Mammothicity, that is: big, big problems

I brainstormed the other night while our computer was in the shop, based on the research I've done over the past year. The following list are the reasons I could identify why, as a nation, our Factory Farming and current agricultural practices must change.

As you may begin to tell, feeding lambs corn is just the teensy tip of the iceberg of the mammoth issue of health and happiness for all: man, land, and animal combined.


Effed, enumerated:

• Food safety - tainted meat (i.e. fecal matter), sick animals, antibiotics, genetically-modified commodity crops.
  
• We are what we eat - walking corn chips.
  
• Non-sustainable farming practices - we only have one earth and it is being raped by our current practices.
  
• High cost of cheap food - ecologically, but also physiologically.
  
• Non-nourishing food - processed C-R-A-P aside, most food is less nutrient dense from being grown in a mono-culture or "finished" in a feedlot on corn - not to mention being bred for heavy travel and a long shelf life instead of taste.
  
• Obesity - we aren't eating REAL food.
  
• Anti-nutrients - eating food-like substances instead of the aforementioned REAL food.
  
• Loss of cooking knowledge - unless you count heating something up as cooking, which I hereby proclaim it is not.
  
• Marketing reigns: the public as victim - swept up with fortified C-R-A-P (aka processed foods) as an answer to "healthy eating", so much so that we don't even know what is normal.
  
• Dignity for domestic animals, both in life and death.
• The nation's food supply - dependent on a limited number of mono-cultures.
  
• Reliance on fossil fuels - farm machinery, pesticides & fertilizers, shipping distance.
• Agribusiness vs. Small Farmer - trampled.
  
• Excessive waste - vast.
  
• Loss of farming knowledge and tradition - sad beyond measure, not to mention completely frightening. This is our food, people! What happens if/when we can't depend on the manufacturers to get us our frozen, boxed, canned food-like substances?
  

Recommended Reading:

There are many more books that can be read on this subject, but these are the ones I've read thus far - and in the order I read them. It has been a very illuminating year, indeed.

• Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World - Greg Critser
• Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal - Eric Schlosser
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver
• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Michael Pollan
• In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto - Michael Pollan

Anything by Wendell Berry is important as well. Most, if not all, of these authors reference him in their work.

I highly, highly recommend reading on this subject. We truly are what we eat - this issue is a beast that will not be calmed. At one point or another, we [Americans] will have to deal with the way we eat, whether it be on a personal or societal level.

It is a problem, once learned about, that necessitates change. Indeed, it may be impossible NOT to change. It is an issue that can be ignored only out of ignorance.