For the better part of a year now, my very thoughtful mother has spearheaded a weekly family dinner tradition that never fails to warm the cockles of my heart, except for one thing -- the chicken, pork and beef that she's inclined to use in her recipes makes me afraid...very afraid. Being an "organic snob" has nothing to do with why her conventionally sourced ingredients put me on red alert. I can easily look past the mainstream carrots, broccoli, onions and other dinnertime ingredients that she typically uses but when it comes to the meat part of the formula, I will always bend over backwards to offer her the organic sausage that I happened to have thawing in my refrigerator or the grass fed ground bison that I was really intending to cook sometime this week but would be perfect in her meat lasagna instead.

When a family member extends a standing invitation to have you over for dinner, it seems pretty rude to expect them to prepare a meal to your exact clean, green specifications. You might be tempted to foot the bill yourself (for all of the organic eats necessary to whip up that evening's dinner), but at that rate, you might as well host the dinner yourself. There are certain boundaries that you just don't cross, and lecturing loved ones on what conventionally raised foods are really doing to our bodies is normally not received very well, plus it can also be perceived as a hurtful jab -- what, my food isn't good enough for you?

Ever since the mid 80s Mad Cow scare,  I became a voracious reader of all that has really been going on behind the scenes of the beef industry. After realizing that the main global producers were continually out for quick profit at the complete expense of the animals they were raising (by fattening them up on a cannibalistic downer-cow diet), I literally swore off of conventional cow flesh. When I later learned about the industry's affection for cloning, I doubly swore off of mainsteam beef and have never turned back. I've made no secret of my complete refusal to eat conventional beef -- in fact, my family has been pretty good natured about my views, offering me chicken breasts and safe veggie alternatives throughout the years while they gamely continue to savor their prime USDA beef.

For some reason though, all of the facts that I've cited regarding what our meat really eats never seem to go beyond the wow stage -- while they seem interested and listen courteously, perhaps they've just been nodding and smiling simply just to be nice (as family oftentimes do). Maybe they really think that I'm nothing more than an extreme looney who they don't mind placating every so often. What continually amazes me, though, is that they've never taken any of the information that I've shared with them and really considered how it directly affects their own lives. Antibiotic and hormone-laden meat produced from animals that were forced to become meat eaters (despite being natural vegetarians...at least in the case of cows) does not a wholesome meal make.

After giving this issue great thought, I realize that my family is just one of millions upon millions who do not grasp why factory farmed meat should be avoided at all costs, not just from an environmental and animal rights perspective but particularly from a health perspective. Maybe a quick reference guide detailing what the world's pigs, cows and chickens consume prior to landing on our dinnerplates is just what the doctor ordered? Well, here it goes:

What are factory farmed pigs actually fed?

According to all of the mainstream industry reports that I could find, pigs are purportedly fed a nutritionally complete diet consisting of 80% GM corn and 20% GM soybean meal. They are natural omnivores and foragers, meaning that if they were allowed to roam free, they would be content consuming leaves, insects, grass, worms, roots, fruit, flowers and even other dead animals. However, I found out that in an effort to cut feed costs, pork producers have been known to augment their porker's diets with everything from 10% distiller's grains (resulting from ethanol production) and rendered pig carcasses to more than 10 million pounds of antibiotics, which is 3 times more than the volume of drugs used to treat people (according to the Union of Concerned Scientists). Millions of tons of meat and bone meal from post-slaughter animal waste are recycled back into animal feed each year, and guess who's at the top of the list to receive these gems? The pig industry. Additionally, some pig farmers have gone as far as to fill in the corners with expired cake, frosted breakfast cereals, chocolate syrup, cookies and candy bars (still in their wrappers), raw Tater Tots, hash browns, French fries, banana chips, yogurt-covered raisins, dried papaya and cashews. In certain states, farmers are even legally allowed to feed their hogs garbage

What are factory farmed chickens actually fed?

Designed to be omnivores, chickens are inclined to peck at the ground in search of plants and protein morsels such as insects, lizards, seeds, worms, amphibians, and even young mice. In factory farming operations, however, they are forced to consume cattle by-products (meat and bone meal), a high volume of arsenic (which promotes growth and prevents disease), liquid fat, expired pet food, ground GM corn, rendered chicken carcasses, plastic pellets to mimic plant-based roughage and a melange of antibiotics and hormones. There's something about this white meat that registers pretty high on the yuckville scale.

What are factory farmed cows actually fed?

Pigs have it easy compared to cows, who are designed to be vegetarians and up until the mid-20th century, were pasture raised and fed a diet of native grasses. Once our government found themselves wondering what to do with a surplus of corn and pawned it off on the cattle industry, the grain train was officially launched. They soon discovered that by feeding items like GM soybeans and GM corn to cattle, the animals could be brought to market a lot faster. Despite the host of gastrointestinal complications that arise from this practice, ruminants are also regularly fed such unappetizing and downright appalling items like restaurant scraps, expired pet food, a host of antibiotics, cottonseed/cotton waste and chicken feces/feathers/floor waste. You've got to hand it to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for claiming that feces and feathers are perfectly suitable protein sources for cattle -- whatever cuts corners and helps them to get rid of an estimated one billion pounds of waste each year is alright by them. How they can justify feeding these vegetarian animals cow blood, rendered cattle fat and a random assortment of ground up animal parts unfit for human consumption (such as pigs, chickens horses, fish and downed cattle) is mind-blowing -- there always seems to be a loophole even though we've been through the whole Mad Cow thing before. 

Um...just wondering...do you still really want to eat that ginormous conventionally-raised chicken breast or highly marbled t-bone steak?