“The livestock industry is the last wildlife-genocide program in the United States,” says Bruce Apple, the director of an Oregon-based environmental organization appropriately called Rest the West. “All-out war is declared on a diversity of species every day to benefit a single industry.” 

This ‘single industry’, the Beef Industry, is one example of how our dollars have an impact to not just the wild horses, but our health and the environment. Think differently about your purchases. Every penny you and I spend makes a political statement.  Take time to look ‘behind the name’. Understand what your purchase means to others.

Is this a difficult concept to wrap your mind around? Yes. However, once you take time to understand everything that happens behind the products we purchase and realize the power of every dollar you spend, then you can begin to govern like no government ever will!

Behind the Burger:

Our sensational appetite for Whoppers, Big Macs and Wendy’s burgers is chomping at the hills of our nation’s wild horses; people eat approximately 200 billion burgers a year! The United States has a population of a little over 307 million; “Modern plants can process 800,000 pounds of hamburger meat a day, from many thousands of different cattle”. Last year the U.S. Population Ate 26.4 Billion Pounds of Beef Cattle! And according to ‘Freakonomics, The Hidden Side of Everything’, “Our Future Looks Fat; Study Predicts Nearly Half the U.S. Population Will be Obese by 2030″.

About 45 million beef cattle roam some 870 million acres, more than two thirds of the land mass in our seventeen westernmost states. There are about 33,700 wild horses and 4,700 burros roaming on BLM ranges in 10 Western states.  The Bureau of Land Management says, if these horses were left on their own, the population would explode. Let’s see, 45 million beef cattle and 33,700 wild horses…and why is the BLM focusing on the wild horse population? Chomp! Chomp! Oh, by the way, there is a huge difference in the way cattle and horses graze.  I’m not saying to stop eating beef…just slow down! Try eating only ‘organic’ and eat less.

The changes needed today will go beyond much of what we have loved and coveted. We have a couple of choices when it comes to the changes we need. We can choose to leave a bright and shiny world; full of everything healthy and beautiful; or, continue chomping away at the heals of our world, leaving a sick and fearful world. This is difficult journey; making time to study before you make a purchase. The upside: You can participate in governing this planet with every penny you spend.

Look closely at the CHANGE that is ahead for all of us; the heart and soul of what life is about, not just what it looks and smells like; new doors to how we connect are opening. Welcome. ‘What happens to the least of us, happens to all of us’.  Me, I’m just a ‘whimsical kid’ that keeps dreaming. Penny Politics works! Try it on and see how it feels!

Happy Wild Horse Trails!

Lets take a long look into centuries of food industry practices. Practices which began innocently enough, but, in many instances have developed into a dark and dangerous business; endangering the planet and it’s inhabitants!

The food industry continually strives to cut costs and expenses in order to increase profit; they hypnotizie the population with their glossy color ads and their promise of miracle foods’; all the while their GREED seeps in a sea of muck! This will become very clear if you are brave enough to follow the slippery trail.

‘The Truth Will Sit You Free’

While doing research into the ongoing Pet Food Recall tragedy and its continued impact to our pets, what seems most important after reading hundreds of these reports is to pass on what I’ve learned; and to keep linking together with others who have similar concerns. Doing so gives more credibility and a more effective means of convincing people to change what they and their furry friends eat!

A startling discovery: most people don’t want to know about this ongoing tragedy! For knowing means you find a truth. Truth. As always, what you do with ‘truth’ is up to you! My advise is to take the journey. Take a deep look into the food industry before you make any decision. For me, the journey has taken some horrific and dangerous trails.

What’s Cooking?

From Rendering Plants to our dinner table! Ever thought about what a ‘rendering plant’ job looks like? Probably not. Here you go:

Rendering plants are like huge kitchens. What do they ‘cook up’? The stainless steel pot contains; dead animals, slaughterhouse wastes, supermarket rejects, pesticides via poisoned livestock, euthanasia drugs that were given to pets; some dead animals have flea collars containing organophosphate insecticide, fish oil laced with bootleg DDT, insecticide Dursban in the form of cattle insecticide patch, other chemicals leaked from antibiotics in livestock, heavy metals from pet ID tag and surgical pins and needles: all go into the ’stainless steel pot’. The mixture then goes into various products’ known as recycled meat, bone meal, and animal fat.

Who would want this job? Well, that’s a whole other story. Rendering plants have different specialties. Some of the end product-label names are: meat meal, meat by-products, poultry meal, poultry by-products, fishmeal, fish oil, yellow grease, tallow, beef fat and chicken fat. Who buys the products from ‘rendering plants’? The livestock, poultry and pet food industries! They use it as feed additives.A 1991 USDA report states that approximately 7.9 billion pounds of meat, bone meal, blood meal, and feather meal was produced by rendering plants in 1983. Of that amount:

12 percent was used in beef cattle feed

34 percent was used in pet food

34 percent was used in poultry feed

20 percent was used in pig food

Scientific American cites a dramatic rise in the use of animal protein in commercial dairy feed since 1987. If these truths don’t set you free, I can’t imagine what would. My previous post on ‘The Power and Politics Behind What We Eat’ offers an intricate account of the cause of much of the disease to the inhabitants of our planet. Unfortunately, there are no labels to identify the above ingredients that have gone into our livestock and poultry feed…and passed onto humans.

One in four deaths is from cancer; given the livestock and poultry practice of feeding the products produced by rendering plants to livestock and poultry; and then we eat (well I don’t) the livestock and poultry: might there be a possible significant connection to cancer’?

