Let me go slowly so you can chew on this meat one subject at a time.
To make animals gain weight more quickly, growth hormones are mixed in with their food.
According to various sources, hormones are used in 80% to 90% of cattle, pigs and poultry raised in the United States.
The National Toxicology Program at the National Institute of Health shows that the estradiol and progesterone used in raising livestock are linked with breast cancer, prostate cancer and the growth of tumors.
Meat eaters have more colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer and ten times more lung cancer than Vegetarians.
A little bit too often, the response that I hear to these details is, I like meat.
What exactly is in all that meat on your plate? In Conscious Eating, Gabriel Cousens describes how farm animals are fed a steady diet of pesticides, hormones, growth stimulants, insecticides, tranquilizers, radioactive isotopes, herbicides, antibiotics and a variety of other drugs and colourants.
Is that enough to make you think twice? What is the significance of all these chemicals in your diet? In 1999, Swiss inspectors detected diethylstilbestrol (DES), the cancer-causing, anti-miscarriage drug, in two shipments of American beef.
Keep in mind that this chemical had been banned by the Food and Drug Administration of the United States for growth promotion in chicken and lambs way back in 1959 and totally banned for use in all animal feed in 1979.
Is this to suggest that some meat producers are still using illegal chemicals? Is your government truly able to monitor and control the production of meat to safe standards? More recently, the use of growth hormones was banned in Europe.
The European Union Scientific Committee states that these hormones pose a risk of cancer, particularly to children.
Somewhat predictably, the US cattle industry claims that it produces safe and wholesome beef.
What can we do about these dangers when many people still like to argue, meat is part of my culture.
Yes, it's part of some cultures like the Eskimos in northern Canada and the Masai people of Kenya because virtually no other food is available other than meat.
In Western culture, students are fed beliefs about the need for meat and protein in school books and relatively few people challenge that information when they mature.
Yes, some cultures include a lot of meat in their diet, but does that equate with having a healthy diet? In Diet for a New America, John Robbins explains that 95% to 99% of all toxic chemical residues in the typical diet come from meat, fish, dairy and eggs.
People are correct when they argue that fruits and vegetables also have pesticides and use fertilizers.
This is true, but the proportion is relatively tiny compared to the toxins in meat and animal products.
Meat has approximately fourteen times more pesticides than vegetables.
Ideally, we should all eat organic fruits, vegetables and grains to eliminate all the chemicals from our diets.
You would think that governments around the world would be checking and stopping these toxic problems and protecting the people...
but governments are often very busy taxing the people and starting wars, leaving little time for protecting our food supply.
Ultimately, who is responsible for the food that goes into your mouth?