(NaturalNews) Remember all the hubbub about the S.510 "Food Safety Bill" and how it would make your food safe to eat? Well, it turns out those expanded FDA powers do absolutely nothing to even address the safety of fresh meat products, and yet new research reveals that
nearly half of all fresh meat and poultry products are contaminated with potentially deadly bacteria, including multiple drug-resistant
superbugs (
http://www.naturalnews.com/032099_poultry_superbugs.html).
This research was conducted by the
Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and published in the journal
Clinical Infectious Diseases. It was based on 136 samples of fresh
meat representing 80 different brands sold in 26 grocery
stores from California to Florida.
The
research reveals that
factory animal farms are breeding grounds for drug-resistant bacteria which are then passed on to humans through
the food supply. This happens because factory farm
animals are routinely dosed with both
antibiotics and vaccines, causing serious imbalances in their own intestinal flora and immune function. This makes these factory farm animals the perfect hosts for breeding drug-resistant
superbugs such as
S. aureus, a particularly nasty strain that can be fatal if ingested.
It's yet another reason to buy
free-range beef, chicken or pork if you eat those meats, by the way. Only free-range animals that are not injected with antibiotics are
safe from the kind of chemical
abuse routinely used in factory farm
operations.
The S.510 Food Safety Bill is a complete joke
What this situation reveals is just how ridiculous all the debate was over the S.510 Food Safety Bill which recently became law in the United States. Remember all those Senators who stood before the
American people and insisted S.510 would "make the
food supply safe" for everyone?
What they didn't tell you is that S.510 did absolutely nothing to address the safety of
meat products. It only attacked vegetables and thinks like raw milk and raw cheese, complete ignoring the safety of meat
products altogether.
And now we know why: The meat products sold in
America today are so widely contaminated with dangerous, deadly
bacteria that
if the American people really knew how much bacteria was in their meat, they wouldn't buy it!So the government, as usual, swept the problem under the rug and pretended that
e.coli was a "vegetable farming" problem. Well, I have news for the federal regulators and geniuses in the U.S. Senate who passed S.510:
E.coli grows in animals, not plants. So the only way it can even get onto the plants is if the factory animal
farms are releasing e.coli downstream where it contaminates the vegetable farms.
The e.coli problem, in other words, is an
animal farm problem, not a vegetable farm problem.
If you can't eat fresh meat, what about packaged meat?
So you might think that if so much of the fresh beef and
poultry is so widely contaminated with potentially deadly bacteria, maybe the packaged "processed" meat is safer for you, right?
You might want to reconsider that: Packaged meat is almost always preserved with a dangerous, cancer-causing ingredient called
sodium nitrite. It's listed right on the label of packages of bacon, sausage, sandwich meat,
beef jerky, pepperoni, ham and many other packaged meat products.
Sodium nitrite causes cancer (
http://www.naturalnews.com/007024.html), and it's added to meat products primarily to turn them bright red (as a chemical
food coloring agent). It also kills botulism, by the way, because it's yet another chemical
antibiotic agent.
So if you eat
fresh meat, you're likely to be encountering superbugs. If you eat
packaged meat, you're probably eating cancer-causing
chemicals.
So what to do?
Solutions for meat eaters
You could always go vegetarian, of course. A largely plant-based diet is not only safer for you; it's also safer for the
environment. (Go check out the runoff from the factory
cattle farms near Greeley, Colorado, and you'll see what I mean...)
For those who choose to eat meat, here are three things you can do to avoid these dangers:
1) Buy local, grass-fed or free-range meat products from
farmers and ranchers you know. Check out the local food co-ops or Saturday farmers' markets.
2) Cook the snot out of your meat products just to be sure you kill absolutely everything that might be living on them.
3) Look for nitrite-free meats at your grocery
store or health food store. They're always in the frozen meat section (in the freezers) because without the sodium nitrite chemicals, they have to be kept frozen to avoid spoilage.
And finally, don't believe anything the federal government tells you about so-called "
food safety." The federal food
safety laws are such a complete joke that they utterly ignore the single largest source of potentially deadly bacteria in the entire food supply: the
factory animal farms that have now become
superbug breeding grounds.
It's yet another side effect of the widespread abuse of antibiotics. Did you know that in North America, far more antibiotics are given to animals than to people? The flooding of antibiotics into the food supply is a type of
chemical assault on our bodies and our environment. These antibiotics are being found in frogs and fish, rivers and streams. They are an environmental pollutant that threaten ocean ecosystems and wildlife.
And yet, the only reason these antibiotics are even needed in the factory animal farm operations is because animal farms are
so filthy and unsanitary in the first place. Have you watched The Meatrix animations yet? If not, visit
www.TheMeatrix.com to learn more.
Mindless consumers created the factory animal farms, in a sense
Now, here's another thing to consider: Why do factory animal farm operations even exist? Because mindless consumers buy meat based on the lowest price and nothing else!
If more consumers demanded grass-fed beef and free-range
chicken, the factory animal farms would be out of business! It is the mindless shopping
habits of consumers who frankly don't even care where their meat comes from that has given rise to these "lowest price" cattle feed lots and
factory farms.
If you don't care where your beef comes from, and you only shop price at the big box stores, guess what you're buying? Antibiotic-injected, superbug-infested factory-farmed beef!
Factory farm cattle companies, of course, are only giving consumers what they demand: the absolutely lowest price on beef, regardless of where it comes from or how the cows were treated, fed or medicated. Amazingly, probably 4 out of 5 beef consumers
couldn't care less about what they're
eating or where it really comes from. They would eat piles of doggy doo if it looked like hamburger and was on sale for 99 cents a pound.
So it's one thing to blame the cattle factory farms for all this, but the truth is that
it is the consumers who create the demand that these factory animal farms are merely trying to meet. If food shoppers really cared what they were eating and changed their shopping habits accordingly, the factory animal farms would collapse virtually overnight.
And that's a
point of empowerment for YOU to remember: When you refuse to buy the lowest-price beef (corn fed, factory farmed beef), you deny revenues to that entire model of cow abuse and antibiotics abuse. When you buy local, grass-fed, free-range beef, you support the local cattle ranchers who refuse to participate in the whole system of factory beef operations.
So the choice is up to you, and every dollar you spend makes a difference. If you eat beef or chicken, simply changing your own purchasing habits can have a powerful influence over the entire system. And when enough consumers refuse to buy factory-farmed beef, the beef factories will finally shut down and become yet another sad chapter in the history of food.
Personally, I don't eat beef, but I do buy beef for my
dog. And I go to a local farmer's market where I can buy beef bones from locally grown grass-fed, free-ranged cattle.
About the author: Mike Adams is an award-winning journalist and holistic nutritionist with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In 2010, Adams co-founded NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video sharing site that has now grown in popularity. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and martial arts training. He's also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don't Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org
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