Are there any labels on beef, poultry, or pork? Do you know how they were raised? What they eat? Are they stressed? Do you know if stress does anything to the quality of the meat? Do you care? Who has the time or wants to take the time to know this stuff? Isn’t that what we pay our tax dollars to do? We put our trust in the United States Government to safeguard its people! To take the time to monitor and inspect what is meant no nourish its people.

Warning from the Past and Present!

The Jungle (1906) is a novel by American author and socialist Upton Sinclair. It describes the life of a family of Lithuanian immigrants working in Chicago’s Union Stock Yards at the beginning of the 20th century.

Silent Spring is a book written by Rachel Carson and published by Houghton Mifflin in September 1962. The book is widely credited with launching the environmentalism movement in the West.

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2001)is a book by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser that examines the local and global influence of the United States fast food industry.

Chew on This is a book for younger readers by Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation) and Charles Wilson on the subject of fast food.

Amazing Discoveries reports, “Food borne illness is on the increase worldwide and in most cases animal products are implicated as the main source of infection.”

Food, Inc. Eating can be one dangerous business. Don’t take another bite till you see Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc ., an essential, indelible documentary that is …

Vote with your Dollars!

This is something you can do this very instant! Vote with your pocket book. Truly, this is the only language industry understands…that’s how we got ourselves into this tragic predicament; we bought into industries glossy color ads and their promise of miracle foods’. Read the labels. Ask questions.

“Of every dollar that an American shopper spends for food, on average, 81 cents goes toward the marketing of that food. Only 19 cents goes back to the farm.”

Currently I’m feeding my canine Pieper ‘Newman’s Own Organic Dog Food’. Everything is on the label. It’s certified organic by ‘Oregon Tilth’. Oregon Tilth has been certifying organic farmers since the early 1970s.The organic industry is a realistic approach to many of my concerns about the health of Pieper, myself and the environment.

MSNBC reports, “This year, retail sales of organic foods are expected to exceed $15 billion — with more than $32 billion projected by 2009. While the conventional food industry still dwarfs the organic sector with $550 billion in yearly sales, it is producing an unappetizing 2 to 3 percent annual growth rate, while the organic industry has savored several years of 17 to 20 percent growth.”

What does this growth say about ‘why’ people are buying more organic food? They are voting with their dollars; taking responsibility for the health and well being of their self, their furry friends and the environment!

From 1987 to 1990, while working at The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) as Humane Sustainable Agriculture Coordinator, I toured organic livestock farms throughout the United States; these livestock and poultry farmers were proud to show me their operation; the livestock and poultry at these farms were allowed to pursue their innate characteristics.

Happy Trails!

“LOS ANGELES – An undercover video showing crippled and sick animals being shoved with forklifts has led to the largest beef recall in the United States and a scramble to find out if any of the meat is still destined for school children’s lunches.”

Watching ‘NBC’s Today’ show about animal abuse in a slaughterhouse; I’m horrified! I’m reminded of Dr. Michael W. Fox and his work at The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) where I was privileged to work along side Dr. Fox in a quest to identify humane sustainable agriculture practices for livestock and poultry.

I’d never thought much about what livestock and poultry go through before it gets to the table. But after I became acquainted with Dr. Fox; the horrific nature of ‘Factory Farming’ became very clear. The dark side of this seldom viewed industry made my mission to find sustainable practices in livestock and poultry rearing imperative and to look to a more vegetarian diet.

The live images screaming out of the television on NBC’s Today’ show were horrific, however, I’ve seen much worse. This is not one isolated case; I’ve seen more proof than anyone would care to see. People should be made to see more of where our food comes from; how it’s produced and how the animals are treated.

Wendell Berry writes:

An agriculture can not survive long at the expense of the natural systems that support it and the provide it with models. A Culture cannot survive long at the expense of either its agricultural or its natural sources. To live at the expense of the source of life is obviously suicidal. Though we have no choice but to live at the expense of other life, it is necessary to recognize the limits and dangers involved: past a certain point in a unified system, “other life” is our own.

The definitive relationships in the universe are thus not competitive but interdependent. And from a human point of view they are analogical. We can build one system only within another. We can have agriculture only within nature, and culture only within agriculture. At certain points these systems have to conform with one another or destroy one another.

Dr. Fox writes:

Currently agriculture, along with all the natural wisdom and empathy that our farmer-ancestors and earlier hunter-gatherers acquired (and, with such wisdom and empathy, were deeply religious), is being lost–to high-tech agribusiness. From culture to technocracy: from sensibility to money, power, and control. The evolution of factory farming is a natural consequence of our culture’s materialistic and objectifying attitude toward nature. Consequently, humanity no longer acts as part of a unified field of being. By not acting so, we destroy this unity, violating the ecological laws of nature and the ethical and spiritual principles of our forebears. Factory farming is a second Industrial Revolution.

Thanks to the national attention brought to us by the media and film taken by the HSUS; the images are a mere glimpse of the ‘tip of the iceberg’! This is NOT a single isolated case! The trail of farm animals on the way to our table tops is paved with misery and cruelty. I urge you to stop and think about the food choices you make. Do you really need to eat that ‘Whopper’ or ‘Mac burger’ everyday. Do you give a thought to the suffering of the animals who went into it? Pain and suffering went into the meat on your plate! Do you give a darn?! Would you dare take a close look at where they live; what they are fed; the medications they receive on a daily basis?

Stay tuned, I’m going to take you to the dark side of livestock and poultry rearing. I’ll also take you to the other side and introduce you to ranchers who rear livestock and poultry with respect. I’ll give you answers on what you can do to make change to your diet.