My lovely 15-year-old niece, Lissa, e-mailed me recently:

Dear Auntie Kama,

My final for my biology class is an environmental issue. We have to research one topic and then make a survey, do an action plan, and then write a reflection. My topic is how the poor treatment of farm animals effects (affects?) the health of the humans who eat them. Daddy said I should look at your site so I did. It was helpful and if you find anything big out that you think I could use in my project, let me know. Thanks!!

I don’t know how or why she chose this topic, but needless to say, I was a proud auntie. Coincidentally, I had just finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma for Kids: Young Readers’ Edition, which is a great distillation of the big ideas in the original, presented to kids in an appropriate way without sugarcoating the issues. It’s even a great read for adults who find the original too long and demanding.

Lissa and I talked on the phone and I told her I would send her more information. I kept having an imaginary conversation with her in my mind and finally wrote her this letter, instead of just a bunch of links, just so the voices in my head would stop:

Dear Lissa,

You’ve probably already discovered this in your research, but the treatment of farm animals affects human health in several ways. We’ve already talked about the difference between factory farms and small family-owned farms. But remember that 98% of our meat supply comes from the factory farms.

Factory farm animals are fed hormones and antibiotics to make them grow faster and keep them free from the disease that their filthy, overcrowded living conditions create. Chickens are fed arsenic (a poison) to stimulate their appetite so they’ll get fatter faster.

This stuff doesn’t just disappear. It becomes part of their bodies. Humans ingest it when they eat the meat.

Hormones have been linked to several different cancers (not the one Grandpa Marty died from, though), and have also been thought to cause early onset of puberty in girls, (though this has not been proven). Hormones are hormones, after all!

The problem with antibiotics is that when overused they lose effectiveness (the bacteria starts to outsmart the drugs), so now when humans get certain illnesses they can’t be treated. And we don’t even know the extent of the problems with arsenic.

There are three more biggies. E. coli, campylobacter, and mad cow disease are terrible illnesses that have been linked directly to factory farms. All are caused by animals being fed an unnatural diet.

Lissa, I think you are very brave for looking at this issue. It can be extremely disturbing and upsetting to think about, especially before dinner! I am sorry that my generation is handing your generation such a mess of a planet. We have made a lot of very bad choices. I think the only way you and your friends can make things better is to learn why things are so messed up in the first place, and that’s exactly what you’re doing with this project. That’s what I’m trying to do with the blog, too, and I promise to keep trying so that you guys have a better world than the one we have now. I have great faith in you!

Love,
Your Auntie

P.S. I would never tell you what to eat; I think that is one of the most personal decisions a human makes. I do believe, though, that we need to dramatically reduce our consumption of meat, eggs, and dairy, and try hard to buy it from local farms that are treating their animals well. It takes more work to find food from good sources, and it’s more expensive. But there are some things we can’t put a price on (like our health)!

Here’s another thing the Brits are doing well. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) acts as a third-party certifer of meat and other animal products, guaranteeing that high standards of animal welfare have been adhered to.

Meat, eggs, milk, and cheese with the RSPCA’s “Freedom Food” label are widely available across the U.K., and the label is well-recognized by consumers (unlike the equivalent U.S. labels). Like the ASPCA, the RSPCA isn’t government funded, but Britain’s farm policies and overall retail climate are obviously more conducive to getting good food to the consumer. This is, of course, of more consequence than our conservative government’s campaign in 2003 to rename “French fries” as “Freedom fries”. Big sigh.

Anyway, sales of Freedom Food are up, proving that when consumers actually have a choice, they often make the right one.

I love it when scientists publicly refuse to play nicely with agribusiness and governments. Here’s a example from the U.K.: Eminent scientists recently resigned in protest from a steering group on genetically-modified food:

Professor Bryan Wynne… [told] the London Telegraph that the committee was rigged in favor of GM food. Professor Wynne’s resignation comes on the heels of the resignation of Dr. Helen Wallace, another member of the committee, who stepped down a week or so earlier because of the cozy relationship between GM manufacturers and the agency overseeing the group.

Economists there are telling important truths too. A recent U.N. report follows the recommendation of Lord Nicholas Stern, former adviser to the Labour government on the economics of climate change. Lord Stern stated last year that a vegetarian diet was better for the planet. The subsequent U.N. report states:

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today. As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.

Cool Brittania, indeed.