The Meaty Truth (6 page)

Currently, most CAFOs remain unregulated, and even if they are regulated, discharge permits serve little to no purpose. Under the EPA’s rules, if a factory farm plans to discharge crap into nearby streams, it has to have a permit. Let’s be clear: factory farms are
allowed
to pollute as long as they have a piece of paper that says they can. This is probably why the EPA has failed to curb pollution. In addition, the EPA does not set hard-and-fast rules for how much CAFOs can discharge.
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This voluntary “polluters’ permit” strategy does very little to mediate current pollution or deal with the underlying problem—the massive amounts of manure.
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When it comes to corporations adhering to environmental standards, a voluntary approach is just not going to cut it.

The EPA’s Office of Water reported that approximately nineteen thousand CAFOs require permits, but only 8,300, or 43 percent, have discharge permits.
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Given these numbers, there are about eleven thousand factory farms that are discharging waste unregulated. Clearly, this system is completely unsustainable. Fortunately, the EPA recognized its lack of progress and declared factory farms a “national priority.” However, the EPA is still stuck focusing on compliance for discharge permits, not on providing actual penalties that would force compliance. Compounding
this problem, the Clean Water Act only provides a federal foundation for establishing rules; it is up to the states to enforce them. As each state has varying rules, our nation’s current approach to remedying our water and environmental crisis from factory farms has proven haphazard and ineffective. Friends, the giant corporations keep raking in money while we, the taxpayers, are left footing the bill for cleaning our water sources. More importantly, we are running out of time to act.

All hope is not lost. Favorably, there have been instances where citizens have been able to push through state regulations that better protect our water sources and curb agribusiness’s extensive political clout. Consider New Mexico: Jerry Nivens, a concerned citizen who could no longer stand to see his waterways polluted, organized a petition that ended in New Mexico passing some of the most progressive dairy-water regulations to date. The dairy industry is the largest agricultural sector in New Mexico and has a strong influence in Congress. Yet, it also is responsible for polluting 60 percent of the state’s groundwater, where 90 percent of the people in the area get their water.
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Although the dairy industry put up a four-year fight against the regulations, Nivens and his team forever changed New Mexico law—showcasing that everyday citizens do make a difference.

Get Ready for Water Wars

Leading international organizations predict that the wars of the future will not be over oil, but clean water. Already there are hundreds of legal suits in the United States over rights to freshwater use. These water wars are just the beginning, because visibly clean water is a foundational necessity for all living beings to survive. Currently aquifers are being drawn at extreme rates—250 times their ability to refill. Already the twelve-million-year-old Ogallala Aquifer is predicted to run dry within in the next twenty years from overuse and abuse by the livestock industry.
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With only 1 percent of freshwater available and a growing population of over seven billion, our water resources are strained at best, without having manure destroy what we have left.

As excessive amounts of liquid animal manure can easily access our waterways and drinking water, we stand to bankrupt not only our health but also one of the Earth’s most valuable and cherished resources—
clean water
. Waterways are a core component of the life cycle, and without our aquatic habitats, our whole ecosystem is doomed to fail. The frequency with which manure is contaminating our water sources and poisoning our groundwater that millions of us use for drinking water is now a nationwide problem. We need to deliver immediate and swift remediation and force agribusiness once and for all to clean up their sh!t.

Know your Sh!t Solutions:

1) Animal crap is now in everyone’s kitchens and backyards. Clean your fruits and veggies.

2) Filter your water. Beware of swimming in rivers, lakes, and streams.

3) Speak out against factory farms in your area! Each voice counts. Don’t want to be living next to a cesspool? Sign a petition! Raising our voices in unity can make these corporations liable for their messes.

CHAPTER 3

Seriously? You’re Still Sick?

“The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.”

