Not in My Food.org : Know what you're eating
Scene from the film "Soylent Green"
True Stories are always scarier: Feeding cow parts and chicken poop to cattle
Remember this epic scene in Soylent Green?
That seems pretty far fetched and gross. Yet here is something that proves that reality can be just as gross: Feeding cattle chicken coop waste. That means your beef may have been fed chicken feces, feathers, dirt and spilled feed made from cattle remains.
Today with Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), we filed pre-Halloween grassroots petitions signed by more than 37,000 individuals with the FDA. The petitions register opposition to the use of poultry waste as cattle feed out of concerns for human and animal health.
Michael Hansen, Consumers Union’s not-so-mad senior scientist put it best
“It seems ghoulish, but it is a perfectly legal and common practice for chicken litter–the material that accumulates on the floor of chicken growing facilities–to be fed to cattle”
Poultry litter consists primarily of manure, feathers, spilled feed and bedding material that accumulate on the floors of the buildings that house chickens and turkeys. It can contain disease-causing bacteria, antibiotics, toxic heavy metals, restricted feed ingredients including meat and bone meal from dead cattle, and even foreign objects such as dead rodents, rocks, nails and glass. Few of these hazards are eliminated by any processing that might occur before use as feed. The resulting health threats include the spread of mad cow disease and related human neurological diseases, the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, and the potential for exposure to toxic metals, drug residues, and disease-causing bacteria.
A coaltion of concerned groups filed a citizen petition to say: Don’t feed poop to cows! FDA’s legal deadline for a response is November 11, 2009.
In the meantime sign our petition saying that poultry poop doesn’t belong in your food. Click here to sign the petition!
Sad and disgusting. So glad I’m veg! If not for anything else, kick the meat habit for your health.
How incredibly gross. How can the FDA allow such practices as feeing cattle with chicken droppings when it is charged with the responsibility of providing healthy food for human consumption! We are off beef until we can be assured that the practice has been stopped.
Obviously the FDA is more swayed by beef lobbyists’ concern for beef producers’ bottom line than they are for the health of American consumers (not to mention the health of the animal itself).
Until the FDA makes health a priority rather than pandering to special interest groups, these inane decisions will continue.
FDA officials should be required to sit down to a steak dinner provided by a beef animal fed only chicken manure and see how appetizing that meal actually is.
It’s no wonder that so many new virus strains are passing from animal to human. Govt’s must do a better job regulating what is fed to the animals we consume.
I love it!