Animal Feed

Does consuming animal meat raise concern for bioaccumulated pesticide exposure?

Almost all livestock is raised on a diet of corn and soybeans. Government subsidies reduce the price of these crops by about 10%, making them the most affordable to livestock farmers. As a result 47% of soy and 60% of corn grown in the US is consumed by livestock.

Around 90% of these crops are genetically modified to be resistant to toxic pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides. These contain chemicals that have been proven to cause neurological damage, endocrine disruption, cancer and various other diseases).

Additionally, these chemicals kill organisms that help assimilate essential minerals and nutrients from the soil into crops such as beneficial bacteria and fungi.

As a result, the sprayed crops are then severely lacking in nutrients and unable to properly nourish livestock.

A toxic diet causes these animals to develop an acidic internal environment, and while living in high-stress, low-sanitation external environments, they are severely prone to inflammation as well as infections like E.Coli. To minimize this, factory farms subject these animals to extraneous amounts of antibiotics and other prescription-grade drugs.(80% of all antibiotics made in the US are fed to farmed animals).

All these toxins, chemicals, harmful hormones (natural and synthetic), and a host of other carcinogens that are found in meat ultimately end up in the body. We were never fit to eat meat, and the world is definitely not fit to support our modern habits. Eating meat is portrayed as a personal choice, but the animals who endure a lifetime of suffering, the low income communities poisoned by agricultural pollution, the starving children that could be saved from the millions of tons of food we produce, and the earth’s fresh water, air, and soil absolutely do not have a choice. In the end the only choice you have is to not be ignorant.

– https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9139826

– http://www.ifpri.org/publication/measuring-economic-impacts-transgenic-crops-developing-agriculture-during-first-decade

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