Chook Me! - Do you know of any websites that give the truth about the beef and poultry industry?

Do you know of any websites that give the truth about the beef and poultry industry?

I read Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, and a lot of it really freaked me out. Could anyone give me more information about the TRUTH on the big corporate cattle, poultry, and fast food industries? Websites would be especially helpful. Thank you.

Public Comments

Read the book called "the Jungle" Deals with the meat-packing industry
unfortunately its very difficult to find out "the Truth" about any subject, because evryone writing a book likes to express their own personal views and version of the facts. facts and statistics and case studies can all be made to say just about anything a particular interest group wants them to say. youve gotta read lots of different sources of information written from conflicting points of view and then based on that make your own decision as to what the truth is......DONT rely on only books written from only one viewpoint..you'll never get an accurate idea of anything by doing that.
Yes. You can go to any animal rights sites.
Read this book it's awesome! Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know about Fast Food
Well, slightly off topic, but you don't want to know what goes on in some of the vegetable industries either. I knew a lady whose sister worked for (I forget where, but some such place), but after what all goes into creamed corn (cobs, stalks, the works), I will never eat creamed corn again.
Yes, but in case you would like more information I recommend going here --> www.factoryfarming.com It's a much better site than Peta's.
Most of the time you just type in what you want. Try thetruthaboutbeef.com
yeah, what we put in our mouths is pretty disgusting! Here's a short but disgusting article I found: http://www.newstarget.com/000681.html Now I don't want to eat at all...Don't forget to read about the truth about tomato sauce, peanut butter, and tons of other processed food--its just as yucky!
go to any vegan,vegetarian, or animal rights website and you will find tons of info,not only beef and poultry,but also the dairy industry,trust me,I'm vegan i know tons of stuff that most don't know about meat and dairy industry. Propped up with the aid of official government policy, farming in the US has been allowed, over the last generation, to grow into a grim corporate monstrosity, the scale of which is hard to comprehend, or even to be believed. Virtually all of the over 7 billion animals slaughtered for food in the US every year are today the product of a highly mechanized factory-like system, incorporating dangerous, unprecedented, and unsustainable methods of efficiency. It takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of meat. According to Newsweek, "The water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer could float a destroyer." In contrast, it takes only 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), dubbed Mad Cow Disease because of the apparent mental torture cows display before death, is an always-fatal neuro-degenerative cattle disease caused by incredibly virulent and mysterious infectious proteins called prions. An outbreak in Great Britain had by early 1996 stricken around 160,000 cows. Circumstantial evidence pointed to the British practice of mixing the remains of sheep, including brains and bones, into cows' feed as the cause of the outbreak. This apparent species-to-species inoculation is what makes all forms of spongiform encephalopathy (known to affect other mammals as well) so alarming. Are cow-eating humans the next victims? At press-time, evidence pointed to a certain strain of Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD) as being the human variant of spongiform encephalopathy. Grim predictions tell of up to 500,000 Britons a year falling to this disease due to their past consumption of BSE-infected cows. Prion-based diseases often have incubation periods in terms of decades, so the saga is sure to continue. In the meantime, since using the remains of dead animals in feed has been integral to agricultural operations in the US for years, BSE, or the chance of some future American version of it, is one more reason to think twice before biting into that char-broiled burger. It is estimated that livestock production accounts for twice the amount of pollution in the US as that produced by industrial sources. Livestock in the US produce 20 times the excrement of the entire US population. Since farm animals today spend much or all of their lives in factory sheds or feedlots, their waste no longer serves to fertilize pastures a little at a time. One poultry researcher, according to United Poultry Concerns literature, explains: "A one-million-hen complex will produce 125 tons of wet manure a day." To responsibly store, disperse, or degrade this amount of animal waste is simply not possible. Much of the waste