Guest guest Posted September 22, 2006 Report Share Posted September 22, 2006 Meat & Protein: Dispelling the Myths (Part 1) JoAnn Guest Sep 21, 2006 19:09 PDT http://gnhealth.com/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=1086 Meat & Protein: Dispelling the Myths (Part 1) Transcript of Gary Null's Radio Show Note: The information on this website is presented for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for the advice of a qualified professional. GARY NULL: I'd like to welcome you to this program. Today part one of an original in depth investigative report: Meat, Protein, and Unraveling the Myths. Most people claim that we live in a violent world, but they are not violent. Do you believe that there is a violence connected to things that we are not directly imparting to another person or an animal? Let me give you an example. Does that make you violent if what you're doing or consuming was in itself violence against another? Imagine for a moment being hung up and unable to move because your body has been paralyzed by an electric shock. Then while you're still conscious your throat is cut. This is how 15 million pigs die each year along with the other cattle that are over 214 million. Now you may not be concerned about pigs because of the stereotypes that we carry around with us, but pigs are intelligent. They're sensitive and highly social animals. They are functionally equivalent to human infants in both intelligence and capacity to suffer. Before pigs have their throats slit, it's called sticking. They are stunned electrically by placing tongs on either side of the neck behind their ears, but in most cases the stunning is inadequate because they're not held in place for long enough or they're incorrectly placed. The voltages used are insufficient so many pigs remain fully conscious during the bleeding out or even before throat slitting. Thus the animal dies an agonized and terrified death. Tries to escape. Is frequently beaten, kicked, punched, hammered until it finally falls into submission. Still conscious and still aware that it's being killed. Now the question is add into that equation - that's just one - one pig - how about 214 million cattle and calves, 615 million hogs, 377 million lambs and sheep, 128 million goats, nine million horses, 19 million metric tons of birds. That's how many animals are killed in the world in a single recent year. In the United States alone 140 million cows, calves, sheep, lambs, and pigs and three and a half billion chickens and turkeys are slaughtered every year. In the 70-year lifetime, the average American eats 11 cows, one calf, three lambs, 23 hogs, 45 turkeys, and 1,097 chickens, and 861 pounds of fish. Some would say that the wanton slaughter of animals in such large numbers gives us an idea just about how violent our world is and specifically people who consume that are. That is what we have become. We have very little regard for life unless it's our own. Many people that eat meat probably profess to like animals, but believe that if it were really possible to prove that they could have a healthy body without having meat there surely would be more incentive to do so. They kind of look at vegetarians and say well. I'm not sure that that is scientifically based. As a result, they don't make the change. Can they really like animals though knowing the suffering and pain inflicted on them by their chosen dietary habits? Or do we care? When we sit at a restaurant and have a veal Parmesan we don't look at the little calf that's been taken from its mother. Put 24 hours a day in a tiny little iron and concrete cage with no room to turn around and intentionally creating anemia to create a white flesh. So the person who gets it at their dinner table says I like the way that looks. I like the way it tastes. But walk down one of the veal rows as I have and put out your hand and all they do is come over wanting to lick your hand, suckle your finger. They have been taken away before they were even weaned. They still have a desire to be with their mothers, and that's what we're eating. Now here's a question. Is there an ethic? Is there a moral responsibility to ask more questions and become more involved to see if we have been for too long consuming these animals with the idea that it's the best or only primary source of complete protein? This program is going to delve in great depth into the entire industry into all the different aspects of why we're eating. Can we be healthy without eating meat or animal proteins at all? How can we redefine a true reverence for life, all life? When we examine the food sources how big a problem is world hunger because of our consumption of our meat? There is a connection. The protein myths will be explored in some depth. In July of 2002 Olivia Rodriguez fidgeted as the monitors at the head of her bed beeped and tubes fed into her arms. She had eaten a meatball, but the meatball was made with ground beef contaminated with E. coli, O157H7, and it was torturing little Olivia's insides. Many others suffered from eating meat that might have come from the same place. One hallucinated that flies were coming through the walls. Another little boy collapsed onto a bathroom floor a blood filled toilet nearby. He screamed in pain all the way to Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center in Denver. Doctors told his parents that Alex nearly died because his platelet count was so dangerously low. " It was almost surreal. It was so awful. You can't even fathom that a little four year old could die because he ate a hamburger, " said his father. A recall of 354,000 pounds of contaminated meat from Con Agra Plant in Greeley came too late. Like most recalls across the country much of the meat had already been eaten. Gail Eisnitz was recently the author of a book entitled " Slaughterhouse, " which promoted the following remarks in a review by Lawrence Carter Long for The Animal Protection Institute. " 'A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.' That was from Franz Kafka