WATER WE DOING? II

Why keep picking on California (below)? There's plenty of water woes to go around. The AP reports that wells all over Nebraska are drying up, and "The situation is forcing farmers and city-dwellers to compete over every drop of groundwater." Huh. You know, it's a funny coincidence, but... what's Nebraska's top export? Yes, it's "live animals and red meats" -- to the tune of $1.0 billion. Keeping in mind that animal-based food takes ten to a hundred times as much water to produce as plant-based food, please also note that four of the state's top five exports are expressly dedicated to the raising of livestock. Nebraska, in fact, has the second largest cattle industry in America. And as our country infects the rest of the planet with wasteful and waste-filled agricultural practices, it's no wonder that 76 million people - mostly children - are projected to die from water-related diseases by the year 2020. I guess by then we'll have perfect hindsight.

WATER WE DOING?

The Wall Street Journal (via MSNBC) reports on Orange County's massive construction of a water purification system so they can get going on drinking their own (treated) sewage as tap water. This would be tragic if it weren't so funny - because there's plenty of water in California; it's just that half of it goes toward FEEDING LIVESTOCK, and of the half that's left, a great deal of it (especially Orange County's) is POISONED by LIVESTOCK WASTE by the time it comes out into your drinking glass. "State and federal inspectors suspect that a majority of California's 2,400 dairies are illegally allowing manure to pollute water," sez the LA Times, by way of example.
So cry me a river as wide as the Rhine: If Californians - and other Americans - would stop being so childishly greedy about nuances of taste, and cut way back on the number of feedlots and dairies in the state, clean water would be quite a bit more plentiful. Plant agricultre uses only a fraction of the water of animal agriculture. And this way, everybody wins. Except, of course, for losers.
And if you only take away one fact from today, remember, cryptosporidium is just another word for ... animal ... feces.
Thankyouverymuch.

THE KIDNEY TAX

I won't wade into the new "Now we're REALLY confused about what to eat!" syndrome surrounding the NYT Magazine's misleading and recklessly biased cover story alleging that Atkins and his lo-carb hi-protein snake-oil brethren have achieved some kind of nutritional credibility, except to point out the indisputable: These diets are bad for your long-term health, ergo bad nutrition. I'll only point to one of the many stories detailing the effects (here it's taxed kidneys and weakened bones) of such reckless eating patterns, but it seems a new one comes out every couple weeks.

AUTISM & ANIMAL PROTEIN

The last day of Summerfest a friend came up to me and said she had a contender "for your blog." That's the first time someone's said that to me - though I've said it to myself many times. Anyway, the item was a good one (thanks!): this rather basic story from ABC news on searches for ways to treat autism, one that mentions a possible trigger. Taking one autistic boy off of cow's milk got him talking again. Hello? Parents, did you ever stop to wonder why you have to keep after kids to drink milk? Maybe there's a reason they don't like it. The London Times Magazine seems to think so - they did a report on milk which was appropriately and rather directly entitled, "Is there a time bomb in your diet?"

A DANGEROUS POSSIBIITY

Rick Berman (below) and his ilk are trying real hard not to pay attention to the troubling developments in the CWD epidemic. CNN asks if it's jumped from animals to humans, and an NIH scientist says there's a study needed to learn if humans can carry the disease. John Stauber, the author of Mad Cow USA, says simply, 'I think CWD can kill people.' Well, unless you're the head of a "foundation" whoring yourself out to tobacco fatcats to maintain the junk-culture status quo, you can probably see that even the slim possibility of this, given our lack of knowledge about these interrelated brain-wasting diseases, is something we need to look at verrrrrry carefully and thoroughly.
Remember, you can't spell "TSE" without "transmissible."

