Factory Farming
Heres the paper I wrote on factory farming. The ending is a little flabby because I just had to get it done and didn't want anything to do with it anymore.
Meat is Murdering YOU
I am not a vegetarian. I have always believed it is in our genetic make up to eat meat. On the contrary however, our human structure is predipositioned to be herbivores. Carnivores have shorter intestines to allow the meat to pass through them quickly. Herbivores have long intestines to absorb the nutrients from plants over a longer state of time. We lack the swiftness usually needed to catch prey. Even our teeth are flat and made for the grinding of leaves. (Sally Deneen, emagazine).Yet as cavemen we hunted meat down with our bare hands and primitive tools. Would planting vegetation been more difficult in nomadic times? Even in the hardest times, prairie days, ration periods, and during infected meat outbreaks, as a culture we have always eaten meat. Now our hunger stares back at us. Are we consuming more than just meat by eating animals? Factory farming, the mass production and consumption of meat, has taken a huge toll on our health, the environment, and our mentality as humans.
In the world, and the United States especially, the demand for meat is very high, but it wasn’t always so prepackaged and available. Between 1820 and 1975 agricultural production has forcibly doubled four times due to five billion people population increase, a statistic from farmsanctuary.org. Plastic wrapped meat is so simple to cook, especially when all the killing, skinning, cleaning, and even de-boning does not have to be done by the consumer. This desire for convenience is what sparked factory farming, like all great inventions. The world desired more meat, at a fraction of the cost. The 1920’s discovery of vitamins in conjunction with the 1940’s discovery of antibiotics made factory farming possible by allowing animals to survive better indoors, under harsher conditions. Factory farming was intended to improve human diet and the economy. Meat was viewed as a luxury, nutritious food, the population wanted more of it. Mass produced meat opened up more possibilities for global trade. Which means more jobs. As listed on the farm sanctuary web site, In the 30’s, twenty four percent of Americans worked as farmers, supplying eleven consumers each. In 2002, it was calculated that one and a half percent of American population worked on an actual farm, supplying 90 consumers, a radical difference. Meat production specificly has quadrupaled in the past 50 years. (Jim Motavalli, emagazine). Factory farms were intended to standardize the meat industry. The concentration of agricultural facilities should have resulted in easier management. Factory farming was a production dream to the American people. It provided less hard work, and more free time. As the population rose, so did the amount of animals in the farms. It became harder and harder to maintain standards, chaos ensues.
If factory farms were intended to improve the health of the population, why are people suffering from dementia, premature thelarche, cancer, and still born babies from eating meat? The answer lies in extreamly high production demands, and unsanitary conditions. Currently, slaughterhouses kill 400 cattle an hour, versus twenty years ago when they processed 175 cattle per hour. (sustainabletable) In an enclosed, small, area containing thousands of animals, excretion cleanup is almost impossible. The animals come to slaughter covered in excrement, and though cleaned, the speed of the production line misses a lot of necessary cleaning. Common ailments that stem from this are e. coli, salmonella, listeriosis, and staph infections. All of which were found in 7.5% of beef tested by the USDA in 1996. According to sustainabletable, and the federal authorities on health, food borne illness, or food poisoning kills 5,000 Americans, sickens 76 million people, and results in 325,000 hospitalizations. Also from sustainabletable, in Greeley, Colorado, ConAgra, a meatpacking plant, recalled 19 million pounds of beef after a woman died from e.coli poisoning, and sickened 35 other people after eating meat from their processing plant. This happened in 2002. 80% of the meat had already been eaten by the population by the time the recall went out.
