I get this a lot: “I understand that the things you write about are important — but they’re so depressing. Couldn’t you write some, you know, good news, for a change?”

So here you go: a solutions post for once, instead of another problem. (But I can’t promise to make a habit of it.)

I live most of the time in Atlanta, the capital of the South, and also of the empire of Big Chicken. Georgia raises more meat (broiler) chickens than any other place in the United States, about 1.4 billion of them a year, and — because factory-farmed chickens aren’t allowed to live very long — slaughters about 1 million of them per week. All those chickens produce 2 million tons of poultry manure and litter a year — one-fifth of what the entire U.S. poultry industry produces — along with all the other downstream effects that you would expect from such intensive livestock-raising: antibiotic-resistant bacteria, water pollution from manure disposal, air quality problems.

A recently founded nonprofit, Georgians for Pastured Poultry, advocates for change in chicken raising. It has published a detailed and troubling report about the environmental and animal-welfare costs of confinement chicken-raising, and has been holding events to raise awareness about the alternative: “pastured” poultry, chickens that are raised on vegetation, under shelter, to high animal-welfare standards.

At the heart of the group’s effort is a conundrum: Agricultural profit margins are already razor thin. Most farmers don’t have abundant savings that they can invest in completely transforming their operations. To move toward healthier livestock-raising, farmers have to know in advance that there is a market for their new product, along with an audience that gets why paying the (inevitably higher) price is worthwhile.

Georgians for Pastured Poultry identified this market gap early on, and starting today, they’re taking the first step toward closing it. They’ve gotten some of the top chefs in Atlanta — 31 as of Friday evening, many of them award-winners — to agree to serve pastured poultry in their restaurants all week. Pastured Poultry Week begins today and goes through Sunday, and will be augmented by farmers’ market and supermarket demonstrations.

A couple of the chefs talked to me about why they want to do this and what the benefits and challenges are.

Craig Richards, executive chef at Ecco (one of Esquire’s 2006 “Best New Restaurants in America“) said: “As a chef, I feel like it is part of our responsibility to provide food that is good for people nutritionally and politically.” His customers respond to that, he added: “People want to know where their chicken is from, where their fish is from… You have to respect sustainability now, people are asking for it.”

Kevin Gillespie, executive chef at Woodfire Grill (and James Beard Foundation nominee and “Top Chef” contestant) said: “We support the agenda to have poultry production, in this state and country, revert back to a more pastured form. It’s better for the environment, it’s better for the economy, and I think it produces a better product.” There’s also some self-interest, he admitted: Buying from local producers is such an important part of Woodfire’s identity that the restaurant maintains an updated list of what’s in season on the splash page of its site, as well as listing its farm partners and foragers on a separate page. But “until recently, there wasn’t a supply of chicken that met our quality standards,” he said. “As time has gone on, that has started to change, and we want to support farmers who are taking the risk.”

(Three Georgia chicken producers are supplying most of the birds for the week, according to Georgians for Pastured Poultry: White Oak Pastures, Darby Farms and Heritage Farms.)

Important point, though: Chefs aren’t, primarily, activists; they are cooks first, aiming to make something delicious, and they are also businesspersons. And making something delicious out of pastured poultry — and getting customers to buy it, so the effort and expense are not wasted — is a bit more challenging than with a commodity bird.

“Pastured birds are different,” says Shaun Doty, an Atlanta chef who is one of the founders of Georgians for Pastured Poultry and is opening a chicken-focused restaurant, Bantam and Biddy, this fall. “They’re allowed to live twice as long as factory-farmed chickens, and they’re outside, running around, engaging in natural chicken behaviors. They’re athletes. And that means the meat is very firm, and the bones are strong. They have huge, old-fashioned taste — but they cook differently, and they eat differently.”

Richards and Gillespie agreed that, to bring pastured poultry into their kitchens, they’ve had to coach their cooks in the difference, and they’re preparing their servers to coach diners as well.

