More than Meat

Some people believe that due to all of the growth hormones that industrial farming puts into our cows and subsequently the food that most commonly finds its way to the supermarket shelves us Americans shop at, we unfortunately ingest these hormones along with other drugs and antibiotics that arguably have negative health affects, and are definitely unnatural to our bodies. Humans are not meant to eat genetically enhanced, drug cocktail formula fed cows inhumanely kept on feed lots filling their faces with corn feed, with the drugs mixed in to keep them alive and make them grow faster. Their bodies were never meant for this way of life; that is why the cows are always sick and need to have the antibiotics in the first place to survive. They were never meant to eat corn, but instead their stomachs were designed to eat grass. Just like cows we’re never meant to live under these conditions, living in the way we do eating the food we eat. As you can see, the system we depend on is not working, and is soon to collapse. Everything is over worked and over pumped with drugs to keep them going in the face of negative consequences.

Over-population is a subsequent cause of this unethical system of factory farming, nitrogen based fertilizers, and feed-lots where cows are stuffed with corn filled with drugs to keep them alive in such inadequate conditions. In my Evolutionary Psychology class we discussed how there is evidence of females having their periods at much earlier ages. We also learned that ovulation is coupled with a high caloric intake. Americans are especially good at this. “Women with sufficient stores of fat are not only reproductively viable earlier, but if is maintained will also be reproductively viable longer” (Gallup). Yes, growth hormones in our food may arguably be a factor of this, but regardless, the obscene availability of food we have simply grown accustomed to, is also a part of the over-population problem. Clearly, the more food made available by this system of nitrogen based fertilizers, and corn fed cows, the more people can eat and the more babies can be made, however even this system has its limits as we are finding out. Not to mention, the food that make its way to our super market shelves that we are eating is unhealthy and unnatural. Sure, there is a lot of it, and it is definitely high in calories, however high in ‘empty’ calories. The food we eat fills us up and leaves us weak. Apart from the drugs, cases of E. coli are also much more prevalent from the Industrial food chain. It is not even clean. The other much healthier food chain we can obtain our food from according to Gary Kleppel our guest speaker, is from the conventional food chain. This consists of produce and livestock farmed and produced right in our backyards. Local farming is a far better solution to supplying food to communities than current industrial systems. Local farming is more humane, cleaner, healthier, as well as even closer, a very important factor. Our food cost is based primarily on the distance the food has to travel to get to us. Our food is generally transported over long distances in trucks before it ever gets onto our plate. According to Kleppel, the more time your food sits in a truck, the fewer nutrients it contains. Also, local farming completely eliminates the need for this transportation, which accounts for a lot of the fuel burned and CO2 emitted into our environment. Local farming also promotes closer-knit closer, bonded communities something I am very fond of. With a community all working together on the same bandwagon, the results are phenomenal as we saw was the case in the movie about Cuba, and their encounter with the power shortage.

The industrial food chain is a major pollution producer, as oppose to that of the conventional system which is carbon sequestering. I feel that it is not a hard decision at all to switch over to the conventional system. I have a high respect for the local farmers, growing up around farmers myself when I was younger in New Jersey. My grandparents owned a tree nursery, and their best friends and neighbors, owned a horse farm. It may not be the best smell, but I love the smell and feel of a farm, it is so natural and right; Freedom from the materialistic mainstream society. Hard-work and raw nature something everyone should experience once.

References

1) Speaker Gary Kleppel

2) Evolutionary Psychology Prof. Gordon Gallup