In 1984, an epidemic of degenerative brain disease was spreading through European farms. The symptoms began with cordination loss, fear, aggression, and develop into spongy holes in the brain. This disease is known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or “mad cow.” The outbreak occurred from the canibalistic tendencies used in factory farming. Cows were being being fed other dead cows mixed in with their regular feed. The fear that this disease could be passed to humans forced Europe to ban consumption of all beef products, stop export of meat, kill any possibly infected cattle, (4,347,380 cows), and prevent anyone who had been in Britin after 1980 from donating blood. Despite all their efforts to keep people safe, it was not enough. In humans, this disease is known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and the first case of it developing from infected beef occured in 1994. There have been no cases of mad cow related deaths in the United States. The death toll in Europe is stable at 35. (New York Times 1999). The FDA now bans usage of “most” animal protiens in feed under BSE/Ruminant Feed regulation. It became standard requirement on August 4th, 1997. (FDA)
If the FDA is imposing rules on factory farms to prevent human health crisis’, why is there still so much contaminated meat? In 1996 an organization known as the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) designed a system to more carefully inspect meat for bacteria. The new system allows many of the inspections to be done by the farms themselves, and reduces inspection by USDA. Processing plants have less incentive to pull contaminated meat, or stop production for decontamination or cleanup. The production inspectors are held accountable for reduced profits in stopping the line unless contamination is proven. The USDA has no power to announce recall on known contaminated meat. It is ultimately up to the manufacture to decide to recall or not. Even after repeated incidents of contaminated meats, USDA cannot close a factory. (sustainabletable)
Feed lots take preventative measures to keep their meat clean by subjecting animals to antibiotics. The medicines are very effective in stopping disease in animals, but they pose other health concerns to the human population. People are consuming meat on a regular basis and each time receive a trace amount of antibiotic dosage. The continual buildup of antibiotics in the system has proven to make prescription antibiotics less effective or even totally ineffective. The research on this is fairly recent, and there is little evidence available to the public. The idea of this, however, could pose epidemic crisis in the future. It could even revert the population back to pre-antibiotic conditions of living. (Rethinking the Meat Guzzler, NY Times).
People are also consuming growth hormones each time they eat meat from a factory farm. The feed lots inject their animals with hormones to speed up their development, thus speeding up the overall processing of meat. This made factory farming so effective in mass producing meat at a low cost. Then it sudenly became evident how detramental these chemicals are to humans. Up until the 1950’s farms used a growth hormone called diethylstilbestrol (DES). It chemically castrated male chickens and generally made animals grow at rapid rates. The hormone built up in the tissues of humans. Males began to develop breasts and higher voices. They became impotent. Young males testicles did not drop. Girls were reaching development at a younger age. There were reports of girls hitting full puberty at as young as five! The FDA put a ban on chicken enhancement with DES, but not in cattle. (Robin Derry). Between 1954 and 1981, 95% of beef was injected with DES. In 1957 it was also advertised to pregnant women as a way to stop miscarriages. When these babies were born, if they were born, they had a much higher risk of cervical cancer, uterus deformities. Six growth hormones are currently used. The natural hormones used are: Estradiol, Progesterone, and Testosterone. Three synthetic hormones are also used: Zeranol, Trenbolone, and Melengestrol. (Ruth L. Oeki, 257).
Hormone additives are one of the scariest aspects of factory farming. The number one growth hormone used today is recumbent bovine growth hormone (rBGH.) It is manufactured by Monsanto Corporation under the name Posalic. It was approved by the FDA in 1993, even though it was never properly tested. It’s only testing was performed for 90 days on 30 rats, and the study was never published. rBGH increases milk production in dairy cows. This is in addition to selective breeding with higher production prone cows. Cows are exposed to long periods of artificial light and fed a grain based to increase milk production as well. In 1994 a hotline was set up by the National Farmers Union for Dairy farmers to call in and voice their issues with rBGH. Severe mastitis (the enlargement of breasts) was reported routinely. A New York dairy farmer called and reported that he took his cows of rBGH and they produced less milk than before he had begun the injections. He had been forced to replace 135 cows out of his stock of 200. Hoof diseases, mouth sores, and internal bleeding deaths in cows have all been reported as side effects of recombant bovine growth hormone. (sustainabletable)
Human suffering, though emence, is nothing compaired to what facotry farming has done to the planet. Of all the elements killing the earth, factory farming takes the cake. It is horrific how much damage a 99 cent cheese burger has done. To begin, the mear grazing and walking of billions of cattle is eroding away the surface. Philip Fradkin put it, “The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetaion and land forms of the West than all the water projects, stip mines, power plants, freeways, and sub-division developments combined.” Since colonial settlement, one third of american topsoil has been lost to traffic and unsustainable farming. That is a lot of damage in less than 300 years. 85% of the loss can be contributed to cattle grazing. 685 million acres of wesern america, ripped apart. (Ruth L. Oeki, 248)
There are aproxamately 20 billion animal livestock on the earth. Currently there are 6,666,581,703 humans on the planet according to the 2006 cencus. One pig will excrete 17 pound of excriemtent per day. It adds up to inconieveable amounts of waste. (sustainabletable).
