Sunday, February 17, 2008

Yet Another Reason to Be Vegan

All day today I've heard about the largest meat recall in American history. The kicker is most of the meat has already been eaten...by school children according to the reports I heard on NPR. As Rob is fond of saying, yet another reason to be vegan.

To be fair, the safety of our food supply is a great concern...vegan or not. Check out food recalls here.

5 comments:

Lisa -- Cravin' Veggies said...

Morning, Linda!

I totally nicked this post for my blog. Hope you don't mind. ;o) It will at least get the message out to a couple more people.

Hearing this kind of info makes me sick. I used to think that news like this was over-exaggerated for the shock value. After reading book after book about factory farms, and our food supply in general, I realize now that it isn't exaggerated.... we have just been kept in the dark until recently.

It makes me sad that our government is in bed with these companies, and so the companies are allowed to run amok. They are rarely penalized for their infractions, and when they are it is a pittance... pennies, compared to what they earn by supplying people (school children!!) with tainted food.

Near-dead animals, aching muscles and joints (just imagine how we feel with flu)... all that illness spread throughout their bodies. And they still manage to be "processed", as they call it. And then the poor children are fed not only the fear and anxiety induced hormones, but also the illness?

It's just not right. Sorry for the lengthy rant. It really struck a chord today.

Peace,
Lisa

Leighann of Multi-Minding Mom said...

One of the reasons I stopped eating meat in 2001 (again) was after reading Mad Cowboy and Fast Food Nation. When I heard about "downer cows" and that the meat packing industry isn't regulated very well, it made me sick. That was it, no more meat for me.

I'm not against organic meat, but have just never had any.

I couldn't believe that news report this morning. I saw it on CNN and saw the secret footage. Those cows were definitely not healthy. And the recalled meat has been distributed for 3 years (?), that's crazy!

VeganLinda said...

Cravin'Veggies, Nick away! I used to volunteer at a farm animal sanctuary in Maryland and I was always shocked by the way animals had been treated prior to making it to the sanctuary. I is appalling. I really think if more people saw what went on, they wouldn't eat meat.

Leeanthro, I always lend out Fast Food Nation and Mad Cowboy to people interested in why people go veg. My oldest was only a couple days old when I took him to his first Howard Lyman talk.

Jennifer said...

Definately glad I haven't been eating meat! But even the meat I have purchased was by a local farmer.

So scary out there. One thing I was kind of shocked by was that it wasn't out there in the media like I thought it should be.

VeganLinda said...

Jen, how true about the lack of media coverage. It is even more disturbing that this is not an isolated event. HSUS's CEO was on the radio talking about the footage that got this out in the media at all. It isn't like this is rare, it is just rare to have the right kind of footage (not too gory, but disturbing) for the media to pick it up.