decades ago. A line that could serve just as well as the book jacket and endorsement for Gail's Slaughterhouse book. Her expose of the meat industry shocks us into realizing the horror that exists largely unseen around us, and helps us realize that the impact of the meat industry is felt everywhere from elementary classrooms to government offices to feed lots to courtrooms. The E. coli deaths recently in the news substantiate the evidence of her documents. Can anyone least of all meat eaters still believe that the United States has an adequate meat inspection system? " Through anecdotes and interviews with USDA inspectors, slaughterhouse workers, undercover investigators, and other industry insiders we have seen there are disturbing indifferences displayed by the meat industry not only toward animal suffering, but also toward the exploitation of its human workers and toward a product that puts its customers at risk through exposing it to life threatening bacteria. Emotional where it needs to be Slaughterhouse is a thoroughly researched and powerfully damning indictment. " One that I would certainly suggest people read, and then go way back. Go to the library and pull out Upton Sinclair's book written in 1906 called " The Jungle. " You want to turn your stomach. You want to see what inspired some improved laws to govern the meat industry, but woefully inadequate for what we have today. On January 17, 1961 in his farewell speech to the nation, President Eisenhower warned of the destructive potential of the eminent military industrial complex. As the '60s unfolded his prophecy materialized as a gigantic arms dealing and war making corporation, which killed thousands of American's youth and millions of citizens in Southeast Asia. It has taken decades for Americans to begin to acknowledge the direct havoc on our nation and the sizable portion of the planet's been adversely affected. Ten years after Eisenhower proved precedent another warning slipped on to the public radar. A small voice from vegetarians and ecologists pointed to the new meat industrial complex as a formidable national threat. Accused it of feeding human greed by killing living beings and destroying their environment. However unlike its predecessor this complex did not wait for wars or other diplomatic failures. Driven by grain surpluses, government subsidies, deceptive promotional practices and consumer apathy it carried out its deadly mission every minute of every day of every year. Butchering nine billion cows, pigs, turkeys, chickens, and other innocent animals for human consumption. It ignored the gathering scientific evidence that linked heart failure, cancer, stroke, and other chronic diseases to the consumption of these animals. It had no inkling of the absurd scenario where millions of other animals were abused and sacrificed in a vain search for a magic pill that would relieve its customers of largely self-inflicted diseases. As the decades passed since the '70s we have begun to recognize that the meat industrial complex poisons the lands and waters with pesticides, fertilizers, and other toxic substances. It depletes irreplaceable topsoil, ground water, and other critical food production resources. It wipes out forests and decimates wildlife in its habitats. Let's take a look at the genesis of the meat industrial complex and its protein theories. The meat industrial complex remains what the phrase suggests: a power, a leviathan that seems impervious to public concerns and constraints. So perhaps we should retrace the evolution of this late 20th century plague to get our bearings on the lethal social menace. The popularity of meat and other animal proteins in the United States diet can be traced back to the early 1940's when the concept of complete and incomplete proteins was popularized. You may even remember being taught this concept in health or science class where you were shown charts of meat and dairy products and eggs and told these were the good complete proteins. Usually the connotation being that complete is equal to what you should have. Then you were shown other foods like vegetables, grains, legumes, and fruits, which you were probably told were the incomplete or bad sources of protein. Now according to the original theory, complete proteins had all the essential eight amino acids in the right proportions while incomplete proteins lacked certain amino acids and did not have them in the right proportions. This theory was music to the ears of the meat and dairy industry who did the original research from behind the scenes supporting all this myth to begin with. It was not long before their products alone began to be advertised in dietetic journals and on television as the right kind of protein. An advertisement for the Armour Beef Company in a 1949 issue of The Journal Of The American Dietetic Association states that fine beef is " a rich source of complete protein and various minerals essential to a normal blood picture and fuel supplying calories, and its satiety value and thorough digestibility make it an important addition to virtually every balanced diet. " Well that journal soon became chock full of various ads supporting the meat industry. The American Meat Institute of Chicago for example ran full-page ads resembling scientific reports of the kind usually found in medical journals. This was gearing up to get more meat into the stomach of more Americans. These ads tried to lend scientific credence to the idea that meat was the only great food. Another ad called " meat and the dietary fallacies in the public mind run by The American Meat Institute label the scientific findings on the connections between high dietary uric acid intake and degenerative diseases erroneous. " They assured the public that meat did not aggravate such disorders as gout, rheumatism, and hypertension; and furthermore they stated that high protein diets were not harmful. A 1948 ad still advertised meat as " Man's Preferred Complete Protein Food. " It stated that, " meat provides protein of biological