Factory farm grown livestock excretes 130 times the human population, 87,000 pounds per second. (PETA). All the chemicals hormones and antibiotics fed to these animals comes out in their excrement, which seeps into the earth. If these are toxic chemicals to begin with, they are no less toxic to humans after digestion. Animal waste from farms are stored in massive containers called lagoons. They can scale 100 yards wide, and thirty feet deep. A single farm can have several football field sized lagoons filled to the brim. Along with excriment, lagoons contain still born fetus, blood, and afterbirth. The liquid contained in the lagoons is pink. (Jeff Tietz, Rolling Stone). The lagoons flood with light rainfall. A heavy storm will flood a farm and surrounding areas. Farmers routinely spray the fields with the lagoon contents. Lagoons are also prone to bursting and have contaminated rivers. Sustainabletable reports on a 1995 lagoon burst that released 25 million gallons of excriment into North Carolina rivers. Ten million fish were killed. Drinking water is deoxidized by the nitrogen, amonia, and phosphorus found in lagoons. In a single gram of excriment, over 100 microbial pathogens can be found, all linked to human disease. (Jeff Tietz, Rolling Stone.)
Unsustainable farming destorys the land over time. It generaly equates bigger, cheaper produce at a fraction of the monetary cost. The cost is paid for in priceless, fertile land. The proccess for growing crops is an extractive one. As plants grow, they steal nutrients from the soil for plant matter. Once the plants leave the soil, so do all the nutrients with it. The plants are fertalized chemicly. The chemicals only provide the bare minimum nutrients to grow the plant. Compost and manure deposite nutrients into the soil naturaly, making them sustainable. Yet, in 2005, sustainabletable reports that 22 million tons of chemical fetrtalizers were used on American soil. 40% of that fertalizer evaporates into amonia in the air. This contributes to the seven tons of top soil erossion per acre, per year. (National Sustainable Agriculture).
The most compelling argument against factory farming is food waste. It is the reason for starving third world countries. A statistic from emagazine claims a third of the worlds fossile fules are consumed to produce animals for food. Acording to Paul and Anne Ehrlich, it takes sixty pounds of water to grow a single pound of wheat. A single pound of meat requires 2,500-6,000 pounds of water. It can be broken down mathmaticaly. It takes 4.8 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. If beef production in the United States cut down ten percent, America could feed 60 million people with grain. (Jean Mayer, emagazine).
The solutions to these problems are plentiful. Not consuming meat or dairy of any kind is the best way to protect yourself as an individual, and lower the demand for product, but it is not an overall solution to the problem. Shoppers can also ask their suppliers where the meat is coming from and choose meat that comes from sustainable farmers and ranchers. There are plenty of rBGH free products out there. The website www.sustainabletable.org has a list of products available that are environmentally, animal, and people friendly. It also incourages switching to a different grocery store if they do not offer hormone and antibiotic free products. Above all, the federal governments should have a tighter control over the inspection of meat and facilities.There must be tighter regulation on how much waste a farm can produce. Which would mean, less overall meat production. People should be better informed of what they are consuming. Hormones should not used at all, in fact, growth hormones of any kind are banned in Europe, where people still enjoy a bounty of beef. The production of meat has simply gone to far. As with the over production of anything, there have been severe reprocutions. In addition to meat, we are consuming the earth.
Works Sited
Bittman, Mark. "Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler." New York Times 27 Jan. 2007. 14 Mar. 2008 .
"CVM and Ruminant Feed (BSE) Inspections." FDA. 06 Oct. 2007. 14 Mar. 2008 .
Deneen, Sally. "Were Humans Meant to Eat Meat?" Emagazine. 9 May 2008 .
Derry, Robin. "Factory Farming, Modern Meat Hormones, Cervical Cancer and a Small Penis." Filipino Vegetarian Recipes. 2007. 14 Feb. 2008 .
Green, Emily. "Britain Details the Start of Its 'Mad Cow' Outbreak." New York Times 26 Jan. 1999. 14 Mar. 2008 .
Motavalli, Jim. "From the Killing Floor to the Table." Emagazine. 9 May 2008 .
Oeki, Ruth L. My Year of Meats. Penguin, 1999.
"The Issues." Farm Sanctuary. 2008. Farm Sanctuary. 12 Feb. 2008 .
"The Issues." Sustainabletable. 2003. GRACE. 14 Feb. 2008 .
Tietz, Jeff. "Boss Hog." Rolling Stone 16 Dec. 2006. 9 May 2008 .
