foods store and get different forms of oats, wheat, and other cereals. Whole grains to flous - then I’m set to go with baking, warm “cereals”, etc.
Total cost for five cases worth of organic, US produced glass/grains/flours/corn flakes/granola?
$40 (glass - reuseable)
$10-15 (grains, cereal etc)
do-si-do @ 17
Ed*ard Teller @ 54
There is a Des Moines WA. The stuff I learn on the lake!
SanderO @ 53
I didn’t mean crack. Just junk food and candy and stuff.
ET,
This may be true in CA, but not in the Bronx or Brooklyn or Newark.
There are ethnic foods, but few organically grown.
But we are seeing more organic foods in commercial purveyors now more and more, but at very high prices. At least it is becoming accessible in more and more neighborhoods.
In NYC all the poor neighborhoods pay HIGHER prices for staples and get the oldest foods. That’s a fact. Go to any bodega in NYC and you can see for yourself.
It turns out, Des Moines, WA is on Puget Sound, prime real estate!
raven @ 48
When I was growing up the concern was nuclear fallout in the food chain, esp Sr90 and Iodine isotopes and now its bacteria and chemicals. Ah, for the simpler times of the 50’s
SnarKassandra @ 57
Cassie everything that the baby gets come through the placenta which is linked to the mother’s blood stream which is where all she eats ends up when digested. Have you studied how digestion works in school?
There is a Des Moines WA. The stuff I learn on the lake!
I think it is pronounced Dez Moinez too.
SanderO @ 62
But i was asking about what comes into the breast milk.
Kirk and others interested in this, another link from Union of Concerned Scientists:
Genetic engineering
snip ~~~During the past decade, biotechnology companies commercialized the first generation of genetically engineered crops—primarily corn, soybeans, and cotton altered to control insects and weeds. U.S. commodity crop producers responded by planting millions of acres of these engineered crops. Because corn and soy are widely used in food processing, small amounts of engineered ingredients show up in a majority of processed food products.~~~~
The brain is one odd place in the human body because there exists something called the blood brain barrier. This prevents many chemicals or drugs from entering the brain. But the rest of the body has no such gate keeper to whatever is suspended / carried in the blood.
SanderO @ 62
She’s in Texas, they probably don’t let them teach that kind of stuff in school!
The story of George Clooney’s new movie, advertised above, is big, poisonous agra.
When I was in college our library was named “Olin” and we had Mansanto also on campus, among other corporations. I think we had some of the first divestiture demonstrations anywhere then, in the early ’70s.
SanderO wrote:
“Vegans and animal rights people are pretty informed on what industrial food is all about.”
Fat chance. In fact, such people choose to be ignorant about how many animals suffer and die to bring them their “cruelty-free” food, including organic. Offer a vegan a choice between organic rice and wild game, and the vegan will choose the one that causes orders of magnitude more animal suffering/calorie every time.
“Once you learn about factory farms it’s pretty hard to consume animal products and actually think about what you are eating.”
Once you learn about factory farms, why wouldn’t you consume animal products that weren’t produced by factory farms? And what about the factory farms (including organic ones) that produce vegetables?
“Mad Cow disease is the result of feeding animals to animals.”
Probably not. It almost certainly was propagated that way, but just like human prion diseases, it probably occurs spontaneously at a frequency of about one in a million.
Breast milk is produced from nutrients in the blood stream. It can be contaminated I believe. Dr Murphy will know that.
Kirk, thanks for the tip on bulk cereal. good idea. :)
I once said that here that growing food for fuel is immoral. The Ethanol program, using corn to produce ethanol, is an example of corporate and political corruption. It costs more in fuel, than is produced, while using valuable land and water and chemicals.
This is not just tax payer subsidized corporate fraud. This wasteful program has caused the price of corn to rise steeply. The poorest people get punished by having higher food costs. THIS IS IMMORAL.
John @ 69
I’m having trouble following what you are saying?
SnarKassandra -
the mothers diet during pregnancy can cause defects & development of the fetus. Folic acid is crutial to prevent spina bifida[defect of the spine] and low protein intake during pregnancy can impact on multiple symptoms.
Then you add infant formula from China which is fake, mothers so poor that they depute the formula short changing the baby. It was seeing a 6 month infant with soda pop in the baby bottle that nearly sent me over the edge.
Several years ago I worked for IFAS (Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences) for the University of Florida in Gainesville. I was conducting fungicide experiments for U of F in conjunction with UC Davis on strawberries and tomatoes. My job was about procuring U.S. fungicide licenses for foreign companies peddling various fungicides. It was a soft money grant job financed with monies from the U. S. and overseas. This, incidentally, is a very common practice.