completeness requiring no protein supplementation from other sources. It instead enhances the nutrient value of the daily diet by supplementing incomplete protein foods to full biological activity. " Poultry on the other hand was pushed as being " rich in protein and relatively low in calories. " The message became clear. Eat meat or if you want to lose weight eat poultry. This kind of advertising was soon being done by other industries whose foods were protein rich. The Dairy Council for instance held milk as a high protein food especially necessary for children and teens. A 1964 ad paid for by The National Dairy Council pictured carefree teenagers romping on the beach and read, " Teenage Nutrition Protein They Could Care Less. " But not to worry. The Dairy Council added that as a prime source of readily available high quality protein milk is particularly well endowed to help meet the unique nutritional needs of teenagers. The American Dietetic Association went so far as to endorse ice cream as a good source of protein. They recommended it particularly for different appetites: the convalescent and the elderly. Ice cream only contains 3.85 grams of protein per 100 grams, but it does contain 12 grams of saturated fat, which as we know can clog arteries. The practice of biased and deceptive advertising by special interest groups still prevails today and even more so. A few years ago the pork industry ran a pro pork campaign. They promoted pork as the lean meat ideal for dieters. They also said that it is a great source of protein despite the fact that pork is high in saturated fat, high in cholesterol, and calories. These ads were seen on television and in magazines like The Journal of The American Dietetic Association. This organization has helped to perpetuate the notion that meat and other animal products are the superior source of complete protein. What is startling about this so-called complete versus incomplete protein theory is that it remained intact and unchallenged for so many years. The proof is that it is wholly a lie. Completely and totally unfounded. No science to back it up. Animal products are only not our own source of protein and aside from the egg they are not even high quality sources of protein. I'll get to that when I talk about the egg project. I was the one who, of course as a scientist at The Institute of Applied Biology, did the original first work in the United States to show that all non-animal foods are also complete proteins and contain all eight essential amino acids. That work done originally in 1978 had difficulty getting published even though it was reviewed and supervised by Dr. Berman and Dr. Hilliard Fitzkee and others. It took 12 years before we could get anyone to publish it because just the concept that an entire nation - all of its scientists, all of its doctors, all of its nurses, all of its dieticians, hundreds of thousands of people had all been wrong in the advice given. And then as a consequence tens of millions of Americans had been sickened and killed by misinformation. It could have been one of the reasons why it took 12 years after being proven repeatedly that there is no such thing as complete or incomplete comparing animal to non-animal. It was all a lie. Even to this day the average dietician, the average physician, the average nurse will still tell you that your best sources of protein are your animal sources of protein. They are wrong. It will take up to 30 years if most scientific history is repeating itself here before the notion of what is good or bad about a particular area of science has changed. The facts are not on their side. They still hold however to the old concept. Modern nutritionists, at least those who have broken from the pact, have abandoned the theory of complete and incomplete proteins, and now are evaluating proteins in terms of quality. Quality is determined using a formula that evaluates the utilization of a protein. Meaning let's say of ten grams protein eaten. How much does a body actually utilize? How much does your cell take in? What amount of that is not utilized? That's what important. It's called net protein utilization or NPU. It tells you how much you actually need in a day of the real good net protein. We also need to take the amino acid content and digestibility of the food into account when assessing it. The highest quality proteins contain the most complete set of essential amino acids, and due to their ideal protein patterns they are utilized with maximum efficiency by the body. The digestibility of the protein containing food is also very important because we cannot thoroughly digest something if we are lacking in enzymes or hydrochloric acid. If we don't thoroughly digest it, then we can't utilize its protein. So think of all the people who are convalescing who are ill and who have improper digestive symptoms, which is a lot of Americans. So when they do eat a hamburger or a hotdog or chicken because of how it's prepared. It's deep-frying. It's difficulty in digesting the amount of fat in it. Those people only get a percentage of the protein in any case, but none of that is considered by the industries giving us the food. They just want us to crave it, and to eat it without any fear of consequence. That's a mistake. While The American Dietetic Association still supports the old theories on protein originated by the meat, poultry, and dairy industries, biochemists and nutritionists from the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration support the more current view of protein. According to the Food and Human Nutrition Information Center, a division of the US Department of Agriculture, total protein refers to the amino acid composition of a food rather than its completeness. For example animal sources have a higher quality of protein than most individual vegetarian or grain sources. However, the total protein figure for an animal product such as beef is not synonymous with its quality more accurately its net protein utilization. Simply put what matters when