“We’ve talked to the cooks about how this has to roast a little longer, a little slower,” said Richards, who bought in about 75 birds and is planning a chicken al mattone topped with local peas and shaved radishes. “And we’ll talk to the staff about how the flavor can be different, and put some up for them to try.”

Gillespie has already had some experience with customer reactions to pastured poultry. “A few years ago we were able to get a very small supply from a gentleman in South Georgia, and when we would serve it, people would say things like it, ‘It’s too flavorful’ — which was funny to me, because, you know, this is what chicken actually tastes like. It made us realize that,  if we were going to change people’s minds about the product, we would have to do it with some education attached.”

Woodfire bought about 50 birds for the week, and Gillespie plans to turn them into a small plate of tastes: white meat and dark meat done different ways, plus a forcemeat. “We want this to be a limited menu item, to drive demand,” he said. “We’re showcasing this as something that chicken can be.”

One week can’t remake an industry, of course — not even with 31 chefs, 20 restaurants and the three best farmers’ markets in Atlanta on board. But what it can do is introduce people to the idea that chicken isn’t just a placeholder on a menu, and isn’t just the cheap, almost-flavorless protein you buy when you don’t know what else to do. Like grass-fed beef and heritage pork, pastured chicken — and the agricultural change it makes possible — will only succeed if consumers purchase it, not out of duty, but out of desire. By starting with famous chefs overseeing hard-to-get tables, Pastured Poultry Week may have found the formula that allows that change to start.

“You can only pass out so much information before you sound like you’re preaching,” Gillespie told me. “We have to sell people on how pastured poultry tastes, and we’re going to do that. We’ll be telling people: This is not your average bird.”

The Reality of Feed at Animal Factories

When many Americans think of farm animals, they picture cattle munching grass on rolling pastures, chickens pecking on the ground outside of picturesque red barns, and pigs gobbling down food at the trough.

Over the last 50 years, the way food animals are raised and fed has changed dramatically—to the detriment of both animals and humans. Many people are surprised to find that most of the food animals in the United States are no longer raised on farms at all. Instead they come from crowded animal factories, also known as large confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Just like other factories, animal factories are constantly searching for ways to shave their costs. To save money, they've redefined what constitutes animal feed, with little consideration of what is best for the animals or for human health. As a result, many of the ingredients used in feed these days are not the kind of food the animals are designed by nature to eat.

Just take a look at what's being fed to the animals you eat.

• Same Species Meat
• Diseased Animals
• Feathers, Hair, Skin, Hooves, and Blood
• Manure and Other Animal Waste
• Plastics
• Drugs and Chemicals
• Unhealthy Amounts of Grains

Are these ingredients legal? Unfortunately, yes. Nevertheless, some raise human health concerns. Others just indicate the low standards for animal feeds. But all are symptoms of a system that has lost sight of the appropriate way to raise food animals.

Same Species Meat, Diseased Animals, and Feathers, Hair, Skin, and Blood

The advent of "mad cow" disease (also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE) raised international concern about the safety of feeding rendered[1] cattle to cattle. Since the discovery of mad cow disease in the United States, the federal government has taken some action to restrict the parts of cattle that can be fed back to cattle.

However, most animals are still allowed to eat meat from their own species. Pig carcasses can be rendered and fed back to pigs, chicken carcasses can be rendered and fed back to chickens, and turkey carcasses can be rendered and fed back to turkeys. Even cattle can still be fed cow blood and some other cow parts.

Under current law, pigs, chickens, and turkeys that have been fed rendered cattle can be rendered and fed back to cattle—a loophole that may allow mad cow agents to infect healthy cattle.

Animal feed legally can contain rendered road kill, dead horses, and euthanized cats and dogs.

Rendered feathers, hair, skin, hooves, blood, and intestines can also be found in feed, often under catch-all categories like "animal protein products."

Manure and Other Animal Waste

Feed for any food animal can contain cattle manure, swine waste, and poultry litter. This waste may contain drugs such as antibiotics and hormones that have passed unchanged through the animals' bodies. 

The poultry litter that is fed to cattle contains rendered cattle parts in the form of digested poultry feed and spilled poultry feed. This is another loophole that may allow mad cow agents to infect healthy cattle.

