Tag Archives | Meat Production

You Are What You Eat

By Andrew Dilks on March 18, 2013 in News 49

WARNING: Video features the slaughter and consumption of animals.

If you were to visit China in the 21st century, you may well stumble across one of the popular speed cooking competitions, where frenetically paced chefs transform live animals into animated culinary oddities: snakes are decapitated then chopped up into inch-long segments, which squirm on the plate several feet away from their freshly-severed heads; Ying Yang fish, their sides deep-fried and coated in sweet and sour sauce are devoured as they stare up, still breathing (if the fish isn’t breathing, naturally the chef is disqualified).

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The Meat Industry Now Consumes Four-Fifths Of All Antibiotics

By JacobSloan on February 13, 2013 in News 13

Will our taste for flesh be what leads to the creation of super-strains of bacteria impervious to antibiotics? Mother Jones reports:

Last year, the Food and Drug Administration proposed a set of voluntary “guidelines” designed to nudge the meat industry to curb its antibiotics habit. But the meat industry has been merrily gorging away on antibiotics—and churning out meat rife with antibiotic-resistant pathogens.

While human antibiotic use has leveled off at below 8 billion pounds annually, livestock farms have been sucking in more and more of the drugs each year—and consumption reached a record nearly 29.9 billion pounds in 2011. That suggests that meat production might be getting more antibiotic-intensive. To put it another way, the livestock industry is now consuming nearly four-fifths of the antibiotics used in the US, and its appetite for them is growing.

… Read the rest

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Vast Majority of Americans Want Meat Raised Without Antibiotics

By majestic on June 25, 2012 in News 8

Consumer Reports has created a campaign, Meat Without Drugs, and a promo video narrated by Bill Paxton and directed by Robbie Kenner (Food, Inc. and the disinformation doc When Strangers Click):

We typically don’t like to regurgitate press releases, but the following statistics from Consumer Reports show Americans to be so overwhelmingly in favor of eliminating the use of antibiotics in factory food animals that it seemed worth sharing:

A majority of Americans want meat raised without antibiotics to be sold in their local supermarket, according to a new national poll conducted by Consumer Reports. The poll is part of a report released today, “Meat On Drugs: The Overuse of Antibiotics in Food Animals and What Supermarkets and Consumers Can Do to Stop It,” available online at www.ConsumerReports.org.

Consumers Union, the public policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, has simultaneously launched a new marketplace campaign, urging supermarkets to sell only meat raised without antibiotics─starting with Trader Joe’s, one of the leading national chains best poised to make this commitment.

… Read the rest

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Midwestern Hog Farms Keep Mysteriously Exploding

By JacobSloan on March 16, 2012 in News 17

Hog farming is even grosser than you imagined. Farms keep spontaneously blowing up due to chemical interactions involving bacteria-laden gas and a brown goop of sketchy origin. Ars Technica writes:

Since 2009, six farms have blown up after methane trapped in an unidentified, pit-topping foam caught a spark. In the afflicted region, the foam is found in roughly 1 in 4 hog farms.

There’s nothing farmers can do except be very careful. Researchers aren’t even sure what the foam is. “This has all started in the last four or five years here. We don’t have any idea where it came from or how it got started,” said agricultural engineer Charles Clanton. “Whatever has happened is new.”

A gelatinous goop that resembles melted brown Nerf, the foam captures gases emitted by bacteria living in manure, which on industrial farms gathers in pits beneath barns that may contain several thousand animals. The pits are emptied each fall, after which waste builds up again, turning them into something like giant stomachs: dark, oxygen-starved percolators in which bacteria and single-celled organisms metabolize the muck.

… Read the rest

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Removing Consciousness From Farming

By JacobSloan on February 22, 2012 in News 44

Every year, billions of animals suffer in the name of cultivating food for humanity. But, suppose none of them had minds? A nightmare or a solution? Via We Make Money Not Art:

Each year, the UK raises and kills 800 million chickens for their meat. Rearing [is] unethical and unsustainable… chickens spend their 6-7 week lives in windowless sheds, each containing around 40,000 birds. André Ford proposes to adopt a ‘headless chicken solution’:

By removing the cerebral cortex of the chicken, its sensory perceptions are removed. It can be produced in a denser condition while remaining alive, and oblivious. The feet will also be removed so the body of the chicken can be packed together in a dense volume. Food, water and air are delivered via an arterial network and excreta is removed in the same manner. Around 1000 chickens will be packed into each ‘leaf’, which forms part of a moving, productive system.