United States. Population Division. U.S Census Bureau. Census 2000. 22 Nov. 2006. 9 May 2008 .
Meat is Murdering YOU
I am not a vegetarian. I have always believed it is in our genetic make up to eat meat. On the contrary however, our human structure is predipositioned to be herbivores. Carnivores have shorter intestines to allow the meat to pass through them quickly. Herbivores have long intestines to absorb the nutrients from plants over a longer state of time. We lack the swiftness usually needed to catch prey. Even our teeth are flat and made for the grinding of leaves. (Sally Deneen, emagazine).Yet as cavemen we hunted meat down with our bare hands and primitive tools. Would planting vegetation been more difficult in nomadic times? Even in the hardest times, prairie days, ration periods, and during infected meat outbreaks, as a culture we have always eaten meat. Now our hunger stares back at us. Are we consuming more than just meat by eating animals? Factory farming, the mass production and consumption of meat, has taken a huge toll on our health, the environment, and our mentality as humans.
In the world, and the United States especially, the demand for meat is very high, but it wasn’t always so prepackaged and available. Between 1820 and 1975 agricultural production has forcibly doubled four times due to five billion people population increase, a statistic from farmsanctuary.org. Plastic wrapped meat is so simple to cook, especially when all the killing, skinning, cleaning, and even de-boning does not have to be done by the consumer. This desire for convenience is what sparked factory farming, like all great inventions. The world desired more meat, at a fraction of the cost. The 1920’s discovery of vitamins in conjunction with the 1940’s discovery of antibiotics made factory farming possible by allowing animals to survive better indoors, under harsher conditions. Factory farming was intended to improve human diet and the economy. Meat was viewed as a luxury, nutritious food, the population wanted more of it. Mass produced meat opened up more possibilities for global trade. Which means more jobs. As listed on the farm sanctuary web site, In the 30’s, twenty four percent of Americans worked as farmers, supplying eleven consumers each. In 2002, it was calculated that one and a half percent of American population worked on an actual farm, supplying 90 consumers, a radical difference. Meat production specificly has quadrupaled in the past 50 years. (Jim Motavalli, emagazine). Factory farms were intended to standardize the meat industry. The concentration of agricultural facilities should have resulted in easier management. Factory farming was a production dream to the American people. It provided less hard work, and more free time. As the population rose, so did the amount of animals in the farms. It became harder and harder to maintain standards, chaos ensues.
If factory farms were intended to improve the health of the population, why are people suffering from dementia, premature thelarche, cancer, and still born babies from eating meat? The answer lies in extreamly high production demands, and unsanitary conditions. Currently, slaughterhouses kill 400 cattle an hour, versus twenty years ago when they processed 175 cattle per hour. (sustainabletable) In an enclosed, small, area containing thousands of animals, excretion cleanup is almost impossible. The animals come to slaughter covered in excrement, and though cleaned, the speed of the production line misses a lot of necessary cleaning. Common ailments that stem from this are e. coli, salmonella, listeriosis, and staph infections. All of which were found in 7.5% of beef tested by the USDA in 1996. According to sustainabletable, and the federal authorities on health, food borne illness, or food poisoning kills 5,000 Americans, sickens 76 million people, and results in 325,000 hospitalizations. Also from sustainabletable, in Greeley, Colorado, ConAgra, a meatpacking plant, recalled 19 million pounds of beef after a woman died from e.coli poisoning, and sickened 35 other people after eating meat from their processing plant. This happened in 2002. 80% of the meat had already been eaten by the population by the time the recall went out.