Animal waste used for feed is also allowed to contain dirt, rocks, sand, wood, and other such contaminants. 

Plastics

Many animals need roughage to move food through their digestive systems. But instead of using plant-based roughage, animal factories often turn to pellets made from plastics to compensate for the lack of natural fiber in the factory feed.

Drugs and Chemicals

Animals raised in humane conditions with appropriate space and food rarely require medical treatment. But animals at animal factories often receive antibiotics to promote faster growth and to compensate for crowded, stressful, and unsanitary living conditions. An estimated 13.5 million pounds of antibiotics—the same classes of antibiotics used in human medicine—are routinely added to animal feed or water. This routine, nontherapeutic use of antibiotics speeds the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which can infect humans as well as animals. Antibiotic resistance is a pressing public health problem that costs the U.S. economy billions of dollars each year.

Some of the antimicrobials used to control parasites and promote growth in poultry contain arsenic, a known human carcinogen. Arsenic can be found in meat or can contaminate human water supplies through runoff from factory farms.

Unhealthy Amounts of Grains

One last surprise. While grain may sound like a healthful food, the excessive quantities fed to some animals are not. This is especially true for cattle, which are natural grass eaters. Their digestive systems are not designed to handle the large amounts of corn they receive at feedlots. As a result of this corn-rich diet, feedlot cattle can suffer significant health problems, including excessively acidic digestive systems and liver abscesses. Grain-induced health problems, in turn, ramp up the need for drugs.

Want to Change What Animals are Fed?

The rise in animal factories over the last 50 years has led to a system that is out of control.  Mad cow disease, increased liver abscesses, and the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are just some examples of the damage that comes from unwise and often inhumane approaches to raising food animals.

As a consumer armed with information, you have the power to promote a modern approach to raising animals that is both productive and healthful. You can help to effect change by supporting systems and producers that feed animals the food they were meant to eat.  

You can:

• Avoid factory farmed animal products altogether by choosing plant-based foods.
• Choose grass-fed and grass-finished beef and dairy products and pasture-raised pork, poultry, and egg products.
• Select certified organic meats, eggs, and dairy and those clearly labeled as using only vegetarian animal feed.
• Purchase meats, eggs, and dairy products from local farmers on the farm, at farmers markets, or by buying a share from a local farmer as part of a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.

For More Information

Sapkota, A.R., L.Y. Lefferts, S. McKenzie, and P. Walker. 2007. What do we feed to food-production animals? A review of animal feed ingredients and their potential impacts on human health. Environmental Health Perspectives 115 (5):663-670.

Visit the Eat Well Guide to learn how you can locate sustainably produced meats, eggs, and dairy products.

Visit the American Grassfed Association's list of producers to locate producers of grass-fed and grass-finished animal products.

Click here for a guide to Community Supported Agriculture.

Click here to find a farmers market near you.

Click here to learn more about the Union of Concerned Scientists' work on sustainable agriculture.

[1] Rendering is an industrial process in which animal carcasses, parts, and other wastes are ground up, heated, and further processed to create a variety of products,  including animal feed ingredients. Meat and bone meal, blood meal, and feather meal are some examples of rendered products. 

Check out this article in Voice of America that features our new research on rising farm animal populations and the increase in factory farms, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

The demand for meat products is rising sharply in developing nations as their economies improve. (Photo credit: Voice of America)

The demand for meat, eggs, and dairy products in developing countries has increased at a staggering rate in recent decades, according to the report. Although industrialized countries still consume the most animal products, urbanization and rising incomes in developing countries are spurring shifts to more meat-heavy diets. To meet this demand, animals are often raised in factory farms, which produce high levels of waste, use huge amounts of water and land for feed production, contribute to the spread of human and animal diseases, and play a role in biodiversity loss.

Click here to read the full article.

