Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

The Cruel Truth About Factory Farms -- Don't Read If You're Squeamish
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/10/25/the-cruel-trut
h-about-factory-farms-don-t-read-if-you-re-squeamish.aspx
Corporations have turned family-farming methods into cost-saving,
mass-production strategies, which endanger public health and treat animals
cruelly.

Also known as large confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), factory
farms treat animals like production units, and the result is poor food
quality for you, and inhumane conditions for the animals.

Consider some of the ingredients commonly used in factory-farmed animal
feed:

    * Excessive grains, fed to animals designed to eat grass

    * Plastic pellets, fed to animals as “roughage” because the factory
diet doesn’t contain natural fiber

    * Meat from their own species, turning farm animals into cannibals
(this practice has also been linked to the spread of mad cow disease)

    * Animal byproducts, such as feathers, blood, intestines, euthanized
cats and dogs, and road kill

    * Drugs and chemicals, including antibiotics (an estimated 13.5 million
pounds each year) and antimicrobials (which promote the accumulation of
arsenic in chickens)

Antibiotics fed to factory-farmed animals are so grossly overused that they
are contributing to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the
United States.

Meanwhile, according to this NewsTarget.com article, “Approximately 95%
of factory-raised animals are subject to deplorable conditions such as
overcrowding, hunger, thirst, and sometimes-fatal weather extremes. Many
times, they are kept conscious or even skinned alive during the process of
slaughtering.”