My son and I stopped at a local farm called England Acres (their last name is England) and found a great market with everything fresh in season and organic. It’s a beautiful 1870s farm and besides the produce they have baked goods, grass fed beef and lamb, pasture chickens, hens and eggs, hay and straw, and dairy – including frozen custard. They give tours and you can visit all of the animals and feed the chickens popcorn. I just needed a little more broccoli and milk but also got some kielbasa to put in the freezer for some day when I feel like doing sauerkraut.
From England Acres website: “The cattle are grass-fed on pasture land with plenty of space, shade, and quality water. Maximizing the fresh grass of spring, summer and early fall, they are supplemented and finished with hay and forage that is grown on the farm as their food supply during winter months. Grass-fed animals live low stress lives and are so healthy there is no reason to treat them with antibiotics or other drugs. Grass-fed beef is more nutritious! Compared with feedlot meat, meat from grass-fed beef, bison, lamb, and goats has less total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories. It also has more Vitamin E, beta-carotene, Vitamin C, and a number of health-promoting fats, including Omega-3 fatty acids, and CLA (conjugated linoleic acid).”
The feedlots they refer to can also be called CAFOs — Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or, most accurately, concentration camps for animals. The crowded conditions in the CAFOs created perfect conditions for massive disease outbreaks – until operators began feeding antibiotics to the animals (which also accelerated growth)[1] leading to antibiotic and antimicrobial resistant (AMR) strains of bacteria.
Feedlot cattle are fattened with corn, which is not a natural part of a cow’s diet and makes them sick because they cannot digest it so they need more drugs. In the movie King Corn (you can see the trailer at www.kingcorn.net) they reported that 70% of the antibiotics in the U.S. are consumed by animals. Sir Alexander Fleming, the man who first discovered penicillin, warned that overuse would lead to bacterial resistance. The conditions in which today’s cows and pigs are housed, and the diets they are fed are so unnatural, cruel, and disease producing that a steady supply of drugs added to their meals is needed to keep them alive.[2]
“The World Health Organization’s 2014 report on global surveillance of AMR reveals that antibiotic resistance is no longer a prediction for the future; it is happening right now, across the world, and is putting at risk the ability to treat common infections in the community and hospitals. Without urgent, coordinated action, the world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries, which have been treatable for decades, can once again kill. Without effective antimicrobials for prevention and treatment of infections, the success of organ transplantation, cancer chemotherapy and major surgery would be compromised.”[3]
The report states that human actions accelerate the emergence and spread of AMR including “the inappropriate use of antimicrobial drugs, including in animal husbandry.” This isn’t news though – the FDA has known about it since the 1970s. Europe and Canada have already banned feeding antibiotics to animals. Of course, there is big money behind CAFOs and pharmaceutical companies, but Americans are eagerly consuming a lot of cheap feedlot meat. Even though consumption has dropped a bit since 2012, the USDA predicts Americans will eat over 203 pounds of meat per person in 2014 (up from 138 pounds in 1950).[4] That figures to be over a half pound of meat a day over however many meals people are eating nowadays — remember those Taco Bell commercials last year that were pushing people to eat a fourth meal around midnight? Yikes, just what we need. We’ll talk about meal times another day.
[1] #38 The End of Food, Paul Roberts, Houghton Mifflin Company 2009, pgs 185
[2] #84 John Robbins, Reclaiming Our Health: Exploring the Medical Myth and Embracing the Source of True Healing, H J Kramer Inc., 1996.
[3] World Health Organization Western Pacific Region, “Antimicrobial Resistance,” Fact sheet #194, April 2014, www.wpro.who.int/mediacentre/releases/2014/AMR_factsheet_FINAL.pdf
[4] United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service; Livestock, Dairy, & Poultry Outlook: No. (LDPM-240) 18 pp, June 2014; and USDA Agriculture Factbook, Chapter 2.