To purchase State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet please click HERE. And to watch the one minute book trailer, click HERE.

http://blogs.worldwatch.org/nourishingtheplanet/developing-countries-see-sharp-rise-in-meat-consumption/

(NaturalNews) 종종 유전자조작(GM) 작물을 방어하는 데 사용되는 논의의 하나는 비GM과 유기농업의 방법으로는 모두를 위한 충반한 식량을 생산하기 어렵기 때문에 세계를 부양하는 데에는 생명공학이 필요하다는 주장이다. 그러나 문제의 진실은 유기농업 자체로 완전히 세계를 부양할 수 있다는 것이다 - 우리는 단지 우리의 건강과 이 행성을 파괴하는 공장식 농업을 끝내는 것을 포함하여 우리의 먹거리를 기르고 키우는 방식에 몇 가지 변화만 주면 될 뿐이다.

A세계 곡물의 40% 정도를 공장식 축산의 동물에게 먹인다

세계 먹거리의 1/3이 쓰레기로 버려진다

http://understory.ran.org/2012/02/23/monsanto-and-cargill-the-thugs-of-big-food/

식량 공급을 점령하기 위한 대규모 세계 행동의 날 바로 전날, 누가 진짜 농기업 악당인지 살펴보고자 한다. 

깊이 파고들수록 우리의 식량 체계의 독의 많은 부분을 책임지고 있는 두 거대한 기업이 명백해진다: 몬산토와 카길. 문자 그대로 우리의 식량을 완전히 망가뜨린 이러한 기업 범죄자에게 결투를 신청할 때이다.

몬산토: 생명공학의 거인

몬산토의 생명공학 촉수는 우리 식량 체계의 목을 조르고 있다. 이 무례한 기업의 야비한 행위는  Percy Schmeiser 씨와 같은 소규모 가족농을 고소하는 것부터 (그리고 법적 과정으로 대부분 파산) 40만 명이 죽고, 50만 명이 불구가 되고, 또 다른 200만 명에게 다양한 질병을 유발했다고 추정되는 고엽제에 노출된 참전용사와 그 가족에 대한 보상을 거부하고 있는 것에까지 뻗쳐 있다.

몬산토가 1996년 유전자조작된 라운드업레디 대두를 판매하기 시작했을 때,  미국에서 재배하는 대두의 2%만이 그들의 특허를 받은 유전자를 가지고 있었다. 2008년 미국에서 재배하는 대두의 90% 이상이 문산토의 유전자를 가지고 있으며 현재 미국 옥수수 종자의 80%를 몬산토가 팔고 있다. 이는 특히 세계에서 단백질 사료의 가장 큰 원천이자 두번째로 큰 식물성 기름의 원천( 팜유 다음)이 콩이기에 우려스러운 일이다.

우리는  많은 것을 몬산토에게 고마워할 수 있다: 인공 감미료는 암과 연결되어 있다; 스티로폼과 같은 석유에 바탕을 둔 플라스틱은 결코 생물분해되지도 않고 수천 년 동안 환경에 암을 유발하는 벤젠을 방출한다; 고엽제(미군이 베트남에 쏟아부었고 지금은 우리의 식량으로 가고 있는 치명적 화학물질 혼합액); 유전자조작(GMO) 종자, 소에게 주입되는 발암성 인공 성장호르몬(미국에서는 널리 퍼져 있지만 유럽연합의 모든 27개국과 캐나다, 뉴질랜드, 오스트레일리아에서는 금지된)인 불쾌한 젖소 성장호르몬(BGH).

지날달 몬산토의 GMO 표시제 운동을 하는 수백만 명부터 더이상 그들의 유기농 농지를 몬산토의 유전자조작 작물이 오염시킬 수 없도록 30만 농민까지 몬산토를 법정에 세웠고, 몬산토는 모든 각도에서 얻어 맞고 있다.

정의가 실현될 것이다.

카길: 세계 농상품 거래자

카길은 몬산토의 사악한 쌍둥이이다.