you're eating a protein is if it has all the amino acids in the right balance to sustain life, and whether these amino acids are going to be absorbed by you. So with the exception of only a few foods almost all vegetable foods including fruits, grains, legumes, nuts and seeds contain the essential amino acids. Some of them contain very large amounts of these amino acids, and many have very high net protein utilizations. Meaning they contain these essential amino acids in the right proportion that your body needs. There's no question that we need protein. Men need somewhere between 50 and 70 grams a day, and women between 30 and 50 grams a day depending upon what they're doing and if they're pregnant they're going to need more. Lactating more. High-level training more. Recovering from fever or cancer more. But for the average person that's about right. About nine-tenths of a gram per (inaudible) body weight a day. However contrary to what you may have been led to believe, when you decide to obtain that protein it's important you ask yourself where am I getting the protein. It's a matter of personal choice and responsibility, and when I say that I mean this. Today if I decide to have my protein I could have a hamburger or a pork chop or ham sandwich or fried chicken, but to do that I would also have to accept responsibility for the fact that in the eyes, in the heart and the mind of an innocent animal, an animal with intelligence, an animal that if you're around it as I have been you'll see that they are as friendly and smart as your dog and cat and frequently far more smarter. That animal is going to suffer. That animal is going to die. Do I need to connect my life force with that animal's dead force? Not in my case. Recently there was a report of a cow that was in line to be slaughtered. If you've ever been - and I recently filmed and you'll see it on a documentary I'm doing on vegetarianism in the near future. You'll see a whole lot of cattle about 1,000 waiting to go into to be killed. The killing process is not pretty. They are supposed to depending upon if everything goes right be able to kill them so the animal doesn't suffer. I've never seen an animal killed without it suffering. Never once. I defy anyone - anyone - to show me an animal that doesn't suffer. More often than not the animal starts moving around. They see in front of them. They see the other animals being killed, and they try to get out of the confined little chute. They'll try to jump over it, and that's when the guy takes out this ball peen hammer and just starts whacking it in the head and knocks out its eyeball. Knocks out its teeth. It's bleeding. It's screaming. Then two or three guys come and just hold its head down and just keep smashing it in the head until its finally knocked unconscious, and then they'll drag it and put a hook under it and hoist it up and start cutting off its skin. Then suddenly it becomes conscious again. Now it's seeing its skin cut off. It's seeing its organs taking out. This can last a minute to a minute and a half while it's aware that it's being dissected. So ask yourself okay. Have your hamburger. Kosher or not. But are you willing to be out there and killing the animal? If you're not willing to kill the animal and take the spiritual responsibility for taking that life, then what right do you have under any concept to do so? Well that's for each of us to determine our own way. I'm just trying to make you aware. Holding a mirror up as painful as it may be. Think before you eat that next piece of flesh because that's what's going to happen. There must be the suffering, the violence. There must be the highly indiscriminate importation of pain before that animal becomes your meal. In different cultures they have preferences for different animals. In France for some reason they seem to love horsemeat. So horses are killed. The very same horses that Americans love and we have seven million horse owners. Over there it's just another form of protein. Other cultures it is monkeys. They bring a monkey to a table. They open the table up after you've selected the monkey. Then they come and put a corkscrew in its head. Its body is below the table. Its head is in a little hole above the table so it can't get out. So it's watching you as the waiter comes over and puts a corkscrew in. Takes off the top of its head. Now the brain itself doesn't have the pain. Cutting its scalp will cause it pain and it's frightened. It's highly intelligent. Then they start eating its brains and dipping it into sauce. The Chinese love to do that. Those in Bangkok they certainly do it. Then in China, Korea, and in Thailand they'll eat puppies. The things that you love come out of box at Christmas time. Well to them that's lunch. Some other countries they eat other things. But all around the world people who have this idea that there is no moral responsibility for this. But then again they're not the ones suffering. So let's take a look at beyond that suffering and beyond the responsibility for that all with the idea that we're getting our protein by an industry that has lied, manipulated. That has used its advertising power to keep the mainstream media from wanting to even see is it true or not. There are other things that we should be concerned with. Let's start with antibiotics. Those meat lovers who discount the arguments over the protein qualities in meat there's a more sinister problem. Meat is also one of the most chemically treated foods in the US diet. Currently some 20 to 30 thousand different drugs are administered to animals. Of these it is known that 4,000 may be transferred to the human population be it the dairy, the egg, the meat, or the cheese. Most of these drugs because they are initially administered to animals and not humans do not require FDA approval. Even those drugs that are FDA approved are not safe. Antibiotics are perhaps the most widely used and abused of these drugs, and since they were first introduced into animal feed in 1949 the use of antibiotics has grown from 