It is about time you get familiar with your food source and the way its prepared. You should look for small independent farms or know the owners. You should always ask if the animals are grass fed and how they are treated when they are sick. Do they give the animals medicine as a prevention? Or just when the animals are at risk of dying?
The best way to choose your chicken is to check that it has been raised on rotated green pastures and supplemented with organic feed. Otherwise here is what you will end up eating which is likely eating what they are eating:
- Animal stock raised in factory farms are generally fed a diet containing chemical pesticides, fertilisers and hormones (8,9)
- Testing detected banned antibiotics, allergy medications, painkillers and depression medicine like Prozac found in Chickens (1)
- A higher level of toxic arsenic found in human as a result of feeding it to poultry (2)
- About 14 million kilograms of antibiotics are sold for use in farm animals annually (3)
- Shrimp contains two food additives used to prevent discolouration in the shrimp. This additive has estrogen-like effects and is likely to reduce sperm count in men and increase breast cancer risk in women. (4, 5)
- Pond water farmed shrimps are often treated with two pesticides – neurotoxic organophosphate, which is linked to symptoms of ADHD, memory loss and tremors and Malachite green, which is a potential carcinogen, used to kill fungus on shrimp eggs.
- Rotenone is a chemical used to kill off fish living in the pond before it is filled with young shrimp. If inhaled, it can cause respiratory paralysis. It has also been linked to Parkinson’s symptoms in mice.
- Organotin compounds used to kill mollusks before stocking with shrimp in ponds. This chemicals can mess up the hormonal system and make someone subject to obesity. (6)
- 25% of shrimp samples labeled as wild or presumed to be wild were actually often farm-raised shrimp. (7)
- There are 6 FDA approved hormones, to use in the beef industry through feeding animals fat. These 6 hormones ends up in the meat and eventually in your body. These 6 hormones increases incidences of certain types of cancer like; thyroid diseases, obesity, diabetes, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, infertility, asthma and allergies.
- Non-organic meat production facilities give antibiotics to the animals constantly, whether sick or not, day in and day out from birth to slaughter.
- Inflammatory causing omega-6 are much higher than omega-3 in non organic meat. Omega-3 is 47% higher in organic meat which can reduce inflammation and protect against cardiovascular disease and cognitive decline.
Sources:
1- http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2012/feather-meal-clf.html
2- http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/EHP351/
3- http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2014/05/05/10-facts-about-antibiotics-resistance-and-food-animal-production
4- http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx800048m
5- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090302125924.htm
6- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16690801
7- http://oceana.org/blog/truth-about-shrimp
8- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26878675
9- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17539883/
