Is Our Meat and Poultry Toxic?

Did you think the very low prices you pay were god given ? You are eating an industrialized horror show.

 

No, it is not safer to be at Fukushima.
As for eating animals grown in factories, open your eyes and take responsibility for your choices. If you do not like being a chemical and antibiotic laden, cholesterol plugged time bomb then make different diet choices.

Hopefully you are not now going to say the gubmint has to do something ?

 

This would sum up our agricultural, envirnomental and industial policies for the last 30 years!
Or is that 130 years???

 

Drug resistant staph is out in the wild (outside hospitals). I came down with a MRSA infection at a surgical drain tube about a week after I was out of the hospital.

Fortunately the Doctor took a culture and they tested it to see which anti-biotic combination would knock it out. While I was waiting 48 hours for the culture to be completed, they gave me their best guess of a strong anti-biotic and it acted like food for the infection.

It is essential that they take a culture and test to see what works on your particular MRSA infection, guessing isn't good enough any more.

 

Issue 1: Poultry more often hosts bacteria since its Ph is not in a range to help prevent the bacteria from setting up residence for very long. This is surface bacteria, usually, and can be washed off easily. Complete cooking should remove any residual risk, unless it is a funky piece, in which case you probably wouldn't want to eat it for the smell. Beef is better at resisting bacteria on its surface, and becomes a big problem usually only when it is ground (thus increasing surface area exponentially) - hence most food borne illness incidents with beef involve hamburger.

2. Most bacteria will live for perhaps 4 hours on an artificial or non-animal surface, like your kitchen floor, and even less on wood (which has natural antiseptic properties) unless, of course, there is a lot of schmootz on the surface for the things to live on.

3. Anyway, assuming that chicken you were about to eat had some vile bug on it, the floor would be the last of your worries.

 

Or in my case, the dog's worries. Most errant food particles don't get the chance to hit the floor. On the rare occasion that she finds something genuinely bad, it comes right back out and she's fine within moments. I wish my digestive system worked that well.

 

Not only meat, but vegetables and fruits are grown using pesticides, herbicides, and chemicals. If it's the regular non-organic variety, then chances are they are full of them.

Most of the vegetables and fruit we grow are clones or almost genetically identical. It is ripe for insects, mold, fungi, bacterial diseases, viruses, etc. We fight them with poison. Many insects are vectors for the bacterial, mold, fungus, viruses, etc. Organic farming uses naturally occurring poisons to control these pests. Non-organic farming sometimes use synthetic versions of these poisons, in combination with natural things like copper (fungi), to combat the pests and diseases.

Some of the non-organic controls can be sprayed right up to harvest. Others you have to stop a few days before harvest to prevent harm to Humans.

Some organic controls include:
Spinosad
Pyrethrin
BT and BTi (beneficial bacteria)
Insecticidal Soap
Neem Oil
Diatomaceous Earth
Sulfur
Borax / Boric Acid
Ladybugs

OK, so in my experience, the only thing that kinda works like magic is Spinosad. It's kinda expensive. The others still take a ton of applications & patience. Some of them still harm things like honey bees.

Many GM food crops are made by Monsanto to be resistant to Roundup. They insert a gene that makes Roundup ineffective. They call them roundup-ready. The seeds are patented. Roundup is Monsanto's trade name for Glyphosate, a synthetic chemical that only acts in the metabolic pathway of plants, and prevents the synthesis of some essential amino acids.

One nasty product is Ironite. It is an iron supplement. Don't use it on food, because it is made from the waste product of an old mine. It contains lots of heavy metals, such as lead and arsenic. These things are not water soluble and accumulate in the soil over time, and can become bioavailable by bacteria and other natural processes, and absorbed by plants. I suppose it is ok to green up lawns.

It's almost impossible to grow cheap food without using these synthetic chemicals.

 

Why do you hate plants? Did they do something bad to you when you were a child?



Tom

 

At this point in my life, I'm fairly convinced that pesticide residue in food, along with chemicals calling themselves "food" (artificial sweeteners that began life as pesticides, for instance), is the foundation that has resulted in Fibromyalgia - at least for me.

I'm pretty careful to eat only organic fruits and veggies, non-GMO grains, and I have avoided nutra-ant killer for several years now. Yes, I am surrounded by chemicals and other factors that continuously try to undermine my health, but what I eat and drink, at least, is under my control.

 

For those without degrees in science, schmootz is stuff you find on dirty floors

My cats do the same thing

Oh, I'm just waiting for you to slip on that banana, take out your back, and wind up in the hospital

 

Yes, it is toxic. Who knows what these animals are fed. Buy organic meat and diary as much as you can. Even vegetables. Search online for the vegetables and fruits that contains the most pesticides ("dirty dozen"), and at least buy those ones organic.

I think the we have gotten so used to using chemicals on our food, it is very difficult to know what is good and what is not. For example, the word "organic" doesn't necessarily mean it is organic. It means it is legally organic.

I am a bio scientist. It takes years to find out how artificial chemicals (or even altering our own chemical composition in the cells) can affect us. I say grow your own food if you can. Even if that means growing spinach on a pot on the balcony of an apartment complex. Like I do. Shoot your own turkey.

I don't eat meat. When I purchase diary products (which is rare), I try to buy "organic".

 

We are members of a co-op and get a bin of fresh organic farm produce bi-weekly. We cook and eat whatever the farmers have for us that week. It's freaking awesome. The taste is so good, we don't want to go back to the old way of eating again. (ironically, this "new" way is in fact the "old school" way)

The co-op also has a storefront where we can go to buy other organic stuff like milk, eggs, honey, poultry, beef, etc. All the member farms are certified organic and you can arrange to visit them if you wish. It's on our to do list.

We hardly go to a regular grocery store anymore, only for small things like bread and cheese. And since there's a new Whole Foods nearby, we still can get other organic foods there as well.

Because it is more expensive, we also become more judicious in how much stuff we buy. We now buy less, eat less, and enjoy our food more. Win win.

 

This whole discussion ought to be a ground swell to enlighten families everywhere to consider backyard gardening. Very few remember Victory Gardens from WWII, but I do remember my grandparents gardens and chickens all of which raised without herbicides, pesticides, injecticides and other chemicals. My grandparents slaved in their gardens not because they demanded organic products, rather they couldn't afford to buy produce.

I'd be curious to know how many Prius owners tend a backyard plot of veggies, versus non-Prius owners. For the past few years, I've planted an assortment of veggies and herbs, savoring flavors and aromas as each comes into season.

FHOP needs a good gardening thread to organically unite newbies, wanna-be's and pros alike while they wait for the wax to dry on their Prius. Maybe we could even trade heirloom seeds.

 

Now there's an idea. You should start one.

My wife's already said absolutely not to chickens, even though I've checked it out and we're actually legal for it. But we're both keen on gardening - I'd say we've reached our limit of pretty flowers and shrubs, and should now focus on food crops.