[Ed. note: I've been slackassing a lot lately, so for today we get two (2) entries.]

There is yet another angle to the factory farm issue that most people might not take into consideration, and that is the issue of well, filth... We squeal and throw a fit when we find out a restaurant prepares the food we eat in an unsafe and disgusting environment. Hell, as Americans, we nervously dive for the hand sanitizer and Lysol spray if someone sneezes within a mile radius of us. Grocery chains now provide Clorox wipes at the entrances of their stores to wipe down their filth-ridden shopping carts. (Howard Hughes really was an innovator ahead of his time. Just imagine what kooky stuff he'd be making bank off of right now if he lived in our age of misophobia...) The Board of Health has very stringent guidelines under which salons, tattoo shops, and any kind of food vendors have to operate. But what about the places where the food initially comes from? What about the killing floors of factory farms? What about the cages and crates in which the animals are raised in the first place?

For your consideration, I submit the following...

2. Factory farms by their nature are unsanitary and potentially unhealthy to human beings.
Aside from the cruelty (which I am doing my best to totally circumvent in this tirade) and the environmental damage factor, meats and other products that come from factory farms are, well, gross. Living conditions on factory farms are gross. We eat animals that wade in their own waste...

"Inside the densely populated buildings, where they are confined their entire lives, enormous amounts of waste accumulate. The resulting ammonia levels commonly cause painful burns to the birds' skin, eyes, and respiratory tracts." -Inma Estevez, “Ammonia and Poultry Welfare,” Poultry Perspectives (MD Cooperative Extension), 2002; 4 (1).

Take the burning of the animals out of that, and any way you slice it, you've still got animals marinating in ammonia. (More precisely, marinating in their own excreta.) If the chemical does that to the birds that are forced to live in it every day, just how healthy can it be to ingest their meat?

"Decomposing corpses are found in cages with live birds. Tens of millions (approximately 14%) of egg-laying hens die during production each year." -USDA APHIS VS, Reference of 1999 Table Egg Layer Management in the U.S., January 2000., USDA NASS, Agricultural Statistics 2007.

So we've got animals crammed into cages marinating in ammonia and rooming with rotting corpses. Mmmmmmm.

"In the midst of avian flu outbreak in Darjeeling, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals India (PETA) released graphic undercover video footage of crowded and filthy conditions on chicken and egg factory farms, which leading health experts – including those at the United Nations – blame for the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu. The report documents the scalding, starvation and mutilation of birds as well as the potential for the spread of disease from chickens to humans." -The Himalayan Beacon

I also found a link to a site which hosts a number of videos specifically concerning the health risks involved with eating animal products, one of which gives us a glimpse at why pork poses such issues...

Diseased Pigs Wind Up on Our Plates

I've mentioned before that livestock accounts for a tremendous amount of the corn and soy in this country, but what else is our dinner eating?

"Just take a look at what's being fed to the animals you eat.

Same Species Meat
Diseased Animals
Feathers, Hair, Skin, Hooves, and Blood
Manure and Other Animal Waste
Plastics
Drugs and Chemicals
Unhealthy Amounts of Grains"
-UCSUSA.org

Really?! ...Really? Animal waste? Blood?

Are you fucking kidding me?!

The same site goes on to say:
"Feed for any food animal can contain cattle manure, swine waste, and poultry litter. This waste may contain drugs such as antibiotics and hormones that have passed unchanged through the animals' bodies.

The poultry litter that is fed to cattle contains rendered cattle parts in the form of digested poultry feed and spilled poultry feed. This is another loophole that may allow mad cow agents to infect healthy cattle."

...And:
"The advent of 'mad cow' disease (also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE) raised international concern about the safety of feeding rendered cattle to cattle. Since the discovery of mad cow disease in the United States, the federal government has taken some action to restrict the parts of cattle that can be fed back to cattle.

However, most animals are still allowed to eat meat from their own species. Pig carcasses can be rendered and fed back to pigs, chicken carcasses can be rendered and fed back to chickens, and turkey carcasses can be rendered and fed back to turkeys. Even cattle can still be fed cow blood and some other cow parts."

I really haven't eaten all day while doing research for this blog.

Here's one last tidbit I'll drop in this category before we move on.
"Animal feed legally can contain rendered road kill, dead horses, and euthanized cats and dogs." -UCSUSA.org

Yup... ROAD KILL.
R O A D K I L L.

So what say we, intelligent mammals with brains six times larger than they ought to be for our body mass? If the axiom rings true and we are what we eat, how do we feel about eating manure, blood, roadkill, harmful chemicals, etc.?