 As
we've learned more about the health hazards of 'red meat', the chicken
factory farming industry has exploded, and with it the cruel treatment
of battery caged and 'broiler' chickens and the dangers of factory
farmed meat and eggs to human health. I won't subject you to details of
what the 98% of all Canadian and US egg-laying chickens who spend their entire lives in battery cages go through, or the gruesome life of the ten billion
chickens born, fattened up and slaughtered at the average age of six
weeks in North America each year (if you want this information and can
stomach it, go to factoryfarming.com or themeatrix.com).
What I do want to mention is what ingesting these poor chickens and their eggs can do to your health:
- 15% of the weight of broiler chickens is the filthy 'fecal soup' they are rinsed in to try to rid the meat of some of its toxins
- many
or most broiler chickens are diseased and/or hemorrhaged and/or
otherwise badly injured when they are slaughtered (salmonella
infections, for one, are so endemic to factory farmed chickens the USDA
no longer even tries to keep count)
- you don't want to know how
modern eviscerating machines operate, and what ends up in 'chicken
by-products' in processed human and pet foods
- no one knows what
the massive quantities of antibiotics, disinfectants and other toxic
chemicals broiler chickens are fed, injected with, sprayed with and
soaked in will do to long-term human health (they are suspects in the
epidemic of human immune system diseases, and have given rise to
antibiotic-resistant supergerms)
- it takes 815 gallons of fresh water to 'produce' a single pound of edible chicken
- the
crap that's fed to battery-caged egg-laying chickens makes its way, in
concentrated form, into the eggs you eat (that's why battery-hen eggs
are virtually devoid of the Omega 3 that used to be one of the main
nutritional benefits of eggs)
- chicken and egg factory farming
is now strongly suspected to be the cause of virtually all poultry flu
outbreaks, and this flu poses one of the greatest threats to human life
and health we face today
- many USDA inspectors (and there are
similar reports from Canadian inspectors) are so revolted by what they
see in factory farms and slaughterhouses that they do not feed their
own families factory-farmed chicken or eggs, and acknowledge they are
forced to approve tainted food by the powerful agribusiness oligopoly
There is something you can do about this:
- Only eat chicken and eggs that are produced by small, local farms using free-range chickens.
They're not that hard to find. They may be more expensive, but they're
much better for you, for the environment, and for the poor creatures
who give their lives to feed you. If possible, confirm that the
free-range claims on the package are true (there's a lot of fraudulent
and misleading labels on big agribusiness products; don't mistake
'organic' for free-range) by visiting and picking up your produce from
the farms themselves. It's a relationship worth fostering for you and
the local farmer.
- Consider becoming a vegetarian or vegan.
This is a little harder, but there are millions who've made the
transition and, despite the agribusiness propaganda, they're healthier,
not sicker, than the rest of us. If you're skeptical, at least go
online and learn how easy it is.
- Adopt the 100-mile diet (learn more at 100milediet.org).
This can also be a challenge if you try to do it 100%, but if you find
out what happens to food (and the environment) when it's trucked
thousands of miles, you'll appreciate that it's worthwhile taking the pledge to buy local.
Don't
be fooled into believing the chicken and eggs you're eating are safe,
healthy and cruelty-free, unless you've verified it yourself. There's
at least a 98% certainty they're not.
It’s time we all 'chickened out'.
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6:26:59 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
