Eating Animals Part 3:

I read how chickens have changed and became unnatural geneticly modified beings. It when when the USDA and Poltry Industry launched a "Chicken of Tomorrow" contest to create a pefect chicken that could produce more meat with less feed. Sounds crazy right? But they actually figured it out. They made a hybrid corn called Cornish blood that gave chickens broad breasts. Also they gave the birds sulfa drugs and antibiotics, which stimulated growth and held down the diseases induced by confinement. The chickens' feed and environment were so manipulated that they were genetically altered. "The average weight of broilers increased by 65%, while their time-to-market dropped 60% and their feed requirements dropped 57%. To gain a sense of the radicalness of this change, imagine human children growing to be 300 pounds in ten years, while eating only granola bars and Flinstone vitamins." (Foer 107) Factory farms have taken the natural process of farming and made it unnatural like what you'd see in a Frankenstein movie. These chickens grow so fast that their bones and organs cannot keep up with the growth. This results in the chickens being crippled or in immense pain.
All this overcrowding within a stressful and filthy environment leads to a weakened immune system. As a result, virtually all chickens are infected with E. coli. Take this into account and then remember how Foer described "fresh." As a result, "between 39% and 75% of chickens in retail stores are still infected." (Foer 131) I don't know about you, but that scares me. E. coli is a disease responsible for thousands of deaths, and yet chickens we purchase at our trusted stores are infected with it. I think we should have more restrictions on what factory farms can and can't sell. Perhaps a restriction such as; if a factory is producing food that is infected, then it can't sell it or the factory should eventually be shut down. So lets take a look at who is in charge of providing nutritional information to the people of America and able to create and provide these restrictions. "The USDA was charged with providing nutritional information to the nation and ultimately with creating guidelines that would serve public health. At the same time, though, the USDA was charged with promoting industry." (Foer 146) Does that sound strange to anyone else? The people who tell us what is ok to eat are also promoting the food industry. The USDA has a complete monopoly of the food industry and basically sets the guidelines for what we should and shouldn't eat. I think we need to change this so that we are eating the safest food possible and are given proper nutritional guidelines. If this continues, more people will die as a result of unchecked food that was put into our stores.