I read something horrible in Fast Food Nation; reading the update chapter at the end of the paperback (in case any of you out there have the first edition, this is pretty indispensible). I've, in fact, marked off so many paragraphs of this section I could update my Journal all week from it. Well, here is a bit from page 287... I was pretty disgusted to find that cattle parts had historically been fed to cattle, pigs to pigs, and poultry fed (to this day, as this page goes on to say below the following quoted lines) to poultry... but it gets worse:
The current FDA feed rules are primarily concerned with efficiency and utility, not public health. They allow cattle to be fed to pigs, pigs to be fed cattle, cattle to be fed poultry, and poultry to be fed cattle. They allow dogs and cats to be fed dogs and cats. Although leading American manufacturers promise never to put rendered pets into their pet food, it is still legal to do so. A Canadian company, Sanimal Inc., was putting 40000 pounds of dead dogs and cats into its dog and cat food every week, until discontinuing the practice in June 2001. "This food is healthy and good," said the company's vice president of procurement, responding to critics, "but some people don't like to see meat meal that contains any pets."
Yeah, pal, they're called sane people!! I have a moral problem with humans orchestrating cannibalism for other animals. I think there's something very dark, very obviously wrong about that.
The current FDA feed rules are primarily concerned with efficiency and utility, not public health. They allow cattle to be fed to pigs, pigs to be fed cattle, cattle to be fed poultry, and poultry to be fed cattle. They allow dogs and cats to be fed dogs and cats. Although leading American manufacturers promise never to put rendered pets into their pet food, it is still legal to do so. A Canadian company, Sanimal Inc., was putting 40000 pounds of dead dogs and cats into its dog and cat food every week, until discontinuing the practice in June 2001. "This food is healthy and good," said the company's vice president of procurement, responding to critics, "but some people don't like to see meat meal that contains any pets."
Yeah, pal, they're called sane people!! I have a moral problem with humans orchestrating cannibalism for other animals. I think there's something very dark, very obviously wrong about that.
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I saw something about that on 20/20 a few years ago (and obviously nothing has changed). They found some connection between illnesses people in Papua, New Guinea had contracted from cannibalism and similar illnesses Americans had come down with from eating cows who are fed grain mixed with their own kind. I think I remember the New Guinea disease being called kourou? and characterized by uncontrollable shaking. I don't know how many documented cases there are of Americans having this from eating cannabalized meat, but it's a freaky connection. I keep buying IAMS for my cats (which PETA was up in arms about for some reason or other---anybody got the 411 on that?) and 'free-range' meat for myself and hope I'm doing the right thing. Veganism doesn't appeal to me, but maybe if I do enough reading, I'll be nauseated into joining Olivia's tribe.
Are you still housesitting? How's it going? Are you giving the cat enough attention?
I'll keep wasting time on here, don't you worry. I just need to find my 'SG balance' so the husband won't say I'm on here too much. What-evah, I do what I want!