~ Thomas Edison

I
t is well known that America’s health has drastically turned to sh!t. We like to pride ourselves on a fantastic health-care system with state-of-the-art research facilities and renowned doctors. While all of this may be true, the fact remains that we rank as one of the sickest countries among the industrialized nations of the world. As a nation, we are on the cusp of an evolutionary health disaster. Something has got to change.

Today, 70 percent of deaths in this country are attributed to chronic diseases.
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These diseases were almost unheard of a mere one hundred years ago. The leading chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes used to be confined to an aging population, as evidenced by their definition as “degenerative” chronic diseases. Yet now we are seeing them in an increasing number of school-age children.
This generation of children has the highest rate of health problems, including obesity, diabetes, attention deficit disorders, and autism. One in three children are obese, and this is the first generation of children who will have shorter life spans than their parents. Today, one in two Americans die from heart disease, one in eight women are diagnosed with breast cancer, and the chance of being diabetic in America is now one in three.
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Although we turn to technology to “fix” our health problems, we are no further ahead in our quest for wellness.

So where are we going wrong? It is really quite simple. We are heavily consuming the wrong foods. In the 1900s, Americans got 70 percent of their protein from plant-based foods. Today we get 70 percent of our protein from animal-based foods.
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Americans consume more meat per person than anywhere else in the world.

As meat and dairy prices have fallen, we have moved to gorging on animal products and processed foods while fruits, vegetables, and whole grains have been largely relegated to the sidelines. We have essentially switched a diet filled with fiber and nutrients and low in cholesterol to one high in saturated and trans fats and cholesterol and devoid of fiber. It is not surprising then that as our meat consumption has nearly doubled and our dairy consumption (particularly of cheese) has quadrupled since the 1950s, so too have our waistlines, health problems, and health-care costs. We have twice the obesity rate, twice the rate of diabetes, and three times the cancer rate than the rest of the world.
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Although we love to blame our genetics or look to the “history of disease” in our families, it’s time we look at our All-American recipes.

We Aren’t Meat-Eaters!

Most people can agree that factory-farmed meat is bad for our health. (If you don’t, we suggest you reread
Chapters One
and
Four
.) Laden with genetically modified organisms, toxins, chemical fillers, growth hormones, ractopamine, arsenic, and antibiotics, this meat is a recipe for health problems. This growing knowledge has spurred nationwide campaigns for “local,” “grass-fed,” and “organic” beef. While these are nice sentiments,
the problem is that meat by its very nature is a disaster for our health. The added toxins are just the icing on the cake. The reality is that we were never meant to subsist on meat.

We are led to believe that eating meat and dairy are the building blocks for good health. We think we are doing right for our bodies by filling up on lots of animal protein and drinking cow’s milk. The Paleo Diet is the newest fad that professes we are designed to be meat-eaters. Really? Where did they get that idea? Although the Paleo Diet does rightly state that we need to eat more natural and less processed foods, the fact is that meat is actually not natural for humans to consume.

Our bodies are designed to live on plant-based foods. We are actively poisoning ourselves every time we eat animal products, whether they are 100 percent local and grass-fed or from Smithfield’s industrialized factory.

Why are meat and dairy so bad for us? In short, meat and dairy are pro-inflammatory—meaning they produce inflammation. Inflammation is the genesis of every chronic disease. Just like we strive to keep a balance between work and play, our bodies need to maintain an optimal pH balance (slightly alkaline) to be healthy. Meat and dairy are highly acidic and disrupt this balance, creating an ideal environment for disease to thrive. Cancer loves the acidic environment created by a meat and dairy diet. Every bite of meat and dairy is akin to a drop of poison that our bloodstreams carry throughout our bodies—affecting each and every system, from our respiratory, immune, and endocrine to our musculoskeletal. Additives from factory farms such as growth hormones and antibiotics are just added abuse.

