Dangerous pastured poultry!

So you use eggs. Being a decent human being, you want to buy eggs from chickens who have been as kindly treated as possible. But here is the deal, which hens have had it better? The cage free ones? Or the free range, mabye? What about pastured poultry? Oh, and they need to be organic, for your own health of course. Although getting organic pasture raised (aka TRUE free range) chicken may be harder from now on, thanks again FDA.  According to these experts, birds raised in a free range, pasture type of situation are in serious constant danger from diseases. Unlike the birds locked in the nice dark building, where there is no germ killing sunshine, fresh air, natural fresh food, or any of the other horrifying and deadly things that come along with nature. You know, the ones that are so happy and healthy that the farmers have to trim the tips of their beaks off so they can't turn on and kill each other from sheer frustration.

  But I digress. So, humane treatment of laying hens. Well, how do they define cage free? Basically the extent of cage free is, well, they aren't in cages. They are still however shut up in a building all the time, and pretty darn crowded. Which, as I said above, is "solved" by debeaking. This is something done when they are less than 24 hours old. The baby chick's beak is put into a machine like a tiny guillotine that simultaneously cuts and cauterizes the beak. Usually the bird recovers fine-unless the employee happens to push the beak in to far. Free range is not how it sounds either, it basically means there might be a few feet of open air available,  but with somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 birds vying for that little bit of open space odds are against all of them ever getting a turn outdoors. So how do you ensure that the eggs and meat you are eating really was humanely raised and produced? SMALL FARMS. Did I say that loud enough? Let me repeat it: SMALL, LOCAL FARMS! Go to the farm yourself, see how and where your food is coming from. Ask questions of the farmer, the guy/gal who is actually spending time caring for and observing these birds. Yes, I would be willing to bet there are small farms near you, you just have to find them. A lot of us are getting a smidge paranoid these days, so we don't make ourselves very well known. But we ARE still here.

I think this may count as a minor miracle, the FDA has admitted that there is poison in the chicken meat you are buying at the store. Arsenic, to be specific. The same chemical that the FDA has been warning us is carcinogenic. Apparently consuming arsenic makes the birds grow fatter faster and "improves" the color of the meat. The arsenic based drug is called Roxarsone, and is manufactured by Pfizer. Researchers have found residues of the drug in chicken they purchased from various stores. Even worse, USDA certified organic and antibiotic free chicken contained trace amounts of the drug as well, although conventionally raised chicken had four times the amount found in the organic chicken. The FDA is currently being sued by the Food and Water Watch for ignoring a Freedom of Information Act. FYI, the FDA is the same group telling us that consuming raw milk is "playing Russian roulette" with your health. John Sheenan, director of the FDA's Division of Dairy and Egg Safety, says this: "We see a number of cases of foodborne illness every year related to the consumption of raw milk." What he conveniently doesn't mention is the number of cases of foodborne illness caused by pasteurized milk. As a matter of fact, in 1985 the largest salmonella outbreak in US history came from pasteurized milk. But what do we, the uneducated public, know about such complicated matters as food safety? We really ought to leave it to our kind (and always honest) government officials.

Animal Rights, or Animal Welfare?

Do you know the difference between AR (Animal Rights)and AW (Animal Welfare)? Do you know how these two different viewpoints could affect you personally? I have just been reading a very interesting website called Americans Supporting Animal Ownership. It gives information on the difference between AR and AW:
"Animal Rights is based on the idea that humans must not use or own animals at all. The organizations who support this philosophy work by changing the laws to eliminate the raising of farm animals for food and clothing, hunting, trapping, fishing, rodeos, circuses, zoos, the use of animals in lifesaving research, and the breeding and ownership of all animals as pets and companions. They are even against the use of guide dogs and service dogs."
"Animal Welfare is based on the principles of humane care and use of animals. When one supports the idea of animal welfare it means they believe that humans have the right to use animals and own them, but with that use and ownership they must take responsibility to provide proper and humane care and treatment. Organizations that support animal welfare are those who work to improve the treatment and well-being of animals."
In my personal experience with these two groups, I find these two statements to be very true. I myself am a supporter of the AW group. I have seen and heard AR supporters state quite seriously that if there was a human child, and an animal, both in a burning building, they would save the animal first. Now, let me get one thing straight right off the bat. I adore animals. I get quite physically sick when I see evidence of animal neglect or abuse, and since I am involved in animal rescue I see it far more than I want to.
But never, ever, EVER would I put any animal's life above that of a human being! To think that AR supporters would put more importance on the life of one of my cats, dogs or poultry than that of one of my children makes me sick in a different way-with anger.
To summarize, if you drink milk, eat eggs, or eat meat of any kind, you are considered a murderer by AR standards. And if you wear fur-Heaven help you, you sicko! Check out some of the quotes posted on the page link I posted above, and then do your own research. Understand the AR agenda, and know your rights.

