Terrible Cruelty to Animals
 

After seeing this, I will never eat at Chick-Fil-A. Unfortunately I'm sure plenty of other chicken places are just as bad. I think I will try to avoid chicken altogether. I'll stick to vegetables and fish.

http://www.chickfilacruelty.com/

This was in interesting article in the latest edition of National Geographic. Primarily as it points out that the conversation of grass fed beef vs. feed lot beef is not that cut and dry. When it comes down to the two choices, one is actually less taxing on the environment, while the other is better for your health. If you do eat meat and your primary concern is for the health and humane treatment of the animals, eating feed lot beef is actually more humane than conventional chicken farming.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/meat/

The article actually presents a case that grass-fed may be at least as ecologically sound as feedlot:

"The guru of the movement is a Zimbabwean scientist named Allan Savory, who says that managed grazing can draw huge amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere—a controversial claim. But the ranchers I met all swore that managed grazing had transformed their pastures. The beef they’re producing is less economically efficient than feedlot beef, but in some ways it’s better ecologically. They aren’t using pharmaceuticals in feed. They aren’t extracting nutrients in the form of corn from heavily fertilized soil in Iowa, shipping them up to a thousand miles on 110-car trains, and piling them up as manure in Texas. Instead their cattle are building and maintaining a landscape."

Absolutely grass-fed is less economically efficient and also absolutely the best choice, from an environmental perspective, is to eat less meat in general, but there's an ecological argument to be made for grass-fed, also.

That was a fascinating article; thank you so much for linking to it!

And it's been no secret about how chickens are kept in factory farms. Whenever someone starts to talk to me about cruelty in horse racing, if they're very obnoxious, I inquire if they are vegetarian, because, even at its worst, the treatment of equine sport athletes doesn't come close to the cruelties inflicted on food animals. Pigs are also treated atrociously.

Just check in to whether the fish is a sustainable species. ;) Tilapia is usually a pretty good choice; matures quickly and can be farmed with relatively little environmental damage.

I prefer grass fed beef myself, but the argument regarding environment does not entirely sway in its favor:
Here’s the inconvenient truth: Feedlots, with their troubling use of pharmaceuticals, save land and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Latin American beef, according to the FAO, produces more than twice as many emissions per pound as its North American counterpart—because more of the cattle are on pasture, and because ranchers have been cutting down so much rain forest to make pastures and cropland for feed. Faced with the staggering problem of meeting rising global demand for meat, “feedlots are better than grass fed, no question,” says Jason Clay, a food expert at WWF. “We have got to intensify. We’ve got to produce more with less.”

Nat Geo has been doing a series of articles like this for the past few months. Definitely worth reading. They also discuss farmed fish in one of the articles. :eek:



I wouldn't touch tilapia...

I think humans need to come to grips with reproduction, and the fact that resources are finite.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...onment-ngfood/

better late than never. soil day was the 5th.

you know, people in general find history boring. i love it...and you'd think enough would study it to learn from it. but, we don't.
the romans knew full well that lead was deadly-they used it anyway, not caring that the mining of lead killed the peasants extracting it-because, who cares about some peasants. they used it in plumbing (chemical sympol PB-plumbum, latin for lead) because it was cheap and easily workable.
not long ago, the oil industries fought tooth and nail to keep lead in gas-the main reason to use lead? to stop the knocking in engines. they argued that since lead is 'natural' it can't be harmful-a type of 'logic' used by michele bachmann not long ago in talking about carbon dioxide.
now, last i checked, we still only have one livable planet. so, if we keep mucking it up-well, where's everyone going to go?

The only thing the food companies care about is profit. They want to make as much money as they can and they don't care how they do it or what the repercussions are. If they found a way to grow food in 30 seconds but it caused cancer, I'm sure they would do it any way (if they thought they could get away with it).

Europe bans horse meat from Mexico.

http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-raci...at-from-mexico

The Zoo of Death :(

Just horrific that this place remains open. Poor animals.


http://www.myfascinating.com/they-ca...e-shut-down-7/