1190억 달러 이상의 연간 매출액을 올리는(세계 각국 70%의 GDP보다 많은) 카길은 세계에서 가장 큰 곡물 거래자이자 세계에서 가장 큰 민간기업이며 그들의 유리한 입장으로 점점 세계화되는 식량 체계를 형성하고 있는 소수의 농기업 거인 가운데 하나이다. 66개국 이상에서 활동하는 카길은 생산, 거래, 제조, 시장까지 우리 식량 공급의 거의 모든 측면에 손을 대며 농상품을 취급한다. 그리고 그건 시작일 뿐이다 —이 카길의 자료표를 확인하고  카길을 점령할 때가 아니라고 생각하지 않는지 말하라.

비인도적일 뿐만 아니라 식품안전을 저해하는 카길의 수치스런 좁은 동물사육시설(CAFOs)에서 타이슨푸드 및 JBS와 함께 미국 소고기의 70% 이상을 가공하는 타이슨푸드 및 JBS와 함께한다는 사실까지 카길은  이윤이란 명목으로 우리의 식량체계를 굳건히 하는 가족농을 그들의 발 밑에 찍어 누르고 있다(거대한 동상을 미국에서 가장 부유한 가족을 만든 McMillan-Cargill 가족이 소유하고 있다고 말했던가?).

적절한 공급망 보호장치도 없이 카길은 계속하여 지역사회에게서 빼앗은 토지와 저임금 노동을 포함하여 사회적 갈등과 인권 침해가 진행되고 있는 팜야자 플랜테이션 지역에서 기른 팜유를 구매하고 거래하여 이윤을 얻는다. 오랑우탄을 멸종으로 몰아넣고 있는 건 두말할 필요도 없다.

아래 사진을 보고 스스로에게 물어라: 이게 진보적 방법인가? 나는 Willie Nelson을 지지하며 죽어도 안된다고 말하겠다.

정말 끝내주게 만들어 놓은 자료. 

이런 걸 보면, 미국은 참 대단하다.

http://www.factoryfarmmap.org/

월요일 아침 커피의 크림부터 일요일 저녁의 통닭구이까지 우리는 식용동물에게 헤아릴 수 없는 빚을 쌓고 있다. 우리는 양분을 위해 그들에게 의존한다. 우리는 명절 동안 흥겹게 칠면조나 햄 요리 주변에 모인다. 아직 많은 사람들이 우리의 식탁을 꾸미는 대부분의 동물이 도축되기 전에 오랫동안 혹독한 고통의 피해자라는 사실을 깨닫지 못하고 있다.  

현대의 칠면조를 보라. 필그림이 본래 추수감사절 모임을 위해 굽던 새를 야생에서 멀리 옮겼다. 오늘날 매우 평범한 칠면조인 흰넓은가슴칠면조Broad Breasted White는 완전히 산업적인 생물이다. 그것은 거대한 건물 안에서 곡물을 먹여 기형적으로 빨리 자라도록 한다. 대개의 수컷 칠면조는 가슴이 너무 육중해져 간신히 설 수 있을 정도다. 그리고 틀림없이 번식할 수도 없다. 인공수정은 이 인간이 만든 종이 살아남는 유일한 방법이다.

그러한 대량생산 고기 공장 -"집중적으로 동물을 먹이는 활동concentrated animal feeding operations( CAFO)"이라 불리는- 은 미국인이 사는 소, 돼지, 닭과 같은 식용동물 축산물의 대부분을 위해 존재한다. 미국에서 적어도 식용동물의 90%는 이런 방식으로 자라고, 다른 나라에서도 빠르게 그런 방식을 도입하고 있다. 이러한 기업은 돼지가 진흙탕에서 뒹굴고, 소가 풀밭에서 풀을 뜯고, 닭이 울타리에 올라서 울음을 울고, 농부가 동물과 소통하는 가족 농장의 인상과는 다르게 삐뚤어져 있다. 공장식 축산에서 어마어마한 동물들 -우사에 10만 마리의 소, 영계용 닭장에서 3만 마리의 닭, 창도 없는 돈사에서 1000마리의 돼지- 이 지나치게 항생제를 먹여 살아남으면서 우리에 가두어진다.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-imhoff/honoring-food-animals-cafos_b_826016.html#243731