Are YOU Mentally Disturbed?

A newspaper called The Guardian has come up with a new mental health disorder. Whoops! Sorry, I mean they are reporting about a new mental health disorder. Now if you choose healthy foods and refuse to eat canned, processed, sugared up junk food you are crazy. Hmmm... Well, people have told me over the years that I am weird. Thanks for letting me know ahead of time, guys!

Choosing healthy foods now called a mental disorder

Pure food obsession The Guardian

Farms Under Attack!

How many people in this country raise vegetable gardens every year? How many of us have received little gifts of extra tomatoes, peppers, or corn-on-the-cob from our friends and neighbors? Some people have even been enterprising enough to sell some of their extra veggies at local farmer's markets for a little extra income. Seems like a pretty harmless, normal sort of activity doesn't it?
Apparently not any more. Seems like some Health Department employees think that fresh veggies (the kind that don't come wrapped in plastic and haven't been trucked over hundreds of miles) are a danger to our health. So dangerous in fact, you can't even feed them to your animals. You can read about the Farm to Fork Farm Dinner Fiasco for yourself. And here I thought it was just raw milk that was so dangerous and unsanitary! How naive of me. Perhaps I should only feed my kids out of a can from now on, that should be safe, right?

Got Milk?

Well, if you are talking about raw milk, then no, probably not. That is because, unless you are fortunate enough to be able to buy the cow, even finding raw milk available for purchase can be like finding the proverbial needle in the hay stack. Why is that, you might ask. If you ask the FDA, or the CDC, or any number of other government agencies, they would tell you it is because raw milk is unsanitary and dangerous and causes the spread of disease. In a lot of states, buying raw milk in any way is illegal. Consuming it is legal, you just aren’t allowed to buy it. Makes about as much sense as politics usually does, right?

So what do you do if you want to drink raw milk and you don’t have the space, time, or money to be able to care for a cow? Well, the law (so far anyway) still says that drinking milk from a cow that you own is legal. So the majority of raw milk drinkers have begun to do what are called cow shares. You buy a partial share in a cow on someone else’s farm. Therefore you own part of this cow yourself, making it legal for you to drink her milk. After all, the law is about not selling the milk, which of course no one is doing. Just selling the cow.

I used to wonder why the government was trying so hard to stop me from drinking this milk. Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, (although I probably do anyway) I think now that the main reason, maybe the only reason, is money and politics. The money is behind the huge corporations, oops I mean dairies, that sell the pasteurized yuck that most people think of as milk. I think too it should be pretty obvious by now that wherever the money is, there shall the politicians be also.

It seems pretty silly to me that, what with the “obesity epidemic” that things like sodas, energy drinks, and sugared-up so called “juice drinks” are still perfectly legal and can be bought in any grocery store. But of course they are still legal! We would be outraged if they were taken off the shelves in the name of health, wouldn’t we? That is because we as American citizens have the right to make our own choices about what we put in our bodies. Except for raw milk, that stuff can really make you sick. And we wouldn’t want to risk that, would we?

Helping your bunnies beat the heat

We are having yet another heat wave here in central Illinois! So I am working overtime to keep the bunnies (and all my other animals) cool and comfortable until the weather cools off again. There are several things you can do to keep your rabbit cool. One of them is to fill a two liter pop bottle about 3/4 full with water, peel the label off, and freeze it. The rabbit can lean against it to cool off. You can also get leftover ceramic floor tiles from your local flooring store, put them in the freezer, and then put them in the rabbit's cages for them to lay on. My Flemish LOVE these! If your rabbit is feeling distress from the heat, use a mist spray bottle with water just slightly below room temp to mist the outsides of their ears. A rabbit's ears have a large vein that runs roughly through the middle of the ear, and cooling the ears helps to cool the rabbit's whole body.
One of my favorite things to do to help my bunnies cool down is to offer them frozen cranberry mush. I put whole cranberries and some water in the blender until they are a thick mush, and freeze the mush in "single serve" amounts in freezer bags. DO NOT add sugar to the cranberries, sugar is unhealthy for rabbits. Then once it is frozen, put it on an uncolored paper plate and give it to your rabbit while still frozen. When they eat the frozen cranberry mush, the ice will help cool them off, and the water they are ingesting will help keep them hydrated as well. You can even use unflavored Pedialyte instead of water when you blend the cranberries to boost hydration even more. Below is a picture of what the cranberry mush looks like when ready to serve.