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and parasites. If we buy factory foods at the grocery store, there is a possibility that we will add some harmful elements to our diets; e.g. antibiotics, hormones, steroids, heavy metals, and assorted chemicals. Factory farms also produce foods that are deficient or low in minerals, polyphenolics, and essential nutrients needed for a balanced diet. Recent research at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Oregon, established the fact that organic foods are generally 58 percent higher in the polyphenolics needed to enhance human immune response. Factory farms, with their non-organic foods, have changed our environment in ways that result in less healthful foods being produced. Since USDA tests less than 03 percent of our foods, with most testing being incomplete, the public has not been warned about what is wrong with factory foods.

There is some evidence that factory farming has resulted in increased desertification and deforestation on a global basis. At the same time, worldwide food production is in decline because factory farming methods are not sustainable. If United Nations' data is correct, 2.9 billion people are now food deficient, with over 800 million of these people living on the brink of starvation. Factory farms want to help solve this problem with clones, genetic engineering, and even more chemicals that very few farmers could afford, even if these additions somehow helped to increase global food production. In reality, and as proven over time, factory farming methods are not sustainable and result in gradual reduction of food production potential, worldwide. When you use chemical fertilizers that "kill" the microbial activity needed to sustain soil fertility, the environmental damage of factory farming is obvious to all. The chemical companies have lied to us all, to make us believe that such damage is not real, so they can keep selling their harmful chemicals in massive quantities.

Even if we were not concerned with all the environmental damage, caused by factory farming, each of us must consider the fact that our medical bills will generally be higher on a diet of foods produced by factory farms. In addition, the giant food companies add extra fats, sugar, and sodium as well as preservatives, food coloring, and a number of things that make our foods less healthful. Americans therefore consume billions of extra, unhealthful calories, and in the process waste billions of pounds of foods simply thrown away given the general poor quality. Over 200,000 tons of this food garbage, each day, contributes to envirommental pollution. At the same time, we feed over 80 percent of the U.S. corn crop to livestock with the result that livestock manures have higher levels of nutrients polluting our water supplies. If we all purchased and consumed grass-fed beef, half of that corn could be used for humans and overall environmental pollution would be reduced. Grass-fed beef has the same taste and quality as corn-fed beef, but most Americans buy the corn-fed beef because that is what the factory farms want us to do (to keep their profits as high as possible). Most of us indirectly help the factory farms damage our environment, so changes must be made to sustain our planet for future generations.

Learn more about this author, David Nuttle.
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