490,000 pounds in 1954 to 1.2 million pounds in 1960. Today it's nine million pounds. The cost of these additives exceeds 300 million dollars annually. These antibiotics are primarily administered to stave off disease that would otherwise be rampant in the closed, highly unsanitary conditions in which meat animals are forced to live. They are fed to veal because these calves are purposely made anemic by iron deprivation in order to yield the white pale meat preferred by many chefs. In this anemic condition the calves are prey to many sorts of infections. Now these highly level of antibiotics have numerous side effects on the people who eat these animals. First of all a bacteria becomes resistant to antibiotics very quickly. It's now recognized that these resistant strains of bacteria can be passed from animal to man, and that they may not be treatable by other antibiotics. Second the antibiotics themselves remain in the animal flesh after it has been slaughtered, and then passed on to the consumer. Over time these drug resistant residues can build up and make your own body resistant to antibiotics when you really need them. So when you need an antibiotic it's not working. Third people who are allergic to antibiotics fed to the animal may suffer from very serious adverse reactions when eating meats full of the drug residues. Just complete that one thought I just realized I didn't complete. So anyhow on this one feedlot one of the cows was so frightened by what it saw of the cow in front of it being slaughtered that it managed rather miraculously so to jump over a five foot retaining wall and hit the ground well below it. Got up and tried to find a door. Ran out a door. Ran out through a lot. Ran across the street. Jumped over a fence and ran out and hid in a thicket. They searched around. Couldn't find the cow. The cow wouldn't move. The cow was hiding. Now think of it. Hiding from what it knew would be its own death. When this got out on the news, and when they found the cow and of course were going to kill it again that's when Peter Max, a unique and very special artist and humanist called and said I'll buy the cow. Well that cow was probably worth about $700, but they charged him I believe $30,000. Exploited the situation, but Peter paid it. Now that cow is living on a farm upstate. One cow saved by one person who really showed his heart. But in the time of a blink of an eye there are another 5,000 cows that don't have that opportunity to be saved. There are other drugs that are widely used on these animals including hormones to regulate breeding, to tranquilize, and to promote weight gain. Now these synthetic hormones can and do cause cancer in the animals given the drugs, which in most cases does not affect the marketability of the meat. So the fact that a cow can have cancer doesn't mean they're going to condemn the cow. They figure just cut out the cancer as if cancer were merely a localized condition, which it is not. It's systemic. We do not yet know the degree to which cancer is viral in its origins, but recent studies have found viruses to be responsible for some cancers. So apart from the unappetizing aspect of eating cancerous meat this meat may actually be the vehicle for cancer viruses to enter our body. Additionally the residues of estrogen one of the hormones commonly fed to these animals may also increase women's chances of contracting uterine and breast cancer. Also children exposed to estrogen may enter puberty prematurely. Androgen, a growth-promoting hormone, may cause liver cancer. Diethylstibestrol (?) hormone, which was banned for human use in 1960's, remained in use in animals until 1979. Other drugs which are used are Ralgrow, an estrogen like compound; Synovax a naturally occurring hormone which affects weight gain and Lutalyse, a prostaglandin often given to an entire herd so that they will ovulate at the same time. Now this drug can affect the menstrual cycle of women. It can also cause pregnant women to miscarry. Cattle are also commonly and frequently sprayed with pesticides such as Vapona, which is in the same family as nerve gas. This is the same chemical used on the no pest strips, and it's considered so toxic that The World Health Organization set the daily allowable limit at .004 milligrams per kilogram. You could exceed this limit by merely staying indoors with one of these strips for nine hours. Unfortunately meat is not the only product, which is filled with chemicals. The chemicals fed to milk cows or are sprayed on them are passed into their milk. Chickens are given the same assortment of drugs that beef cattle are given, which in turn shows up in eggs. Chickens are given additional drugs to promote shell hardness and uniformity of yolks in their eggs. So actually the complete protein found in meat, eggs, poultry, fish and milk can be associated with saturated fat, elevated cholesterol, nitrates, hormones, pesticides, herbicide residues, antibiotics, preservatives, and countless additives. Therefore animal proteins can be worse for you by far than vegetable protein even though the meat industry would have you think otherwise. Unfortunately the US population is towing the meat industry line. On average the individuals in the United States eat about 200 pounds of red meat and 50 pounds of chicken and turkey and 10 pounds of assorted fish and 300 eggs and 250 pounds of various dairy products per year per person. Now consider that that takes into account every single American citizen. I eat none of the above. Babies don't eat any of that. Many senior citizens and vegetarians don't eat that, which means that the people really eating these are eating a lot more. In December of 2002, a hopeful development occurred in Denmark where the results of a ban on antibiotic use in animal feed since 1995 was released by Professor Heinrich Wagner of The Danish Veterinary Institute. It was found that using antibiotics as growth hormones did not boost farm productivity as much as good animal husbandry, which has the added benefit of reducing