The world’s hunger for animal protein is on the rise … and that’s as it should be. It’s the best single source of nutrients like vitamin B12 that make our brains so powerful.
But there’s a problem … the animals we eat aren’t hunted in the wild, and aren’t raised in sustainable environments anymore. They’re “grown” on commercial farms where antibiotics are used routinely to prevent the diseases that crop up from the way they’re raised, and to promote faster growth.
There is a way to get around this problem, as you’ll soon see.
But first, you’re probably wondering how antibiotic use for animals affects you. Well, do you know what your chances of developing an infection that can’t be cured are? Extremely high, according to researchers who say the odds are starting to look bleak … that we’ll be having more and more incurable infections unless we ease up on the use and abuse of antibiotics for “growing” animals.
It’s so out of control that we now have many superbugs that cause infections that can’t be quelled by almost any means. The more antibiotics that are used, the greater the likelihood that bacteria develop resistance to all known remedies.
80 percent of ALL antibiotics used in the world are used on livestock. And it’s getting worse. A study at Princeton University warns that globally, in the next twenty years, the administration of antibiotics to farm animals will grow by 67 percent.
The scientists point out that the use of antibiotics has accelerated because of the increase in factory farming, what they call “intensive farming systems.” Those are the types of farms that supply most of the meat to your supermarket.
To protect yourself against this rising threat, you can now easily buy pasture-raised meat from animals that have been raised without antibiotics.
If your local market doesn’t have any, there are a few places online where you can get it.
Three resources that can help you find pasture raised meat of all kinds are www.eatwild.com, www.eatwellguide.org, and www.localharvest.org.
The USDA also has a large listing of local farmer’s markets where you might be able to find out who, in your area, sells pasture-raised meat.
This is a good way to get to know your local farmers who don’t abuse antibiotics and who grow healthy sustainable food that you can eat, and that have no antibiotics that can compromise your immune system and leave you open to illnesses of every kind.
Two other sites that can guide you to pasture raised meat are www.humaneitarian.org, which lists grocery stores that sell grass-fed meats, and www.americangrassfed.org, which has a very thorough list of grass-fed meat producers.
