New Year's Resolution 2011

Some of you may have seen "animal rights activist" at the top of my blog and thought "Huh?" Well, let me explain that. Activist may be a little strong for right now...non-factory farm eater is more accurate, but there's no cool word for that. My New Year's resolution besides to lose weight, save money, and drink less - all the cliche resolutions put aside - was to stop eating food from factory farms. For those that do not know, factory farming is a term used for large production of raising livestock in confinement at high stocking density, where a farm operates as a factory. The main product of this industry is meat, milk, and eggs. (I hate milk and rarely buy eggs, so my main focus is on the meat from these farms.) Confinement at high stocking density requires antibiotics and pesticides to mitigate the spread of disease and pestilence exacerbated by these crowded living conditions. In addition, antibiotics are used to stimulate livestock growth by killing intestinal bacteria.

Now that you have that, let me start from the beginning. This past summer, I saw the movie Food Inc. It is an incredible movie, and if you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it. Everyone should see this movie just so that they can have the real facts about what they are putting into their body when they eat. Food Inc. focuses on how your food gets from Point A to Point B, what's put in it, what it is made of, etc. The U.S. agriculture business is discussed. Factory farms are discussed and shown. Pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones that are put into our food are discussed. And companies that are monopolizing the food business are discussed. Needless to say, after seeing this movie, I had to do more research on this subject. What I found was horrific. We, as a society, have grown up doing what we've been taught. Eating food is something we need to do to survive. However, it never crossed my mind what I was actually putting in my body until I was 25 years old. Now why is that? The reason is - no one knows because the information is not given to us in plain sight! It is not in newspapers what goes into your food or the procedures that are used to raise and kill an animal. If it was, I can promise it would raise a lot of eyebrows. 

You must seek out this information for yourself if you want to know the truth. That's exactly what I did. I did research on everything to do with this subject. Because of what I found, I decided to make my New Year's resolution to not eat food from factory farms. I'm not going to talk about what goes on in factory farms. I'm not going to show pictures of the animals or the farms themselves. It is a sore subject with me, and one of the main reasons I have not eaten meat from a factory farm as of 1/1/11 12:01 a.m. As an animal lover, it is absolutely atrocious what goes on in these hell houses. I made the mistake of reading too many articles and watching too many undercover videos that the Humane Society conducted about factory farms for me to ever think about going back on this resolution. If you are interested, all you have to do is google "factory farming" and you will see a ton of information on what I've been talking about.

Animal rights is just one aspect of why I've decided to change my eating habits. Another major one is the  chemicals that are put into our food. Pesticides are put on plants to keep them from ripening too quickly, growth hormones are fed to animals in their food (mostly chickens) to accelerate their growth so that more meat can come from one animal, and antibiotics are given to the animals to prevent the spread of disease since there are so many in one space. And this is what we are eating...

Hopefully, I haven't upset too many of you by speaking my mind on this. This subject was a main reason for me starting a blog. It is something I have become extremely passionate about, and I feel I need to spread the knowledge I've learned so that you may know the facts and make your own decisions. I'm only on Day 8 of this, and I'm not going to lie - it is hard. I can't eat out anymore. I can't shop at normal grocery stores for meat. If I want to buy meat, it is going to be more expensive because it has to come from an actual local farm where the animals are free-range, pasture-fed, and raised humanely. I know I have a tough road ahead of me, but I feel proud of myself for doing this. I know that me doing this won't end what goes on in the food business, but at least I can not support it. Hope all of you have a great weekend, thanks for reading, and WAR EAGLE!!!!