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The Gaia Reports by Theodora Filis

Factory-Farming Puts Human Health At Great Risk

5/23/2015

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By Theodora Filis

Public health concerns beyond food borne illness are created when over-crowded animals are susceptible to infection and disease. Industrial livestock facilities treat animals with low-levels of antibiotics to prevent illness and promote weight gain. This creates a breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The sub-therapeutic dosages used on millions of factory-farmed livestock can reduce the effectiveness of antibiotics for human patients. The feed used for livestock can also introduce public health threats. Broiler chickens often receive arsenic-based feed additives to promote pinker flesh and faster growth, and beef cattle continue to be fed with animal byproducts, which increases the risk of mad cow disease.

According to the FDA, approximately 80% of all antibiotics used in the US are fed to farm animals for non-therapeutic purposes.

Routine administration of antibiotics has the harmful effect of promoting the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Although the low dosage of antibiotics kills many bacteria, the stronger bacteria that survive can reproduce and pass their resistance to future generations. Since bacteria are able to reproduce in as little as 20 minutes, routine administration of antibiotics can induce the rapid development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which can spread directly to humans and animals. When manure is spread onto fields or stored in manure lagoons, these bacteria can also contaminate waterways and groundwater. In fact, scientists have detected antibiotic-resistant bacteria in groundwater as far as 250 meters away from manure lagoons.

The rise of factory farming is as a result of public policy choices driven by big agribusinesses, especially meat packers and processors that dominate the critical steps taken between farm and consumer. The silos and gentle meadows portrayed in advertisements are a sham. With tens of thousands of animals comes millions of tons of manure and adds to the increased polluting of waterways, groundwater, air and soil. Wetlands have been destroyed; beautiful rivers and tributaries turned into algae choked cesspools devoid of life, pastures ruined by excess nitrates, phosphates and toxic residues from antibiotics, hormones and even dangerous heavy metals. Oceans are so filled with industrial effluents and animal factory waste that it is no longer safe to eat any ocean creature, all are contaminated by excess levels of mercury, cadmium and other trace metals.

Most of the pork, beef, poultry, dairy and eggs produced in the US come from large-scale, confined livestock operations.

Large-scale farms do not produce healthy or safe food, and in no way maintain our environment. The growth of factory farms, in recent decades, is decimating the small and medium scale livestock farms that provide good food for us, and good economies for rural communities. Industrial livestock operations create public health hazards with over-crowded facilities making it easy for disease to spread. When thousands of beef cattle are packed into feedlots full of manure, bacteria can get on their hides and then into the slaughterhouses. Contamination on even one steer can contaminate thousands of pounds of meat inside a slaughterhouse. In 2010, the crowded, unsanitary conditions at two Iowa egg companies caused a recall of more than half a billion potentially Salmonella-tainted eggs.

As antibiotic-resistant bacteria spread, medicines used to treat human diseases can become less effective, which poses a significant threat to public health. The Institute of Medicine estimates that antibiotic-resistant bacteria cause US health care costs to increase by four to five billion dollars each year.

Factory farms threaten human health by incubating infectious diseases that can spread to the human population. Diseases can be transferred directly from animals to humans, or from an animal serving as a “mixing vessel” for a new strain of a disease. In cases of direct transmission, a worker who comes in contact with a diseased animal or its manure can contract the disease and pass it on to family and the surrounding community.

In other cases, an animal infected with one disease can contract a second disease from another animal, causing the diseases to mix and form a new type of illness.

Scientists suggest that a virus passed from hogs to humans may have caused the 1918 “Spanish Influenza” pandemic which eventually killed 40 million people worldwide. The Centers for Disease Control has expressed concern that another similar epidemic will occur in the future.




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Coca-Cola Capitalizes On Weak Milk Market by Charging Twice The Price For #GMO Milk-Based Drink

5/23/2015

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By Theodora Filis

Coca-Cola recently partnered with a dairy farm called Fairlife to launch a new brand of milk. “Who knew milk could be so spectacular?” grins Fairlife CEO in a marketing video. Lactose free, with 50% more protein and calcium and half the sugar of regular milk, it seems Coca Cola hopes to re-brand itself as a caring, family-friendly firm with ties to small dairy farmers. Coca-Cola's North American chief, Sandy Douglas, said to a crowd at Morgan Stanley's Global Consumer Conference last October that "It's basically the 'premiumisation' of milk... We'll charge twice as much for it as the milk we're used to buying in a jug."

The company's marketing campaigns use words like `natural´, `health and `wellness´ to have us believe this drink is good for us. But don´t believe the hype – quick internet search exposes them to be pro-GMO campaigners masquerading as pro-natural family farmers, but this is clearly nothing more than a propaganda campaign to cover up their pro-GMO agenda. One reporter summed up the launch as “an hour long pseudo-discussion about how we can only feed the world with GMO’s”.

Aside from skepticism about a sugary, unhealthy soft drink company launching a "healthy" milk-based drink, Coca-Cola is also being criticized for their ads which feature a series of photos depicting skinny, blonde and brunette women wearing nothing more than a splash of milk.

Captioned, "Drink What She's Wearing" and "Better Milk Looks Good On You,"The Guardian describes the campaign as a step backwards in terms of objectifying women through advertising.

"As if the images themselves weren't insulting enough, these captions enhance the sexist undertones of a message supposedly intended to focus on health and nutrition," wrote The Independent's Ylva Johannesson in a critique titled, "Do we really need pinup girls to sell us drinks?"

Many dairy products are made from GMO materials. When livestock consumes GMO corn or other staples, this directly affects the constituents of the milk they produce – the same milk that is used to make a multitude of dairy products.

Coca-Cola's claim that Fairlife is derived from sustainable, healthy practices is laughable, as Coca-Cola has blatantly showed NO regard for such practices in the past.




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