inevitably is flushed into rivers and streams. Becoming a vegetarian does more to clean up our nation's water than any other single action. According to the Family Food Protection Act of 1995 (S.515), Section 2: "meat and meat food products, and poultry and poultry products, contaminated with pathogenic bacteria are a leading cause of foodborne illness." The bill also states that foodborne illnesses take approximately 9,000 lives, and cause between 6.5 and 80 million illnesses, each year. According to USDA Secretary Dan Glickman, 500 deaths a year are attributable to E.coli contamination in beef. In the words of John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America, a dairy cow living in today's modern milk factory "is bred, fed, medicated, inseminated and manipulated to a single purpose--maximum milk production at minimum cost." She lives with an unnaturally swelled up and sensitive udder, is likely to be kept inside a stall her entire life, is milked up to 3 times a day, and is kept pregnant nearly all of her life with her young taken from her almost immediately after birth. "Contented" is the characteristic most often attributed to the cow. However, cows in today's factories have to be fed tranquilizers to calm their nerves. By concealing a hidden camera on his body, an employee of a Rapid City, SD slaughterhouse was able to obtain a videotape for CBS-TV's 48 Hours. The tape showed how a plant with over 300 employees that processes an average of 50 cows per hour with only 4 USDA inspectors "keeps the line moving." It showed workers taking dangerous shortcuts in cleaning up fluid that had broken out of an abscess from a piece of chuck beef, a severe violation of USDA rules that would require an extended clean-up procedure. Comments from a seasoned USDA veterinarian: "I can say from my experience of nine years and in talking to other food inspectors around the country, this probably goes on on a daily basis." The National Cancer Research Institute found that women who eat meat on a daily basis are almost 4 times more likely to get breast cancer than those women who eat little or no meat Farm animals in our factory sheds today are supposed to have their drug intakes stopped at proscribed intervals prior to slaughter to avoid residues ending up in the final consumer product. Withdrawal schedules, however, are not always properly followed. With so many different drugs, the regimens can be complex, with written instructions often not very coherent. Due to the mechanized nature of today's conveyer belt feeding systems, troughs of old, drug-laden feed may not get cleaned away when withdrawal should begin. In addition, since farm animals are often fed animal waste as well as animal flesh, drug and pesticide residues continue to be recycled Harvey Diamond, co-author of the Fit for Life books, writes, "the list of ailments that can be linked to dairy products is so extensive there is hardly a problem it doesn't at least contribute to." Consumption of cow's milk is linked to colitis, dysfunctions of the thyroid gland, and headaches--even Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Lou Gehrig's disease and Multiple Sclerosis. Parent advisor Dr. Benjamin Spock has said that cow's milk, "causes internal blood loss, allergies and indigestion, and contributes to some cases of childhood diabetes." Dr. Spock even linked milk to the risk for anemia in babies. The common cold, as well as allergies to dust, cats and pollen, are more likely to go away when cow's milk is taken out of the diet. About 98% of all milk in the US is produced using factory methods. Part of factory life for a cow includes dangerous levels of drugs administered to boost milk output. Due to selective breeding, cows already produce at least two and a half times the amount of milk of yesterday's pastured counterpart. Then, as of February, 1994, farmers were given the go-ahead to use the genetically engineered hormone Bovine Somatotropin (BST) on their herds. Designed to boost milk output by an additional 15 percent, milk per cow statistics are already showing the effects nationwide. A cow naturally has at least a 20-year lifespan; today's stressed out cows, however, become hamburger in less than 4 years, as a cow's ability to give milk quickly diminishes under modern conditions. Nearly half the fish tested in a 6-month investigation by Consumers Union were found to be contaminated by bacteria from human or animal feces, suspected to be the result of poor sanitation practices at one or more points along the fish handling process Of all the antibiotics administered in the US to people or farm animals, farm animals receive over 95% of them--not so much to treat infection, but to make the animals grow faster on less feed A US Congressional committee report, published in 1985, charged that there were 20-30 thousand animal drugs in use at the time, and that as many as 90% had not been approved by the FDA Farming today is fully concentrated in the