Meat lover’s nightmare

I knew that the food served at a bowling alley in NY would be terrible, but I didn’t expect it to be this bad. We attended my daughter’s friend’s birthday party which was held at a bowling alley. Since the bowling alley doesn’t allow outside food and drinks, they served their own foods for the guests, fried foods and pizza. Fried foods included French fries, chicken nuggets, chicken tenders, onion rings, and cheese stick fries. Obviously, both fried foods and pizza were cheap frozen foods. The line of junk food made me cringe just thinking about what kind of and how much chemicals and additives were in them. But there are more serious issues you need to be concerned because you might die from eating meat.

Two years ago, a man was admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital in Brooklyn for surgery and was immediately quarantined after a blood test revealed that he tested positive for Candida auris (C. auris), a deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria. After three months of intensive care, he died, and a great deal of work was done to remove any trace of the fungus from his hospital room. The hospital had to install special cleaning equipment, tear out parts of the ceiling and floor, and dispose of treatment equipment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers such drug-resistant organisms an “urgent threat” that kills 700,000 people each year around the world. Without action, that number could rise to 10 million people a year worldwide by 2050. Why do these bacteria exist? Many researchers point out that the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in factory farming is the main cause.

Antibiotics are usually prescribed to stop infection and kill bacteria and other germs found in the body, but in the livestock industry the majority of antibiotics are given to animals that are not sick. They are administered in small, unhealthy environments, mixed with the animals’ food and water to make them grow bigger and to prevent disease. Based on 2009-2019 data for the United States, the amount of antibiotics used in livestock production is 7.96 million KG per year, and about 70% of the antibiotics used in the United States are given to livestock.

It would seem obvious that if such a large amount of the drug were to be injected, resistant bacteria would survive and multiply, contaminating the meat and slaughterhouses when it is processed. And by eating these mass-produced meats, you are directly exposing yourself to the possibility of drug-resistant bacteria.

And since various groups have voiced their concerns that such conditions are dangerous, some livestock producers have labeled their products as “raised without antibiotics. People tend to think those meats are safe if they are labeled as such, but in fact, they are not safe. Livestock producers are moving toward vaccine use in order to reduce the use of antibiotics, which are frowned upon by the public.

Vaccines administered to livestock animals are not designed with the same attention as vaccines for humans. So they contain toxic additives such as formaldehyde and thimerosal. Thimerosal is a substance that has been controversially linked to the development of autism and other developmental disorders, and formaldehyde is a highly toxic substance known as one of the causative agents of “sick house syndrome” and is carcinogenic. For livestock producers, it is not a matter of concern if their cows can no longer function properly in society or have random seizures. For now, all they care about is fattening them up and getting lots of meat out of them.

Is it safe for humans to eat meat filled with such dangerous chemicals?　 The study report, “Human Diseases Associated with the Use of Veterinary Vaccines,” points out that administering live vaccines to food animals can expose humans to the vaccine, and even if this exposure caused disease, no one would be able to trace the cause of the disease to the food meat vaccine.

Would you still want to eat this scary meat? I am not saying that you should become a vegan. If you want to eat meat, you can buy pasture-raised meat at the local farmer’s market. But I recommend that you should avoid eating meat at regular restaurants. Unless a farm to table restaurant, the meat served in ordinary restaurants loaded with antibiotics and toxic chemicals. I have warned my family to never eat meat outside of our house (of course, they rejected it first! 😜). From now on, if we are invited to a birthday party, we will have to bring our own snacks just in case.

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