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"As a result, a large percentage of grains grown in the US are used in animal feed, with 47% of soy and 60% of corn produced in the US being consumed by livestock."
http://www.sustainabletable.or...

The corn and soy would feed humans more if consumed directly by humans rather than put into a cow first to then eat the cow.

According to the European Union’s Scientific Committee on Veterinary Measures Relating to Public Health, the use of six natural and artificial growth hormones in beef production poses a potential risk to human health.iii These six hormones include three which are naturally occurring—Oestradiol, Progesterone and Testosterone—and three which are synthetic—Zeranol, Trenbolone, and Melengestrol. The Committee also questioned whether hormone residues in the meat of "growth enhanced" animals and can disrupt human hormone balance, causing developmental problems, interfering with the reproductive system, and even leading to the development of breast, prostate or colon cancer.iv

Hormone imbalances are also a problem:

Diethylstilbestrol (DES) was one of the first hormones used to fatten feedlots. It was banned in 1979 after forty years of evidence that DES was cancer-causing. In its place, sex hormones, such as estradiol and progestins (synthetic forms of the naturally occurring hormone progesterone) have been implanted to virtually all feedlot cattle. The least hazardous way to administer hormones to animals is through an implant near the animals ear. Unfortunately, many farmers inject hormones directly into the muscle tissue that will be later used to make meat products. The only USDA-imposed requirement is that residue levels in meat must be less than one percent of the daily hormone production of children. This requirement is unenforceable because there is no USDA testing for hormone residues in meat. Furthermore, hormonal residues are not practically differentiable from natural hormones created by the cow's body. As a result, the use of hormones to boost meat production is completely unregulated.

Moreso, the impact of all this extra estrogen is having on people (especially men) is particularly worrying. Maybe meat is making today's boys a little soft.

The amount of estradiol in two hamburgers eaten in one day by an 8-year-old boy could increase his total hormone levels by as much as 10%, based on conservative assumptions, because young children have very low natural hormone levels. In real life, the situation may be much worse. An unpublicized random USDA survey of 32 large feedlots found that as many as half the cattle had visible illegal "misplaced implants" in muscle, rather than under ear skin. This would result in very high local concentrations of hormones, and also elevated levels in muscle meat at distant sites. Such abuse is very hard to detect.

Given that a tiny proportion of cows actually slaughtered for sale of their parts have actually eaten grass in their lives, they are also full of all sorts of pesticides, dioxins in the fatty tissue being one particularly nasty result. These mutants don't eat eat grass, as their ancestors have, but corn, soya beans and oats. 70% of all grains grown in the U.S are fed to animals to turn into tissue which is then eaten. A highly inefficient and environmentally costly source of proteins.

Like it or not, any non-grass-grown meat is pretty much poisonous. Sadly grass grown meat is such a tiny proportion of meat eaten as it's just not a market-competitive means of production. It's all hormones, antibiotics and a high protein diet for the animals that are eaten these days. Any vet will tell you we're eating very sick beasts.

Even we Europeans are not safe - most of the meat eaten here is raised on imported grains. Farmers have a practice of putting a f

People who eat meat at fast food joints are consuming (albeit in small portions) sterilized faeces and ground up other humans.

citation needed!

Sir —

With respect, the publicly available documentation of my assertion is extensive.

Government statistics, e.g.:
* The USDA in a 1996 study found that at meat processing plants, "78.6 percent of the ground beef contained microbes ... spread primarily by fecal material."

Articles, e.g.:
* Fast Food Nation (book review)

Documentaries, e.g.:
* Food, Inc.

Websites, e.g.: SustainableTable.org: Slaughterhouses and Processing

Books, e.g.: Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry (Hardcover)

Google "slaughterhouse fecal matter", and related terms.

I'm surprised anyone would ask for a citation for this; I assumed it would be common knowledge.

According to this article, a John Hopkins school likes to blurt out pseudo facts about killing the planet, too:

Yet for all the energy we put into our food system, we don't get very much out. A 2002 study from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated that, using our current system, three calories of energy were needed to create one calorie of edible food. And that was on average. Some foods take far more, for instance grain-fed beef, which requires thirty-five calories for every calorie of beef produced. What's more, the John Hopkins study didn't include the energy used in processing and transporting food.

The only reason why I know anything at all about the disease is because of the Janet Skarbek documentary. With the law on the side of the beef producers (remember the Oprah case?), you won't see too many news outlets sticking their necks out to report this. That and the CDC is doing its best to discount any cases here in the USA as "normal" CJD (as opposed to the variant type).

What the upshot of all this is (as I understand it) is that the prion unfolds somewhat (mutates) and that is what does the damage. They aren't a virus, and they are dammed hard to destroy. And from what I remember, the mutated prions "saw" through the cells in the brain causing holes in it.

Check out the picture of a damaged brain:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/572832.stm

A link to the unfolding/misfolding info:

http://www.cprmap.com/prion/prion-finding-offers-i nsight-into-spontaneous-protein-diseases-8134.html

A link to the Janet Skarbek documentary:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/sight8704.c fm

The latest victim in the USA:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&arti cleID=13D8532225DEA4FCA8E0EBDFB27B83E4

And a reference to the Hindu/cow link:

http://www.sustainabletable.org/blog/archives/2005 /09/news_new_theory.html

I can't remember where I saw the Janet Skarbek documentary. I think it was either FreespeechTV or LinkTV.

Oh, and the word that I have to type in to prove that I'm not a script is "infected". Ironic.

http://www.energybulletin.net/7088.html

"Over all--including energy costs for farm machinery, transportation, and processing, and oil and natural gas used as feedstocks for agricultural chemicals--the modern food system consumes roughly ten calories of fossil fuel energy for every calorie of food energy produced"

Of course, that footnote goes back to a David Pimentel source.

http://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html

http://www.css.cornell.edu/courses/190/exam2002a.h tm

Non Pimental source:

http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/energy/

That's 3 calories to produce 1 calorie, but it doesn't mention distribution (the 3000 mile caesar salad example).