In 1984, an epidemic of degenerative brain disease was spreading through European farms. The symptoms began with cordination loss, fear, aggression, and develop into spongy holes in the brain. This disease is known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or “mad cow.” The outbreak occurred from the canibalistic tendencies used in factory farming. Cows were being being fed other dead cows mixed in with their regular feed. The fear that this disease could be passed to humans forced Europe to ban consumption of all beef products, stop export of meat, kill any possibly infected cattle, (4,347,380 cows), and prevent anyone who had been in Britin after 1980 from donating blood. Despite all their efforts to keep people safe, it was not enough. In humans, this disease is known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and the first case of it developing from infected beef occured in 1994. There have been no cases of mad cow related deaths in the United States. The death toll in Europe is stable at 35. (New York Times 1999). The FDA now bans usage of “most” animal protiens in feed under BSE/Ruminant Feed regulation. It became standard requirement on August 4th, 1997. (FDA)
If the FDA is imposing rules on factory farms to prevent human health crisis’, why is there still so much contaminated meat? In 1996 an organization known as the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) designed a system to more carefully inspect meat for bacteria. The new system allows many of the inspections to be done by the farms themselves, and reduces inspection by USDA. Processing plants have less incentive to pull contaminated meat, or stop production for decontamination or cleanup. The production inspectors are held accountable for reduced profits in stopping the line unless contamination is proven. The USDA has no power to announce recall on known contaminated meat. It is ultimately up to the manufacture to decide to recall or not. Even after repeated incidents of contaminated meats, USDA cannot close a factory. (sustainabletable)
Feed lots take preventative measures to keep their meat clean by subjecting animals to antibiotics. The medicines are very effective in stopping disease in animals, but they pose other health concerns to the human population. People are consuming meat on a regular basis and each time receive a trace amount of antibiotic dosage. The continual buildup of antibiotics in the system has proven to make prescription antibiotics less effective or even totally ineffective. The research on this is fairly recent, and there is little evidence available to the public. The idea of this, however, could pose epidemic crisis in the future. It could even revert the population back to pre-antibiotic conditions of living. (Rethinking the Meat Guzzler, NY Times).
People are also consuming growth hormones each time they eat meat from a factory farm. The feed lots inject their animals with hormones to speed up their development, thus speeding up the overall processing of meat. This made factory farming so effective in mass producing meat at a low cost. Then it sudenly became evident how detramental these chemicals are to humans. Up until the 1950’s farms used a growth hormone called diethylstilbestrol (DES). It chemically castrated male chickens and generally made animals grow at rapid rates. The hormone built up in the tissues of humans. Males began to develop breasts and higher voices. They became impotent. Young males testicles did not drop. Girls were reaching development at a younger age. There were reports of girls hitting full puberty at as young as five! The FDA put a ban on chicken enhancement with DES, but not in cattle. (Robin Derry). Between 1954 and 1981, 95% of beef was injected with DES. In 1957 it was also advertised to pregnant women as a way to stop miscarriages. When these babies were born, if they were born, they had a much higher risk of cervical cancer, uterus deformities. Six growth hormones are currently used. The natural hormones used are: Estradiol, Progesterone, and Testosterone. Three synthetic hormones are also used: Zeranol, Trenbolone, and Melengestrol. (Ruth L. Oeki, 257).
Hormone additives are one of the scariest aspects of factory farming. The number one growth hormone used today is recumbent bovine growth hormone (rBGH.) It is manufactured by Monsanto Corporation under the name Posalic. It was approved by the FDA in 1993, even though it was never properly tested. It’s only testing was performed for 90 days on 30 rats, and the study was never published. rBGH increases milk production in dairy cows. This is in addition to selective breeding with higher production prone cows. Cows are exposed to long periods of artificial light and fed a grain based to increase milk production as well. In 1994 a hotline was set up by the National Farmers Union for Dairy farmers to call in and voice their issues with rBGH. Severe mastitis (the enlargement of breasts) was reported routinely. A New York dairy farmer called and reported that he took his cows of rBGH and they produced less milk than before he had begun the injections. He had been forced to replace 135 cows out of his stock of 200. Hoof diseases, mouth sores, and internal bleeding deaths in cows have all been reported as side effects of recombant bovine growth hormone. (sustainabletable)
Human suffering, though emence, is nothing compaired to what facotry farming has done to the planet. Of all the elements killing the earth, factory farming takes the cake. It is horrific how much damage a 99 cent cheese burger has done. To begin, the mear grazing and walking of billions of cattle is eroding away the surface. Philip Fradkin put it, “The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetaion and land forms of the West than all the water projects, stip mines, power plants, freeways, and sub-division developments combined.” Since colonial settlement, one third of american topsoil has been lost to traffic and unsustainable farming. That is a lot of damage in less than 300 years. 85% of the loss can be contributed to cattle grazing. 685 million acres of wesern america, ripped apart. (Ruth L. Oeki, 248)
There are aproxamately 20 billion animal livestock on the earth. Currently there are 6,666,581,703 humans on the planet according to the 2006 cencus. One pig will excrete 17 pound of excriemtent per day. It adds up to inconieveable amounts of waste. (sustainabletable).