BLOWING SMOKE

What do Joe Eszterhas and his recent near-deathbed conversion to the anti-smoking cause have to do with Meat Facts? For one thing, Joe's admission that "I told those lies" paints a clear picture of how easy it is to defraud and victimize people as long as you're not on the short end of it. But there's a more specific connection: Rick Berman's so-called Center for Consumer Freedom was founded on money from Philip Morris, (at least $900,000) whom Berman begged for help to fight "attacks from anti-smoking, anti-drinking, anti-meat, etc. activists." The joke's on PM: These days, the CFCF doesn't talk much about that wonderful "freedom to smoke" - but it's in quite a lather over the first Fast-Food lawsuit, brought by the same legal team that initiated the first anti-smoking lawsuits. Predictably, Berman bends over backward to ridicule anti-meat sentiment, as in this sparkling essay assuring us that lettuce, not animal feces, is the hidden source of deadly E.Coli.
But the reason I bring all this up is because of the recent "Quorn" brouhaha. The attacks by CSPI on the safety of Quorn are completely consistent with their somewhat alarmist history, yet I had an inkling that this "Nanny Culture" (Berman's favorite phrase) crusade to demonize a consumer product, to REMOVE consumers' CHOICE to decide what is or isn't safe for them, would not get one peep of criticism from Berman, because in this case, it's a vegetarian product. Feel free to search the CFCF site for any mention of the word. Meanwhile, Rick, maybe you should have a talk with Joe - before it's too late.

LISTERIA HYSTERIA

Hey, remember those hot dogs Sara Lee sold, knowing they were tainted with listeria - the ones that killed 20 people outright and sickened more than a hundred? (Don't worry, the company had to pay a whopping $200,000 for causing all those deaths!) Looks like other companies have seen the light - the green light - to go ahead and freely dump Listeria-filled animal products on the nation's consumers. Just in the past couple weeks, that includes separate recalls involving more hot dogs, sausage products, pork loaf, chicken salad - sorry, I mean, A TON of chicken salad, cheesecake, and plain ol' cheese.
Listeria - not a very nice word, but at least it sounds better than "feces," eh?

MEAT FACTS IS BACK -- WAYYY BACK!

The staff of Meat Facts has returned from vacation. If you notice links to stuff that's a week or so older than the posting date, well, that's why.

MEAT FACTS IS OFF -- WAYYYY OFF!

Off on vacation, that is, as of tomorrow morning. So sit tight for a week or two and we'll see what "piles" up in the meantime.

'HAMBURGER MEAT IS A TOXIC SUBSTANCE'

This observation comes from the St. Petersburg Times, which notes in yesterday's editorial that while irradiaton is being pushed as The Answer to fecal contamination, the solution is really "for Congress to force the meat industry to clean up its act, and its product. And it would be better for the meat industry to stop fighting such reforms if it wants to retain any credibility." Meanwhile, over at USA Today, an Op-Ed by Joan Claybrook puts it more succinctly: "People do not want to eat meat contaminated with fecal matter -- even if it has been irradiated."

CONAGRA: LET THEM EAT FECES

It's hard to say which is more amazing - the incompetence of the USDA or the arrogance of Conagra (and its ilk). Even while House and Senate Democrats are grandstanding about the USDA's ridiculous 100-day delay in issuing a recall, the Chicago Tribune reports that ConAgra won't give samples of the E.Coli strain on the beef in question to THE CDC, so the government agency can do its job of tracking who's getting sick from this stuff. No siree, that's "private property!" (Reminds me of "Salmonella's good for you! from 7/13.) What other industry could get away with such blatant, anti-consumer, criminal stonewalling? This makes Bill Gates look like a damn teddy bear! If this aspect of the story gets picked up at all, it could give this whole issue legs like it never had before. And the people who are slapping their knees over the first "fast-food lawsuit" will perhaps realize it's not so funny when someone refuses to tell you what kind of poison they've put in your food.

I'LL JUST SWITCH TO FISH II

Another clue that our obsession with eating animals does damage: The big scary voracious walking fish that just got banned was imported why? To be eaten, of course! Meanwhile, if you're pregnant or live in New Jersey, you - as well as everybody else with a lick of sense - had better not eat those scaly creatures. You may as well just crack open a thermometer and guzzle it. But here's the kicker - if you're deluding yourself into thinking fish is desirable because it's rich in Omega-3 fatty acids, you have a choice of eating large amounts of toxins, as above, in wild fish, or eating the much safer farmed fish. Except farmed fish are a lousy source of Omega-3s, essentially for the same reason they're a poor source of toxins. One way or another, you gotta throw out the fish with the bathwater.

