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Isn’t the problem really that we have an unsustainable level of meat/fish production?
What is ideal (and more natural and more healthy) is GRASS FED animals roaming pastures – not factory farms where 1,000 cows are kept locked in stalls, unable to move, being force fed grain (which they can’t really digest because they are designed by God to eat grass) – and then there is the 50,000 metric tons of cow shit these farms dump into our rivers and drinking water.
The problem is that you can’t have a McDonalds on every single block selling 900 hamburgers a day without resorting to a factory farm methodology – and that system has proven to be unsustainable for both the animals and the environment.
We’ve got cows being treated inhumanely because of the conditions of the factory farm.
We’ve got the massive environmental problems of how to deal with all that animal waste (right now it’s just dumped into rivers and streams. If these guys just happen to get caught – no problem! They pay the $25.00 fine and keep right on dumping. Kid died because he drank contaminated water? Do ya really think the CEO of ACME Factory Farms is going to sob uncontrollably and beg God for mercy? That dude couldn’t care less.)
We’ve meat recall after meat recall. Sometimes it’s “Mad Cow” and sometimes it’s just diseased beef. Oops! Did your kid eat a factory farm hamburger and die? (shrug) Oh well. The alternative of actually (gasp!) regulating the beef industry is to unthinkable to even entertain! Better to endure a few dozen dead kids a year than embrace communism – so reason the Conservatives. Why if someone actually TESTED the meat that would be worse than anything Hitler ever did, right neocons?
The sensible solution is to admit this level of beef production is totally unrealistic and unsustainable. Fer God’s sake a lot of this meat is diseased! And the environmental fall out from these factory farms is alarming and dangerous.
But nothing will ever change.
Back in WWII we were a nation that would rise to the challenge!
Now? Now we’re too fat to get off our lazy boys and deal with reality.
My God. How many Conservatives have already written in decrying the “evil liberal elites” who are “trying to control our lives and tell us how to live!”
One can’t help but think of the Appalachians. Those people embraced strip mining at a totally unsustainable level and (surprise, surprise!) shot themselves in the foot when the bottom fell out and have never recovered. They fought anyone who even dared to suggest that they slow down or ease up on the mining.
The same is happening with beef production. The warning signs are everywhere. But the Conservative have all sworn blood oaths to stand against any attempts to moderate the situation. God forbid they can’t get a Big Mac 24hrs a day.