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Blood Runs From Sewers In Polish Town

By JacobSloan on January 25, 2012 in News 17

A pretty good reminder that meat is murder, society is built on barbarism, et cetera. Via the Telegraph:

Residents of Koscierzyna, a small Polish town, called in the police and ambulance service to investigate after blood began streaming out from under manhole covers. After bubbling out through holes in the covers, the blood formed a river of red that flowed along a road in the Polish town forming large bloody puddles.

An investigation revealed that the blood had come from a meat processing plant and had seeped onto the streets because of a blocked drain.

“There are two schools on the street where a large amount of blood was flowing,” wrote one angry resident on a news website. “The blood was also heading towards a local market. When you consider public health this situation is appalling.”

People also questioned as to how the blood had managed to leave the meat processing plant without any form of treatment, despite possible environmental risks.

… Read the rest

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Outrage Over South Korea’s Mass Live Burial Of Pigs

By JacobSloan on March 24, 2011 in News 98

Factory farming practices are always bloody and cruel, but this seems to go above and beyond. Following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, since December South Korea has killed 20% of its domestic livestock — 3 million animals have been exterminated, mostly pigs, who are being buried alive by the thousands in gigantic pits. The practice is traumatizing workers (who hear the pigs’ screams in their sleep) and provoking outrage around the world. Video footage is difficult to sit through:

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Fake Steak, Not-Much-Meat Tacos, And More On Chain Food Menus

By majestic on February 7, 2011 in News 15

The lawsuit against Taco Bell for selling meat tacos that contain only 35% beef has opened up, excuse the expression, a can of worms in the kitchens of chain restaurants. ABC News‘s Alan Farnham finds that’s only the beginning of the deceptions being perpetrated by corporate purveyors of “meat”:

…Kantha Shelke, chief science officer of Corvus Blue LLC, a Chicago food science and nutrition research firm, says it’s frankly impossible for a consumer to know how much meat is in a food item at Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King or any other fast food restaurant. That’s because such disclosure is not required. Even when an item is touted as being “all-beef,” it may be only 70 percent meat and not run afoul of regulations.

Non-meat ingredients in meat items include ones that add flavor or promote consistency, and binders. “American consumers think they’re being cheated out of their money when they hear that term,” says Shelke.

… Read the rest

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Cloned Cow Milk and Meat Approved For Sale In U.K.

By JacobSloan on December 9, 2010 in News 0

The British equivalent of the FDA just announced that milk and beef from cloned cows is safe for consumption and may be sold without being labelled as such. The dairy and meat of the future has finally arrived…grab yourself a steaming hot cloneburger. The Telegraph reports:

The food safety watchdog said produce from the descendents of cloned pigs and cows is safe to eat and should not have to undergo any extra checks compared with other animals before going on sale.

Ministers are expected to rubber stamp the new guidelines, clearing the final hurdle for the meat and milk of cloned animals to be sold freely in Britain.

The FSA published new advice yesterday which stipulated that farmers must seek a license before selling meat or milk from cloned animals, but not their offspring.

The new guidance was prompted by a scare in the summer when it emerged that meat from the offspring of a cloned cow had been sold unwittingly in butchers’ shops without a license being obtained.

… Read the rest

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Eat Meat From Cloned Cattle

By Pelliciari on August 12, 2010 in News 2

If you really enjoyed a steak from one cow, now you can have the exact same cow again! It’s like a Twilight Zone episode where your plate keeps refilling with the same piece of meat. In an attempt to increase production rate of quality meat, the US has been mass producing meat from cloned cattle. BBC has the report:

Some of the cattle cloned to boost food production in the US have been created from the cells of dead animals, according to a US cloning company.

Farmers say it is being done because it is only possible to tell that the animal’s meat is of exceptionally high quality by inspecting its carcass.

US scientists are using a variety of techniques to assess which animals have exceptional qualities.

These attributes include meat quality, productivity or longevity.

There is a long tradition of resurrecting dead animals for cloning – Dolly the sheep being a case in point.

… Read the rest

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