Transcript HOW IS OUR `OLD` AGRICULTURE SYSTEM

Welcome to…
“APPETIZERS”
Discovery & Empowerment
Dialogue© (Part D)
HOW IS OUR ‘OLD’ AGRICULTURE
SYSTEM CONTRIBUTING TO OUR
ECO-DISINTEGRATION?
Let’s explore the answers, using the help of the
Eco-Paradigms you printed in PDF Format,
titled:
THE ‘OLD’
COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE
& UNCONSCIOUS EATING PARADIGM
THE ‘BOLD’
ORGANIC AGRICULTURE
& CONSCIOUS EATING PARADIGM
Today’s
INTENSIVE INDUSTRIAL APPROACH
to Agriculture
represents a historic departure from the ways farming
has been practiced throughout most of human history,
and is a huge threat to human welfare and the
well-being of animals and the land
The DEMAND FOR FOOD
is increasing, but food supplies are decreasing,
due to exploitation of land, water, and resources
and inequitable distribution of food to
developing countries.
This threat affects human health, future
availability of food supplies, and
conservation of natural resources and
wildlife.
Chemicals, toxins, drugs, hormones,
and genetically engineered organisms
PUT ECO-SYSTEMS AT RISK
Diets in wealthy countries
are molded largely by the
economic interests of
industrial food
corporations that don’t
respect the ecology of
living things.
To complicate matters…
ADDITIVES
in processed convenience
foods are making
people sick!
HEALTHY EATING RITUALS
and their civilizing effect
on families
are being lost and forgotten
Let’s take a look under a microscope,
to see how commercial agricultural
practices
are contributing to the
eco-disintegration of our earth’s
living ecology
INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE
raises and slaughters about 50 billion
animals for food worldwide each year, about 80% are slaughtered in the
U.S. , including:
120 million hogs
9 billion chickens
300 million turkeys
Because these animals are
dependent upon natural resources
such as water and topsoil to grow
their food, and heat for the giant
warehouse-like barns they live in…
factory farming is depleting
land, trees, water, and
petroleum.
Acreage the size of seven football fields is burned
down every minute in the Amazon rainforest, much
of it to make room for cattle to feed the meat
habit of the US and Europe.
Thousands of species in the web of life
become extinct in the rainforest when
land-clearing destroys their homes.
FACTORY FARMS
crowd animals mercilessly,
NEVER let them go
outdoors, and DENY them
the chance to fulfill their
normal instinctive lives!
Chickens spend their entire
lives in cages, stacked four
high, with floor space of 86
square inches, just a little
bit bigger than a lettersized piece of paper.
They are usually de-beaked in an
exceptionally cruel manner to prevent
them from pecking themselves to death.
The industrial production of
beef cattle generates TONS OF
WASTE collected in open-air
cesspools called “manure
lagoons” from which
concentrated pollutants
including bacteria, parasites and
viruses seep into groundwater as
well as rivers, lakes and streams.
The ODOR downwind from manure lagoons,
including the odor of concentrated ammonia,
is sickening in the extreme and can contain up to
150 volatile chemical compounds.
The use of genetically
modified SEEDS can’t be
confined to certain
fields, but winds and
insects carry the genetic
pollution to non-GMO
plants in nearby fields.
MORE agricultural chemicals (not fewer)
are used on pesticide-tolerant GMO
plants, increasing harm to the soil and
water from these chemicals.
Eating GE corn,
ALTERED to have a
pesticide within each cell
of the plant, has killed
Monarch butterfly larvae
in several experiments.
Other beneficial insects,
including ladybugs and
lacewings, also had higher
mortality when feeding on
and around GE crops.
More than 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides
(or 6 million tons by weight of active chemicals, not “inert” ingredients)
are applied to US crops every year
Planting of so-called
pesticide-resistant
GMO crops has
increased pesticide
use by 50 million
pounds per year!
Use of chemical fertilizers on the land
strips topsoil. Crops are deficient
in nutrients and
trace minerals as a result.
People eating food grown
in this depleted soil can
become nutritionally
depleted, and may be sick
more often and feel
exhausted.
Because food that is grown in an
un-whole way does not support a healthy
connection between humans, plants,
animals, and ecosystems,
it cannot create
or sustain a
healthy flow of
energy within our
planetary
biosphere.
Sources for this information include:
FARM and California Certified Organic Growers
IT GOES WITOUT SAYING
that plants, animals, and ecosystems
burdened by industrial and agricultural
farming methods
have a reduced ability
to detoxify and regenerate
Let’s Examine How the Practice
of Industrial, Commercial Agriculture
Leads (through our Everyday Food Choices)
to the Eco-Disintegration of Our
Human Ecology
A NATIONWIDE STUDY
By The Centers for Disease Control
revealed that more
than 90% of us have
a dozen or more
pesticides lodged in
our body tissues,
most absorbed from
our food choices.
Toxic chemical fertilizers and
pesticides used to grow fruits, vegetables,
grains, seeds and legumes are difficult or
impossible to wash off the food.
In the human body, these
substances can (and do)
INCREASE the risk of
diseases such as cancer and
neurological defects.
Numerous studies have shown that
rural families and farm workers routinely
exposed to pesticides
have a higher rate of non-Hodgkin’s
lymphoma, skin melanomas, multiple
myeloma and leukemia, as well as and birth
defects, than the rest of the population.
