WHERE’S THE BEEF?
Prices are soaring globally. Brazil is the top producer with exports to China, Chile, US, Russia and the EU. While prices are up, volume is down 10%. Brazil cattle ranching is the number one driver of Amazonian deforestation. The US is the second largest producer of beef. While herds are at a 75 year low, ranchers are plugging cows with growth hormones to increase their bulk. The concoction as approved by the FDA includes six natural and synthetic drugs to make cows grow fatter – faster. Which translates to people ingesting the same hormones with similar results.
Synthetic Hormones include: Zeranol, trenbolone acetate, and melengestrol acetate. Zeranol is a fungus that increases cancer cell proliferation and is linked to breast cancer for its estrogen properties. US Beef is not approved in the EU, UK, Russia, China, or Australia. Trenbolone Acetate is a steroid causing classic symptoms such as muscle improvement, loss of scalp hair, acne and swelling of breasts. Melengestrol acetate is used to inhibit reproduction – as in sterility. Per the FDA none of these drugs are approved for human consumption – despite humans consuming them in beef. Made in America.
Natural Hormones include; Progesterone, testosterone, and estradiol or estrogen. Packaging: Unlike a simple “no added hormones” label, the organic label also guarantees that the cattle were fed 100% certified organic feed, never given antibiotics, and managed according to specific animal welfare and pasture-access rules. Easy choice.
Oddly, the FDA has banned the use of these same hormone additives in poultry, pork and Bison. The hormones are not just in the feed, cows are also fitted with an implant that regularly releases testosterone, progesterone and estrogen synthetics. YUM.
Farm Fish have no nutrients so they are injected with synthetic nutrients and color. Mass farming of chickens also have no color or nutrient value other than some protein albeit less than pasture raised. Ditto for eggs. Mass production of chickens came into existence in the 1920’s while Industrialized Farming took hold in the 1960’s. In 1974, the U.S. government adopted the “Get Big or Get Out” agricultural policy, which transitioned traditional cattle raising into confined animal feeding operations.
Since that policy directive from our government, the US continues to fall in ranks of global lifespan now averaging 47th or 62nd depending on the model used. Not Stellar. But predictable.
In the 1930s, 24 percent of the American population worked in agriculture compared to 1.5 percent in 2002. WHY was the US government involved in factory farming? Earl Butz. He became Secretary of Agriculture under Nixon and Ford – a Republican New Deal Kingpin who grew up in the FDR era. He destroyed small farms and heavily pushed for commodity crops – in particular corn. He coined the above phrase ‘Get Big or Get Out’ to rid America of family farms.
Butz was forced to resign as a result of some rather ‘unsavory’ political and social comments, was subsequently charged and indicted for tax evasion, and was well known for his snarky tongue. But he left America in a loop of farming crises that turned America’s farming into a factory for profit. He was not concerned with animal humanity, or rural country farmers, he was obsessed with money and had a mouth that challenged the boundaries of Trump.
FOOD ADDITIVES:
While the 19th century was no puritanical period regarding fake additives to food products, the explosion in chemical compounds came about via DOW and Monsanto in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Advertising propaganda was key. The explosion of synthetic additives, emulsifiers, and artificial flavorings were hyped as ‘better than ever’. Commercial food laboratories and major brands aggressively integrated synthesized compounds to heighten color, modify flavor, and dramatically extend shelf life.
It was a form of mass hypnosis on par with Freud.
But it was tobacco conglomerates, RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris who designed highly addictive, ultra-processed food. As a direct result, 10,000 chemical additives are legally permitted in our food as promoted by the US Government. The major food brands spun off from tobacco when health organizations began to call out the tobacco industry for cancer causing cigarettes. It was simply another strategy to preserve ‘food additives’. Of course, we now know the tobacco wasn’t causing cancer – the chemical additives were.
These additives guarantee obesity which guarantees an ever ‘growing’ market for addictive non-nutritional foods to sustain the Big Pharma Industry. Nestle, PepsiCo, Unilever, Mondelez International (formerly Kraft Foods), and Mars dominate the global food chain. While the Pharmaceutical industry collaborated with the food companies in the 1980’s, in 2011, Nestle opened its first Health Science Division as a corporate strategy to merge the addiction markets and create cures for subsequent diseases in the form of pills for life.
Just as cigarettes became additive as a market strategy, so did processed food. It was always about Money. Today there is a cross-over inside the organizational structures of the food giants and Big Pharma. Somewhat like the Monsanto coup of the US Government wherein they dominated the FDA.
PepsiCo’s Spanish Board Chair and CEO also happens to be co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s board of stewards for the Food Systems Initiative. Nestle’s Spanish Board Chair is Pablo Isla who also happens to be a member of the advisory group for McKinsey and Company which authors US presidents via Oprah Style make-overs. The CEO and Board Chair of Mondelez International was formerly with Novartis.
The conglomerates that form and formed the tobacco industry, the food industry and the pharma industry collaborated on a business model of ‘addiction’. And the only way to avoid their decay products is to buy 100% organic responsibly and avoid all pharma products. Although making your own dressings and condiments isn’t nearly as difficult as we might imagine!