Let’s examine some important anatomical differences between us and carnivores that place us firmly in the herbivore category. If we compare carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores, our anatomy most closely resembles that of plant-eating apes and chimpanzees. Firstly, we have blunt teeth, not fangs for ripping meat. Most carnivores are capable of swallowing ripped chunks of raw meat whole. If we tried to do the same, we would end up choking. Secondly, we have long digestive tracts, whereas carnivores have very short digestive tracts.
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When we eat meat, it putrefies in our
digestive systems, leading to disease. With a short digestive tract, natural carnivores avoid meat putrefying in their colon and digestive tract.

Finally, we aren’t meant to function on protein, especially animal protein. Despite marketing myths, protein is not the most efficient or effective energy source. In fact, protein often tires us. Many of us have experienced a “food coma” after a heavily animal-protein meal. What are our bodies most efficiently designed to process? Carbohydrates. That’s right. Unlike carnivores, our stomachs produce amylase, an acid used to break down carbohydrates found in plants. Marketing has pitted carbohydrates as the enemy, but the truth is that our bodies thrive on glucose from carbs. This is the energy that fuels our brains. This does not mean we can eat cake all day. The type of carbohydrate is important. We need complex carbohydrates like whole grains for energy.

For over fifteen years, it has been well established in medical literature that just one meal high in animal fat, such as a typical American breakfast of sausage, scrambled eggs, and cheese, can damage our arteries.
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When our arteries become inflamed, they are less flexible and become stiff. It takes about four to six hours for our body to combat this inflammation. By that time, it is already time for lunch. When we continue to eat meat and dairy products, we flood our body with acid, creating an acid overload. It is a vicious cycle that keeps our bodies in a perpetual state of chronic, low-grade inflammation that sets the stage for disease, one meal at a time.

Today, doctors, not just in the United States but from around the world, are confirming that our compounding health-care problems and escalating health-care costs are primarily linked to our consumption of meat and dairy products. Study after study and physician after physician (who aren’t paid by the meat and dairy corporations) are showing that dairy and meat products are
disease-producing
. Four out of the ten leading causes of illness and death in the United States are linked to our meat and dairy-based diets. A mere three-ounce steak can increase our risk of dying by 13 percent!
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Researchers at both Harvard and Cornell University issued statements saying that the optimal amount of meat in our diets is
zero
!

Our high rates of chronic conditions stem from our decision to directly go against our plant-eating roots. We can think of our bodies as cars. We can fill our tanks with soda, and the car will run for a while, but eventually it will malfunction. Similarly, we can feed our bodies the wrong fuel, but eventually they will break down.

Let’s review three of the most common American afflictions: heart disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes, to see why we can ditch the pills for plants.

The American Diet Is a Heartbreaker

Too many of us think that heart disease is our fate. Popping cholesterol pills has become the new normal. In the United States alone, six hundred thousand people die each year from heart disease, and there are five hundred thousand new cases each year.
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The American Heart Association estimates that heart disease will cost the United States $818 billion dollars in health care per year by 2030.
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Our health-care system might not be able to keep up with this astronomical climb in disease. Consider this: almost all males over fifty-three and females over sixty-six who have grown up eating the traditional American diet are already suffering from some form of heart disease.
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An even bigger problem is doctors are now seeing hardening of the arteries, a disease called atherosclerosis that is a precursor to heart disease, in children as young as eleven.
¹¹
Most of us don’t even realize we have heart disease until we suffer a heart attack or stroke. More worrying is that most first heart attacks are often fatal. The real tragedy is that heart disease is completely preventable. This “household” name should not even exist.

Heart disease is really a misnomer, as the entire body, not just the heart, is affected. Know this: if you have clogged arteries anywhere, you probably have clogged arteries everywhere. For example, guys, having a problem getting it up? One of the first signs of heart disease in men is erectile dysfunction. As we travel south, our arteries get smaller, making the penal arteries the first to be affected. Although companies have created billion-dollar empires around this “soft” issue, pills are only temporary
solutions to your sexual woes and won’t help your heart either. Want to fix your bedroom problems? Take a hard look at your “manly” meat-and-dairy diet.