antibiotic resistance. In a previous landmark study in the early '90s, the professor and his colleagues discovered that bacteria in the animal gut were developing strong resistance to antibiotics. These resistant bacteria were then finding their way into the human population causing infections in hospitals that did not respond to antibiotics and becoming difficult to treat. That research led to a voluntary ban on the use of antibiotic feed in Denmark. Now during the phase out between 1995 and 2000 the agriculture use of antibiotics fell from 210 tons to 96 tons per year. The researchers found that this was followed by a large drop in the incidence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in animals. One strain of resistant bacteria dropped from 80 percent of poultry and 20 percent in pigs to just three percent in both species. Because of these dramatic results, Europe is now considering following Denmark's lead. A meeting of the European Union Agriculture Ministries for later this year will decide whether or not to ban the use of antibiotics in animal feed all together. Meanwhile in the United States antibiotics are a big business when it comes to raising animals. Over one-half of the nation's annual antibiotic production goes to livestock and poultry. Antibiotics for livestock and poultry account for 800 million dollars in annual sales in the major nations of the worlds, and the figure is expected to rise steadily as is the number of medical feed additives now figured to be around 50. The massive wealth being accumulated as a result of this brisk and flourishing enterprise has benefited only a few major companies though. Nearly three-quarters of the feed additive sales in the United States is generated by only three companies: Eli Lilly, American CytoMed, and Pfizer. Let's take a look at the meat inspection. Most people believe that everything they eat has been inspected and therefore must be safe. These are the pillars of the meat industrial complex. They have the clout to prevent proper inspection of their slaughterhouses. For example The US Department of Agriculture was opposed to the passage of the Humane Slaughter Act, but was nevertheless made responsible for its enforcement. However while the intentional violation of the Meat Federal Inspection Act carry stiff fines and imprisonment violations of the Human Slaughter Act carry no penalties at all. When inspectors observe violations of the Humane Slaughter Act they're required to stop the slaughter process until violations are corrected. The threat of these stoppages is supposed to assure an industry compliance with the law since downtime can result in fewer profits for the day. But the inspectors are prevented from properly observing the plants. How so? Well the General Accounting Project's Tom Devine says, " Inspectors who have attempted to stop the production line of a slaughter have been reprimanded, resigned, reassigned, physically attacked by plant employees, and then disciplined for being in fights. Had their performance appraisals lowered. Been placed under criminal investigation. Fired or being subjected to other forms of retaliation that were necessary to neutralize them. " Another fact is - I'll quote from this. " Inspectors are required to enforce humane regulations on paper only. Very seldom do they ever go into that area and actually enforce humane handling in slaughter. " They can't. They're not allowed to because the inspectors' stations are at the beginning and end of the line, and they aren't allowed to leave their stations. " I'd go to the office, " says one man. " I'd go to OSHA, Occupational And Safety Health Administration. I'd say look. You got live hogs here. Number one. People are getting cut. Number two. It's cruel. Meaning living hogs. Those are hogs that weren't anesthetized so they're being butchered alive. No one would take action. I was also the safety representative for the union, and I got lots of complaints about it. " Another person says, " They make sure everything is by the book when anybody official visits. Whenever OSHA comes to check on things the stick pit where animals are bled out runs like a jewel. As soon as they're gone it's back to business as usual. " Another person, " I asked Mike why the union hadn't brought the humane violations to the USDA's attention. Neither he nor the other local union officials were aware that USDA had any enforcement authority regarding the humane treatment of livestock or that there was a Humane Slaughter Act. No one knew. " This was the union representing the people who were doing the slaughtering. What are these inspectors? These were all meat inspectors I just mentioned. Federal inspectors. Well why didn't they get their report out to the public? Here's what an inspector says. There's no way these animals can bleed out in a few minutes. It takes up to that time just to get them up the ramp. By the time they hit the scalding tank they're still fully conscious and squealing, and then they're dumped into boiling hot water. Now you've got them cut, bleeding, and bruised bad. They're thrown into a tank of scalding hot water and they try to get out of it. It could take 15 minutes of them trying to get out of it all the while their body and their skin is peeling off from being boiled. " Another says, " Bad sticks when the person who is supposed to be hitting the right vein in the animal's neck sends the blood flowing from the animal's body misses the vein, which is easy. Usually you don't have enough time to bleed out. What do they do? They just take this bleeding animal fully conscious and they drown them by holding them under water in a scalding tank. " Think of that for a moment. Think of that the next time you have your regular kosher piece of meat. That animal could have been intentionally drowned in scalding boiling water fully conscious. Do you have a responsibility for the meat that you eat? Then go and drown a screaming terrified cow or pig, and while you're holding it under water and you're looking in its eyes and