Factory farming is to Mad Cow Disease as sharing needles is to Aids.
SnarKassandra @ 41
Once again Cassie - great question.
Any pups who ever had diarrhea (the runs) after taking antibiotics (abx) saw - or wiped - the answer.
Our stools (doctor talk for shit) are over 50% bacteria.
Each little bacteria doesn’t each much - but together, they eat something.
The feedlots - places where cattle are fattened up (unnaturally) on grains - calculated that cattle given antibiotics will fatten up faster than cattle (pigs. chickens, etc) raised without antibiotics.
So the feedlots dump antibiotics (most of them related to the abx used for humans) into Industrial Meat/Poultry.
As discussed recently here, almost 80% of your poultry and the majority of your meat is contaminated with fecal (intestinal) bacteria from animal shit smeared around the packing houses.
The antibiotics kill most of the bacteria, but the surviviors of the abx progroms survive ’cause the abx don’t kill them: they carry gense fo rresistance to that abx.
So will all of their children - so when yo or your family come to ER sick from the animal-shit derived E Coli, Salmonella, et al contaminating your food -
The antibiotics we docs and nurses provide often fail - we’re treating bugs that acquire antibiotic resistance on the feedlot.
Better living through Industrial Agriculture.
SanderO @ 62
Actually, it is incorrect that every thing the mother eats (when digested) ends up in the mother’s blood stream. Have You studied how digestion works? Because, if you have, you got a pretty simplistic view.
Oh, and Cassie, breast tissue is also like a magnet for carcinogens and un-healthy fats, etc.
I like butter, but the butterfat from cows is really loaded with bad chemicals. I eat organic butter, and not much of it. But I pay extra for organic, mainly because animal fats (and breast milk is full of these) do become the repositories for the bad chemicals, and not just from what we eat. What we breathe is also dangerous. For breasts/milk.
I gotta just let this out. I tried to google for it, I tried You Tube, nothing! I’m warning you…get ready…it’s the milk commercial!
Time for Milk
Anytime is the
right time for milk
A glass of milk
Any time at all.
Anytime! Anytime’s the right time.
Pour a glass,
a glass real tall
It’s time that you had a ball
cuz any time at all
is the time for milk
paid for by the California Milk Advisory Board.
Phew! I feel better now.
I look forward to learning more about this — infuriating as it will be — because while I’m eager to put pressure on congress critters (rep & senate) I have no clue what I should pressure them *for*!
Although, it seems to me that this is another example of why legislation needs to be broken down into concrete parts without bits and pieces tucked inside every corner…!
Wouldn’t want to dismantle food programs for school children, for example, while reducing the Cargills to actual working shills…
katymine @ 74
My mom nursed me until I was 2. No formula. Yes soda. Soda was one of my first words.
Do-si-do @15, on wintergreen mint ’sparking. It’s due to a phenomenon called ‘triboluminescence’. Light due to rubbing. No lewd jokes now, if you please. I’m actually at a meeting in Chicago this weekend of geologists, physicists, and archaeologists using a luminescence effect of radiation dose to determine the age of sediment formations in geology and of archaeological sites. (Thermally- and optically-stimulated luminescence dating methods, just so you know).
There once was a ‘Peanuts’ strip about triboluminescence, a very nifty thing to see.
Related: One thing Monsanto does is engineer crops that do not produce seed. In other words, if you plant this crop, you will not get seeds from it and you will have to go back to Monsanto for more. Aaaaaaaannnnndddd (no surprise here) these crops tend to take over nearby crops, so if your neighbor starts to use ‘em you might find your own crops affected once cross pollination occurs.
I consider this a crime against nature, and it should be absolutely prohibited…
Cassie, I missed yor precise question o n breas tmilk - could yo please repeat it?
Oh - and pups - we’re all equal here. I use my title with the food/health/eco posts ’cause physicians have had a unique role in public health at least since Snow took the pump handle off and quelled cholera in a neighborhood…
but please - just call me Kirk. Like Hawkeye Pierce said “that’s my name.”
katymine @ 74
You said it, sister.
BTW, we have a city close to us whose water system does not supply floridation (am I spelling that right?) Kids in this city get horrible cavities.
It amazes me how even here with educated mothers, they will put the baby down with a bottle of apple juice.
Snarks, anything that goes into the mother’s system affects the baby. Even hair color. There was a very controversial anti smoking ad that showed the fetus smoking. I hope that is not too strong a message for you and that I am not in trouble with your very kind aunt. ;)
VJB @ 83
omg! I’m not that smart but now I’ll sound like it…triboluminescence. I like it.
be sure to pack some Wintergreens.
LOL.
I can’t speak for people who choose to be ignorant.