"They’re designed to eat grass and, maybe, grain. I mean, they have four stomachs for a reason- to eat products that have a high cellulose content. They are not designed to eat other animals.”
-Steven P. Bjerklie
Quote Found On Page 202 of "Fast Food Nation" -Eric Schlosser
I Find this to be BEYOND disgusting. The cattles that are being slaughtered to become our next meal are being fed dead cats, dogs, and chickens. Cattle's are natural herbivores. Their body isn’t built to digest ANY meat products. Yea, us human beings consume dead animals on a daily basis, but our body is designed to digest these types of material. It even takes our bodies 15 days to digest these meats. Due to feeding these cattle dead meat the “mad cow disease” began. The sad part about it is that current FDA regulations still allow dead pigs, horses and chickens to be fed to these cattles. Sawdust and waste products from poultry plants are also being fed to the cattle. 3 million pounds of manure from chicken has been fed to cattles. This is like you yourself as the consumer eating pounds of chicken manure. YUCK, yea I know I felt the same way.
Feeding these cattle dead animals can lead to all types of disease. The food borne illness that is mentioned a lot throughout this passage is E-coli 0157: H7. When a single cattle is infected with E-coli 0157: H7, it can contaminate thousands of pounds of meat that was produced at that plant. This pathogen causes bloody diarrhea, bloody urine, vomiting and excruciating pains in the abdomen area. This pathogen can also be fatal in children.
So the question that we all must be asking ourselves is, why do these corporations feed these cattle dead animals? WELL, due to the rise in grain, corporations had no other option than to fed these cattle dead animals. Dead animals are the only material that is still high in protein and can still accelerate growth. Because of the high demand of meat, corporations are left no other choice.
So lets all think about where that hambuger you might eat really came from and what it is REALLY made out of! (MANURE!!!!!)
This chapter was a little disturbing for me. It makes me want to think more than just twice about what I have been eating. I am fairly proud of myself that I no longer eat hamburgers, hot dogs, or sausages but all this still stays in the back of my head and I often wonder what did the chicken I am about to eat was fed. I think by the end of this book I am just going to end up giving up on food. (Wish that was possible) by the way love the tone you used on this blog, not only was it interesting on the facts aspect, it also kept me entertain with your sarcastic sense of humor. :)
ReplyDeleteYea I know... Im thinking like EWWW that sausage egg and cheese I ate had dog, cat, crap, chicken, and a whole bunch of other nasty stuff in it. (gagging) If I don't come to class monday is because I have E-COLI (Dum Dum Dum*sound effects*) Im laughing now, but this is deff. no laughing matter at all!...and THANKS, I try to always keep a sense of humor =]
ReplyDeleteHey Michelle!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm still surprised about the fact that we are unconsciously eating animals' manure through cows =0 .... This is an issue that definetly concerns us as consumers since is directly afecting us. I would like to also know if there are other ways that cows are being or can be affected by these changes on their natural way of eating.
I wonder, is it really true that these corporations "have no other choice" than to feed their livestock dead cats and dogs, simply because the price of grain has gone up? How else might this problem have been addressed?
ReplyDeleteBoth your post and Dahriana's comment about "giving up on food" might raise some good questions for Monday's Q&A with Tracie McMillan. How can we avoid these foods, as individual consumers? Is there anything we can do beyond changing our individual eating habits?
Well, I personally feel that they do have other options but they just choose not to stress these options, because everyone is thinking mostly about MONEY. Money has desensitized many big shot corporation workers, they actually forget that people can literally die from their products. Some other options that they can preform is just basically going back to feeding cows grass, but this too would have a ripple effect on these corporations and comsumers as well. What I mean by that exactly is, that if these plants go back to feeding cows grass, this would cause the price for the meat to rise, so consumers are effected financially.
ReplyDelete