hands of a few. In the US, eight firms control half (approximately 3.5 billion birds) of the poultry industry, and four meat packers control 90 percent of meat processing. The so-called Freedom to Farm bill, which came into law in early 1996, schedules $36 billion to be given over 7 years, in essence, to the wealthiest of America's agribusinessmen--regardless of prices in the market, nor with requirements to farm anything at all. The law will ultimately act to shake out small and moderate sized farms once and for all. Late in 1995, the FDA put into place new rules pertaining to the regulation of fish processing. The rules require the FDA to inspect each of the nation's 6,000 processing plants, at most once per year and as little as once every three years, at which time a few samples may be taken for later evaluation. Individual fish will continue to not be inspected by any US agency. Though every fish processor will be required to keep ongoing records of safety procedures peculiar to its operation, no regulations whatsoever will pertain to the 100,000 fishing vessels that bring seafood to market. The new system is considered an improvement--from the standpoint of the consumer--over the previous one The USDA does not inspect for trichinosis in pork. It is widely known that pork must be thoroughly cooked before eating. Still, about 4% of Americans have trichinella worms in their muscles which can periodically cause flu-like symptoms and even death Trade in animal food puts needless pressure on world governments straining to get along. For instance, the US allows the implantation of hormones into beef cattle. For this reason, since the late 1980s, the European Union has banned all imports of US beef. With the advent of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the USDA has vowed to step up pressure on the EU to force it to accept US beef. The controversy could possibly even have to be settled by the Geneva-based World Trade Organization's dispute settlement body. A similar scenario between the US and Russia with respect to poultry was being played out at press-time. Intense pressure from the poultry industry was put on the USDA and even Vice President Gore to intervene when all poultry imports were rejected outright by Russia due to safety concerns. More than a third of the veal calves tested in a 1995 undercover investigation done by the Humane Farming Association came up positive for clenbuterol--an acutely toxic and illegal animal drug. Subsequently it was found that many veal producers in the US had knowingly purchased and used the drug for their herds over a five-year period. This in itself is frightening; but worse is the revelation that the FDA and the USDA worked to protect the veal industry from scandal by maintaining a coverup about the clenbuterol use of which it became aware Poultry processors are not required by the USDA to check for salmonella bacteria in poultry. A 1978 USDA rule still in effect accepts a "chill tank" bath for bird carcasses as a sufficient counter-measure. Dunking a chicken carcass through this bath, now known as the "fecal soup," has been likened to a rinse in your toilet. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 25% of all chicken sold in the US carry the salmonella bacteria--a conservative estimate. The USDA says that salmonella poisoning may be responsible for as many as 4 million illnesses and 3 thousand deaths per year According to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, cardiovascular diseases caused 954,000 deaths (42% of all deaths) in 1993. Total direct cost to sufferers added up to $126.4 billion. Seventy-two percent of the deaths were due to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), a disease strongly linked to a meat-based diet The treatment of human disease with antibiotics is showing signs of being hampered by the flagrant overuse of antibiotics fed and injected into the animals people eat. Meat-eaters are exacerbating the trend toward human immunity to medicinal drugs just by eating cow's milk, hamburgers and chicken. This ultimately affects everyone, vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike.
You don't even wanna know where the meat they use on those doner kebab poles comes from, that are turning vertically by flame.. If you knew the type of meat they use for that fast food snack, you would become vegetarian. Its not fit for human consumption.
Burger King website. Tell the Vegan to limit his answer. Pray over your food, don't over eat, drink water and lots of veggie, you will be O.K. What you don't know won't hurt you too bad, right?
People all seem to have opinions on this stuff. I grew up on a chicken farm and I've never seen any evidence or mistreatment. A lot of the stuff you see is exagerated and isolated. I'm sure many of the websites people are going to give you are going to be very one sided, based on each persons own opinion. You'll have to do your own research. Good luck getting the "TRUTH."