**.. animals and meat ..**

We watcehd a video in one of my classes yesterday and I just e-mailed my professor for the link or title of the movie. It's about slaughter houses these days and why they are like that.  If I get it I will share it with you, but this is really bothering me.

Few farmers have control over what they produce and how they produce it. Most of them have been bought out by one of the 4 major meat producers. They feed the cows corn, which cows are not supposed to eat, they are supposed to eat grass. They feed them the corn to get them to grow faster and get them to the slaughter house quicker. The corn has been sprayed with pesticides and all kinds of things to get them to grow more quickly, because of course everything needs to grow super speedy. Since they don't have grass to eat these cows stand in their own and others manure until the meat markets come to pick them up, where they are hung up and washed quickly by workers. NOT ensuring that the animals are fully cleaned of manure and they get it on themselves causing the workers to become contaminated and sick with e-coli or salmonella. 

Meat markets used to be a great job and a great place to work. Now they are dangerous. They keep the assembly line of meat moving so quickly that it is dangerous to work there now. 

A chicken farmer decided to be interviewed for the movie with the risk of losing her job. They keep over 300 chickens in a single house with no room to move. They feed them (something I can't remember off the top of my head) but they give them something to get them to grow quicker than their bodies can handle. It typically takes a chicken 70 days to grow and they can get them BIGGER than that in 49 days. The problem with that is it's not natural and their bodies can't handle it. Their muscles can't develop that quickly so they can only walk a couple steps before falling down. Same as the cows, they walk around in their and others manure then fall and get stuck in there. 

The lady did end up losing her job which she was okay with and was ready to quit anyway.

What caused this problem? Fast food restaurants. And why is America so obese? Because we think we can't live without meat and chicken. Well we can. There is fish (which is WAY more healthy than any other meat), fruits, vegetables, not only can we live on just that, we would all be extremely healthy.

I do eat meat and chicken but I eat it proportionally and we get our meat from local farmers. Yes I am guilty of eating at fast food restaurants, but I do not go everyday nor every week for that matter. 

I know that it would be difficult to keep up with the high demand of meat with no huge slughter houses, but think of all the jobs people could have working for farmers locally. How much more safe their work environments would be and how the risk of salmonella and e-coli would reduce drastically. It's always something to think about.