you're watching it gasp for breath and air. It's 400 degrees. You watch its skin bubbling up. It may take two or three minutes. Ask yourself is your belief so strong that you could kill without any thought of any consequence. Some people no problem at all. Other people they'd have to think about that. Still other people are repulsed by the concept. If you're repulsed by the concept of the vast majority of animals - the vast majority - suffering this way before you have them on your plate, then you should be equally repulsed by your own lack of conviction of pushing it away. Unless you're willing to kill it and take the moral responsibility for killing it, what right do you have to eat it? " Animal abuse is so common that workers who've been in the industry for years get into a state of apathy about it. After a while it doesn't seem unusual anymore. In the wintertime they are always hogs stuck to the sides of the floor freezing on the floors of the truck. They go in there with wires and knives and just cut the skin off and pry the hogs loose with crowbars. The skins pull right off. These hogs were alive when they did this. Animal abuse is so commonplace nobody even thinks about it anymore. " That's from an inspector. Another inspector, " One time the knocking gun was broke all day. They were taking a knife and cutting the back of the cow's neck open while he's still standing up. They would just fall down and be shaking, and they then just start stabbing the cow in the butt to try to make him move. They'd break their tails. They'd beat them badly. I've drugged cows until they're bones start breaking while they're still alive. " And another one, " Bringing them around the corner they'd get stuck in the doorway. Just pull them until their hide ripped off until the blood just dripped on the steel and concrete. Breaking their legs pulling them in. The cow was crying with its tongue stuck out. They'd pull him until his neck just popped off. " " Dragging cattle with a chain and forklift is standard practice at the plant, " explained a long-term inspector at a large beef operation in Nebraska. He says, " And that's even after the forklift operator rolled over and crushed the head of one cow while dragging another. They go through the skinning process alive. They'd actually be living. Conscious and being skinned alive. I saw that myself a bunch of times. I found them alive clear over to the rump stand. And that's happened in every plant. I've worked in four large ones and a bunch of small ones. They're all the same. Everybody gets so used to it that it doesn't mean anything. Workers drag cripples with a garden tractor and a chain crunching their bones. " I'm Gary Null. Part one of my in depth investigative report on meat and protein. For those of you who have not eaten meat, but you eat chicken consider the following. Science studies of market ready chickens found that campylobacter, which is a very serious bacterium, on up to 82 percent of chickens. In a survey of 50 brand name broilers in Georgia, government researchers found 90 percent contaminated with campylobacter. Even Food Safety Review, the USDA's own publication, reported " heavily contaminated flocks may result in a contamination rate of 100 percent for finished products. " Again, even with chlorine and other so- called improvements in place for sanitation, the campylobacter was found on up to 100 percent of the chickens coming out of the chill tank. A US inspection report highlights this impotency (?). " Anyone reading this may wonder why the inspectors didn't do something to stop the problems. The leadership at The Department of Agriculture wouldn't let us. We used to stop production for hours if necessary to get the facility cleaned up. But by the time I left anyone who tried to do that would have to find another job. " Let's take a look at the meat industrial complex today. If we recognize the complicity of the meat industrial complex and the creation of these threats to the lives of the meat consumers we have to take a look then at Tom Devine. At GAP, he told the following: " The very same officials who are charged with promoting the sale of agricultural products are also supposed to protect the consumers from filth and unscrupulous practices. " As a result of the USDA's duplicitous mandate and its primary focus on marketing, the department's ranks have long been filled with industry leaders meaning the meat and chicken industry leaders how have demonstrated their abilities at increasing industry profits. In fact as far back as 1983 author Kathleen Hughes wrote " Return To The Jungle, " an expose of the collusion and the partnership between the Reagan Administration and the meat industry. By that time Ronald Reagan had already appointed three agribusiness leaders to head up the USDA. The Secretary of Agriculture was John Block, a corporate hog producer from Illinois. The Assistant Secretary later to be Secretary of Agriculture was Richard Line, President of The American Meat Institute. The Assistant Secretary for Marketing and Inspection Services was William McMillan, a former meatpacking executive and Vice President of The National Cattlemen's Association. In May of 1989 Joanne Smith was appointed Secretary Treasurer of Agriculture for Marketing and Inspection Services. She was a cattle rancher and previous President of the National Cattlemen's Association and previous Chair of The Beef Board, a public relations organ for the beef industry. Now she was the enforcer, and the trend continued into the '90s. Don Tyson, Senior Chairman of the Board of Tyson Foods of Arkansas, the world's largest poultry processor and one of the nation's leading seafood and pork producers maintains close ties to the White House. In addition to being a long time Clinton friend, Tyson was also the second largest contributor to a $220,000 fund that Clinton used to pursue his Arkansas political agenda. A Mr. Frielander (sp?), a USDA insider said that 14 former USDA executives he personally knew had recently moved directly into