MMMMMMM...IRRADIATED FECES!

Still not convinced that the USDA is more corrupt than Enron? How 'bout this item: They convened focus groups to see if they could get away with calling irratiated food "pasteurised" and met with a resounding 'NO' - then ignored the results and pretended TO CONGRESS that the research hadn't happened, in order to get such a provision into the farm bill. Gosh, last time I heard, lying to congress was a pretty serious offense.
But the bigger joke is that we have warm, fuzzy feelings about the word "pasteurization" and don't want it debased this way, when it's basically simply a way to cook fecal matter in milk to the point that bacteria won't spread so much. As the CDC notes in its pro-irradiation pep-talk, milk ... sickened and killed consumers by the thousands a century ago, before pasteurization took hold. By what means did it sicken & kill 'em? Besides tuberculosis, it often carried Listeria, Campylobacter, Yersinia, Salmonella, Staphylococcus, and ... you guessed it ... Escherichia coli. Yeesh, let's zap that stuff!

HEAT IS BUILDING ON CORRUPT USDA

Now that the feces-laced beef has sickened 26 people in five states, newspaper editorials across the country are waking up to the plain signs of corruption in our government agency in charge of animal agriculture. In this one from the Chicago Tribune, one reform advocate says "I have never seen such clear evidence of the USDA ignoring inspectors trying to do the right thing."

MEAT & BRAIN-WASTING DISEASES LINKED

Study after study is now confirming that eating less meat and more fruits & veggies DECREASES the chance of Alzheimers. Or to put it another way, eating more meat and less fruits & veggies INCREASES that chance. (We won't go into the whole tangent on cholesterol-lowering drugs, and how you only need those if you consume cholesterol in the first place.) But it is worth noting that some commentators have suggested Mad Cow may already have struck in the U.S. and been misdiagnosed as Alzheimers. The two brain-wasting diseases have a fascinating, and scary, amount in common. Something to think about - while you're still able to think.

MEAT RECALL TURNS MASSIVE

The ConAgra beef recall already mentioned several time here has become front page news as the USDA has expanded it to 19 million pounds of beef in 21 states, the second largest recall ever. And while the public in general yawns and turns the page, some (non-vegetarian) watchdogs are finally saying enough is enough - Stop Putting Corporate Profits and Corporate Secrecy Ahead of Public Health!

KILL 'EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT 'EM OUT

...whaddaya mean God didn't sort 'em out? Oh, uh... gee... now what do we do? Another illustration of how the "toilet assumption" works against our ability to think intelligently about our food sources.

I'LL JUST SWITCH TO FISH...

Got fish? Yeah, that's a healthy alternative. Folks, it's this simple. Animal fat, the thing that's so good at trapping those vitamins and minerals we love, also inevitably traps pollutants - at rates exponentially higher than plants. It doesn't matter if you dance from beef to chicken to fish - no matter what animal product it is, in addition to everything else you get from it, you're going to be piling on the toxins!

MEAT FACTS CLAIMS FIRST VICTORY

The USDA read my blog from Monday (and probably its entire one-week archive) and responded quickly. They're now promising to tell suppliers RIGHT AWAY, instead of 12 days later, when they find e. coli - i.e. feces - on meat that's going out to consumers. And then they acted even more quickly, finally letting us know about e.coli-carring fecal material in meat that was slaughtered back in FEBRUARY. Mmmmmm, that's some tasty crap! ...but at least the USDA making some noise. See if it gets followed by any consequence.

ALL SHE ATE WAS A MEATBALL - AND IT NEARLY KILLED HER

"We nearly lost her," said Marcel Rodriguez as he held his 2-year-old daughter's
tiny hand Thursday at Children's Hospital. "All she ate was a meatball." This is from that ConAgra recall I pointed to in an earlier post ("Got Chubs?"). Turns out USDA had found e-coli infected meat weeks before but didn't tell anyone, because - and this, they admit, is the reason - they didn't want to do any damage to the company. So instead, a couple dozen people have been made violently ill and parents have watched their young children almost die. Gotta have those priorities!