the generalities:
a-it’s bad for you(fat, hormones, causes cancer, antibiotics, pesticides, etc)
b-it’s bad for the animals(have you ever been to a factory farm or a slaughterhouse?)
c-it’s bad for the environment(animal production is responsible for 24% of greenhouse gas emissions according to the un, and animal production is the #1 cause of deforestation in the 3rd and developing world).
d-it’s bad for our drinking water(animal production is the #1 cause of water pollution in the united states)
e-it’s bad for workers(again, have you ever been to a factory farm or a slaughterhouse?)
and so on.
but i just read a report about arsenic being used in chicken feed in the u.s(it’s a process that has long been banned in europe).
since the 40’s and 50’s chicken farmers in the u.s have been adding arsenic to their chicken feed.
so, if you’re eating chicken or eggs you’re also eating arsenic(to name just one of hundreds of toxic chemicals approved for animal production).
here’s a quote:
“According to the Environmental Protection Agency, long-term exposure to inorganic arsenic can cause bladder, lung, skin, kidney, and colon cancer, as well as deleterious immunological, neurological, and endocrine effects. Low-level exposures can lead to partial paralysis and diabetes. “None of this was known in the 1950s when arsenicals were first approved for use in poultry,” says Ellen K. Silbergeld, a toxicologist at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.”
so i guess you have a simple choice: eat chicken and eggs and ingest arsenic, or, uh, don’t.
oh, arsenic is also an additive in cigarette tobacco(along with lead and other toxic ingredients).
so if you really want to have an awesome arsenic party you could eat fried chicken while smoking cigarettes(maybe wrap the cigarettes in bacon beforehand. or dip them in nail polish remover. for that extra carcinogenic ‘oomph’).
the upside to this is that you’ll be the center of attention when people come to visit you in the hospital when you’re 445 years old and a minute away from dying after enduring a long and slow and painful battle with cancer.
and everyone likes to be the center of attention, even if it involves having cancer of the everything.
sorry for being so grim.
-moby