Factory farm grown livestock excretes 130 times the human population, 87,000 pounds per second. (PETA). All the chemicals hormones and antibiotics fed to these animals comes out in their excrement, which seeps into the earth. If these are toxic chemicals to begin with, they are no less toxic to humans after digestion. Animal waste from farms are stored in massive containers called lagoons. They can scale 100 yards wide, and thirty feet deep. A single farm can have several football field sized lagoons filled to the brim. Along with excriment, lagoons contain still born fetus, blood, and afterbirth. The liquid contained in the lagoons is pink. (Jeff Tietz, Rolling Stone). The lagoons flood with light rainfall. A heavy storm will flood a farm and surrounding areas. Farmers routinely spray the fields with the lagoon contents. Lagoons are also prone to bursting and have contaminated rivers. Sustainabletable reports on a 1995 lagoon burst that released 25 million gallons of excriment into North Carolina rivers. Ten million fish were killed. Drinking water is deoxidized by the nitrogen, amonia, and phosphorus found in lagoons. In a single gram of excriment, over 100 microbial pathogens can be found, all linked to human disease. (Jeff Tietz, Rolling Stone.)
Unsustainable farming destorys the land over time. It generaly equates bigger, cheaper produce at a fraction of the monetary cost. The cost is paid for in priceless, fertile land. The proccess for growing crops is an extractive one. As plants grow, they steal nutrients from the soil for plant matter. Once the plants leave the soil, so do all the nutrients with it. The plants are fertalized chemicly. The chemicals only provide the bare minimum nutrients to grow the plant. Compost and manure deposite nutrients into the soil naturaly, making them sustainable. Yet, in 2005, sustainabletable reports that 22 million tons of chemical fetrtalizers were used on American soil. 40% of that fertalizer evaporates into amonia in the air. This contributes to the seven tons of top soil erossion per acre, per year. (National Sustainable Agriculture).
The most compelling argument against factory farming is food waste. It is the reason for starving third world countries. A statistic from emagazine claims a third of the worlds fossile fules are consumed to produce animals for food. Acording to Paul and Anne Ehrlich, it takes sixty pounds of water to grow a single pound of wheat. A single pound of meat requires 2,500-6,000 pounds of water. It can be broken down mathmaticaly. It takes 4.8 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. If beef production in the United States cut down ten percent, America could feed 60 million people with grain. (Jean Mayer, emagazine).
The solutions to these problems are plentiful. Not consuming meat or dairy of any kind is the best way to protect yourself as an individual, and lower the demand for product, but it is not an overall solution to the problem. Shoppers can also ask their suppliers where the meat is coming from and choose meat that comes from sustainable farmers and ranchers. There are plenty of rBGH free products out there. The website www.sustainabletable.org has a list of products available that are environmentally, animal, and people friendly. It also incourages switching to a different grocery store if they do not offer hormone and antibiotic free products. Above all, the federal governments should have a tighter control over the inspection of meat and facilities.There must be tighter regulation on how much waste a farm can produce. Which would mean, less overall meat production. People should be better informed of what they are consuming. Hormones should not used at all, in fact, growth hormones of any kind are banned in Europe, where people still enjoy a bounty of beef. The production of meat has simply gone to far. As with the over production of anything, there have been severe reprocutions. In addition to meat, we are consuming the earth.
Works Sited
Bittman, Mark. "Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler." New York Times 27 Jan. 2007. 14 Mar. 2008 .
"CVM and Ruminant Feed (BSE) Inspections." FDA. 06 Oct. 2007. 14 Mar. 2008 .
Deneen, Sally. "Were Humans Meant to Eat Meat?" Emagazine. 9 May 2008 .
Derry, Robin. "Factory Farming, Modern Meat Hormones, Cervical Cancer and a Small Penis." Filipino Vegetarian Recipes. 2007. 14 Feb. 2008 .
Green, Emily. "Britain Details the Start of Its 'Mad Cow' Outbreak." New York Times 26 Jan. 1999. 14 Mar. 2008 .
Motavalli, Jim. "From the Killing Floor to the Table." Emagazine. 9 May 2008 .
Oeki, Ruth L. My Year of Meats. Penguin, 1999.
"The Issues." Farm Sanctuary. 2008. Farm Sanctuary. 12 Feb. 2008 .
"The Issues." Sustainabletable. 2003. GRACE. 14 Feb. 2008 .
Tietz, Jeff. "Boss Hog." Rolling Stone 16 Dec. 2006. 9 May 2008 .
United States. Population Division. U.S Census Bureau. Census 2000. 22 Nov. 2006. 9 May 2008 .