Pesticides that are chlorine-based
(most of them) bear a chemical
resemblance to ESTROGEN,
a sex hormone that is a cause of
reproductive cancers in humans,
including breast cancer.
In fact, a study of women working
on farms where these chemicals
were in use found they were
2.8 times more likely to have
breast cancer than other women.
And then, there’s
VETERINARY ANTIBIOTICS
Of the 36 million pounds of antibiotics used
annually in the US, 70% are given to
HEALTHY ANIMALS to prevent the
unnatural conditions in which they live
from making them sick.
The Antibiotic DRUGS that
animals consume end up in
the meat we eat and the
milk we drink…
They are one of
the causes of
antibiotic-resistant
strains of bacteria in
the human body.
PEOPLE WHO WERE BORN BEFORE 1974
have dieldrin in their bodies -- a dangerous carcinogen
that was banned that year.
Those who ate beef between
1947 and 1977 were exposed to
DES, a potent carcinogenic
growth-promoting chemical that
was given to cattle to “beef them
up” until it was
also banned.
Synthetic and genetically
engineered hormones
USED TODAY, to make animals
grow faster and fatter …
may also have an undesirable effect
on HUMANS who eat meat
containing these hormones.
MANY HORMONE
DEPENDENT DISEASES
including cancer and diseases of the
reproductive system…
are caused, and made worse, by hormones
injected into animals.
Because industrially
farmed foods are used to
produce everyday
PROCESSED FOODS
that make up the mainstay
of the standard American
diet,
people are eating foods that are
essentially “un-whole” – depleted in
nutrients and laden with
dangerous chemicals.
Processed foods such as refined flour,
sugar and oils, are made “unwhole” by the refining process,
which destroys or discards most of
the nutrients.
We are overweight, but
STARVED for the natural food
fibers, colors, enzymes and
oxygen, as well as vitamins and
minerals that serve to keep our
human ecology in good working
order.
FOOD ADDITIVES,
including preservatives, dyes
and colorings, have been
linked to a variety of health
problems.
MSG, for example -present in many processed
foods -- has the potential
to cause brain cell death!
Aspartame, the currently popular
artificial sweetener found in
no-calorie soft drinks and other
foods… causes a variety of
symptoms of TOXICITY…
including joint pain,
headaches,
hyperactivity, and
systemic conditions
resembling autoimmune disorders.
Drinking water
in most urban areas contains
measurable amounts of
Viagra, anti-depressants, and
chemotherapy toxicants…
and several hundred other
prescription and
nonprescription drugs
that are designed to be
biologically active!
Arsenic in drinking water
has been linked to lung
and bladder cancer, and
could be harmful at lower
levels of exposure than the
current “allowable limits.”
Children are at particular
risk from arsenic.
Fluoridation of nearly all US public water
supplies results in everyone’s exposure to
fluoride, which can depress thyroid activity.
MICROWAVES
that many people depend on to
cook meals
HURT the vitamin, enzyme, and
nutrient content in the food and
create unhealthy by-products.
THE FOOD WE EAT,
it might be summarized…
simply isn’t healthy if it
doesn’t invite a healthy
connection to the ecology of
the earth, and if it doesn’t
sustain a healthy flow of
energy within our bodymind system.
HOW CAN WE TURN
AN UN-WHOLE AGRICULTURE AND
FOOD PRODUCTION SYSTEM INTO
A WHOLE AND THRIVING ONE?
To Answer This Vitally
Important Question,
Print Out and Study the Reading
Notes that accompany this Power Point
(Notes are featured in
Appetizers Section,
Part D, of Book. Or
online PDF doc)
“Reading Notes ”
Covered in this Section Include:
Examining Our Factory-Style Animal Agriculture System
From Domestic Factory Farms to the Rainforest, Raising
Animals for Food Is Exacerbating Our Global Problems
Factory Farming Produces Contaminants
Factory Farming is an Atrocity that We Need Not Accept as
Normal
We Consume the Products of Torture When we Eat Mass
Produced Animals
Continued…
The Paradox of Our Existence, Is That, We Have to Eat Living Things
Examining Our Factory-Style Plant-Intensive Agriculture System
Terrorists Acts against the Environment Can Be Blamed on the Crop
Dusters that Spray Poison Chemicals on the Land
GE Food Has Not Been Evaluated for Long Term Effects on the health
of Humans and the Earth
How Do You Feel About Companies that Are Altering the DNA of
Our Food Supply?
GE Foods are Proven By Some, to Be Unsafe for the Environment
Continued…
The Production of GE Foods Leads to the Bio Accumulation of More
Chemicals into the Environment
The Production of GE Foods Leads to the Bio Accumulation of More
Chemicals into the Environment
In Our Schools Today (with the Exception of Some Colleges) There Is a
Low Priority Attached to Nutrition Education
Do We Need to Be Vegetarians, to Say that We Eat In an Eco-Friendly
Way?
What One Chooses to Eat, Must Ultimately Be Based on Their Changing
Needs
Continued…
Creativity and Flexibility Support Us in Feeding and Nourishing
Ourselves
What Is the Alternative to Food and Nutrition Propaganda that
Schools Promote in their Nutrition Education Materials?
Do You Have a Picky Eater in Your Family?
The Eco-Intelligent Eating Model Helps People to Integrate Their
Dietary Needs with the ‘Dietary’ Needs of Our Planet
Can An Organic Method of Agriculture Save People and the
Planet?
Eating Organically, Offers to Be an Adventure