industry jobs. Not just vets he explained. Training officers. Area supervisors. Regional directors. Agency administrators. Washington staff officers. Not only does the meat industry control the government bureaucracy at the top, but also now we have the hazardous analyst critical control point, which turns over regulation to the plants themselves. Plant workers now with no whistle blower protection at all are replacing federal workers on the line. Could the meat industry finally be trusted with corporate self-inspection? Not on your life, and yet that's exactly what has happened. We have seen whistle blower files documenting the type of products some of the nation's largest meat and poultry plants have tried to slip into human food channels in 1995 and '96. Red meat animals and poultry that were dead on arrival at the plants were hidden from inspectors and hung up to be butchered. Several heads of from cancer eye cattle were switched to smaller carcasses before inspection so less meat would be condemned. Up to 25 percent of slaughtered chicken on the inspection line was covered with feces and bile and ingesta. In one enforcement action at a single facility, inspectors retained six tons of ground pork with rust, which was bound for a school lunch program in Indiana. Fourteen thousand pounds of chicken speckled with metal flakes. Five thousand pounds of rancid chicken necks and 721 pounds of green chicken that made employees gag from the smell. Despite the fact the federal agency employees had documented the sell of nearly two million pounds of tainted food, USDA was allowing the sale (?) buterol treated calves to be sold to the American public. Instead of altering this and alerting consumers to the widespread use of these chemicals, the investigating agencies trying to protect the veal industry from what its members stated could be potential ruin initiated a major news blackout. When meat inspectors work for the government they yielded appraisals such as the company employees told us that rats were all over the coolers at night running on top of meat and gnawing on it. We saw fecal contamination get through one to one foot smears as well as flukes, which are liver parasites. Grubs, worm-like fly larvae that burrow into the cow's skin and work their way through the animal's body. Abscesses, which are encapsulated infections filled with pus. Hide hair and ingesta, which is partially digested food found in the stomach or the esophagus. Cows are slaughtered that have been dead on arrival. So some long that they're ice cold. So it's hard to believe that such blatant corruption is possible when the industry regulates itself. And that's the part of the story people are not aware of. The meat industry is so pervasive in its sinister effects that even its workers are vulnerable. With nearly 36 injuries or illnesses for every 100 workers, meatpacking is the single most dangerous industry in the United States. In fact a worker's chance of suffering an injury or illness in a meat plant are 600 percent greater than if that the same person worked in a coal mine. If it seems harsh and irrational and unfair to call the meat industrial complex a plague, by the late 1990's the public was reacting to just such a perception. Nearly a century ago in 1907 a doctor Alzheimer had published a treatise about the disease that would one day carry his name. He had two young colleagues who worked with him, a Dr. Creutzfeldt and Dr. Jakob. They too had identified a similar brain wasting disease that now had Europe in a panic. The disease caused the brains of cows to turn into sponge-like mass and their behavior was called mad. But now over 90 years later, it was repeating itself. I'm Gary Null. In the next installment of our special program we'll go in depth into looking at the true cause of mad cow disease and looking at the statements that we had nothing to worry about in America. No mad cow disease here or so they said. Could we have it here? How would we know? When an industry regulates itself and is one of the single most corrupt in our nation, what can we do about it? First thing we have to do is dispel the myths, and we'll do that on our next program. Thank you very much for listening. (End of Part One of Meat, Protein and Dispelling the Myths) © 1996-2006 Gary Null & Associates, Inc. (GNA). . Some of the articles and materials that appear herein are reproduced with the permission of the copyright owner(s). No reproduction or duplication allowed without the written permission of GNA. The statements contained herein have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Nothing contained herein is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. The materials contained on this website are for educational purposes only, and GNA does not endorse or express any opinion as to the validity of the information or advice contained on this website. Consult with your knowledgeable health care provider to determine which and what amounts of vitamins, minerals, food supplements, dietary plans, or exercise programs would be beneficial for your particular health needs. If you are using any medications, you must consult with your physician and pharmacist to determine if any vitamin, mineral, nutrient, chemical, phyto-chemical, herb, botanical, juice, drug, or food may be counter-indicated. Disclaimer The information on this website is presented for educational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for the diagnosis, treatment and advice of a qualified licensed professional. Throughout this website, statements are made pertaining to the properties and/or functions of nutritional products. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and these materials and products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. http://gnhealth.com/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=1086 JoAnn Guest mrsjo- www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/Diets Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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