{"id":77640,"date":"2018-05-23T05:53:40","date_gmt":"2018-05-23T12:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=77640"},"modified":"2018-05-23T05:53:57","modified_gmt":"2018-05-23T12:53:57","slug":"7-really-gross-reasons-to-never-eat-meat-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/05\/23\/7-really-gross-reasons-to-never-eat-meat-again\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Really Gross Reasons to Never Eat Meat Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

By:\u00a0Judy M.<\/a>\u00a0Courtesy care2.com<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
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Editor\u2019s note: This Care2 favorite was originally posted on\u00a0September 26, 2013.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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You know the statistics that eating red meat will take years off your life, and you\u2019ve probably\u00a0heard\u00a0of\u00a0pink slime<\/a>. If, for some reason,\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0still hesitating<\/a>, here are seven reasons why you might want to\u00a0think twice<\/a>\u00a0before eating your next steak.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0SUPERBUGS
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Thinking about turkey burgers for dinner tonight? You may want to think again.<\/p>\n

A report from the\u00a0Food and Drug Administration \u00a0found that, of all the raw ground turkey tested,\u00a081 percent was contaminated<\/a>\u00a0with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But ground turkey wasn\u2019t the only problem. These bacteria were found in some 69 percent of pork chops, 55 percent of ground beef and 39 percent of chicken.<\/p>\n

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are known as\u00a0superbugs<\/a>. The use of antibiotics on factory farms, in order to bring animals to slaughter faster or to make up for crowded conditions on feed lots, is one of the reasons why antibiotic resistance is on the rise.<\/p>\n

Government data has revealed that one antibiotic-resistant strain of a germ called\u00a0Enterococcus faecalis<\/a>,\u00a0normally found in human and animal intestines, was prevalent in a wide variety of meats. This means that the meat likely came into contact with fecal matter \u2014 and that there\u2019s a high likelihood that other antibiotic-resistant bacteria is present too.<\/p>\n

How\u2019s that burger looking now?<\/p>\n

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2.\u00a0ANTIBIOTICS<\/h2>\n

Antibiotics<\/a>\u00a0are used in livestock to make\u00a0animals grow faster and to prevent disease. Some 29.9 million pounds of antibiotics were sold in 2011 for meat and poultry production \u2014 compared with the 7.7 million sold for human use, according to the\u00a0Pew Charitable Trusts<\/a>. And that number has been on the rise.<\/p>\n

Dr. Gail Hansen<\/a>, a veterinarian and senior officer for the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming, believes the use of antibiotics in animals is out of hand:<\/p>\n

We feed antibiotics to sick animals, which is completely appropriate, but we also put antibiotics in their feed and in their water to help them grow faster and to compensate for unhygienic conditions. If you have to keep the animals healthy with drugs, I would argue you need to re-examine the system. You don\u2019t take antibiotics preventively when you go out into the world.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0CLEANING PRODUCTS<\/h2>\n

School districts and parents had not been aware that some 7 million pounds of meat served up in school cafeterias was coming from scraps swept up from the floor. These meat parts were then sent through a series of machines, which grind them into a paste, separatesout the fat and lace the substance with ammonia to kill bacteria, such as salmonella and\u00a0E. coli<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The end product, known as\u00a0pink slime<\/a>, looked disgusting. And the puffs of ammonia used to kill the bacterium E. coli really grossed everyone out.<\/p>\n

It turns out there\u2019s also another cleaning product used in meat production. According to the website\u00a0MeatPoultry.com<\/a>, 99 percent of American poultry processors\u201d cool their birds by immersion in chlorinated water-chiller baths.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yum.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0MEAT GLUE<\/h2>\n

What you think is a slab of meat, perhaps a filet mignon, often turns out to be comprised of meat scraps held together with something commonly referred to as meat glue.\u201d Officially known as transglutaminase<\/a>,\u201d the product has its origins in the farming industry, when the natural enzyme was harvested from animal blood. Nowadays, it is produced through the fermentation of bacteria.<\/p>\n

The FDA has ruled that meat glue is generally recognized as safe,\u201d and it is required to be listed as one of the ingredients. However, it\u2019s unlikely that any restaurant or banquet hall would list the ingredients of its meat on the menu.<\/p>\n

Ever thought of\u00a0going vegetarian<\/a>?<\/p>\n

5. CHEMICALS, PESTICIDES AND HEAVY METALS<\/h2>\n

In 2010 the Department of Agriculture\u2019s inspector general condemned the U.S. for allowing meat containing pesticides, heavy metals, veterinary drugs and other chemicals to reach supermarket shelves. That\u2019s because the\u00a0country\u2019s standards for testing meat for pesticides and chemicals were so lax that, in 2008, Mexico turned back a shipment of American beef\u00a0because it didn\u2019t meet its\u00a0standards for copper traces<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How about a\u00a0veggie burger<\/a>\u00a0instead?<\/p>\n

6.\u00a0HORMONES<\/h2>\n

American beef is so heavy in hormones that the European Union has said it doesn\u2019t want the product.\u00a0The European Commission\u2019s Scientific Committee\u00a0on Veterinary Measures<\/a>\u00a0claims that\u00a0hormone-heavy beef production poses increased risks of breast cancer and prostate cancer,\u201d\u00a0citing cancer rates in countries that do and don\u2019t eat U.S. beef. Perhaps you didn\u2019t know that the synthetic hormones zeranol, trenbolone acetate and melengestrol acetate are a routine part of the recipe for production of U.S. beef.<\/p>\n

7. CARBON MONOXIDE<\/h2>\n

Have you ever wondered why those steaks on the supermarket shelf are so red? That\u2019s because as much as\u00a0\u00a070 percent\u00a0of meat packages in stores<\/a>\u00a0are treated with carbon monoxide to keep the meat\u2019s red color \u2014 oxymyoglobin \u2014 from turning brown or gray \u2014 metmyoglobin \u2014 through exposure to oxygen.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Ann Boeckman<\/a>, a lawyer with a firm representing major meat companies, consumers do not need to worry about being deceived. When a product reaches the point of spoilage, there will be other signs that will be evidenced\u2014for example odor, slime formation and a bulging package\u2014so the product will not smell or look right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Good to know.<\/p>\n

Photo Credit:\u00a0USDA\/Flickr<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By:\u00a0Judy M.\u00a0Courtesy care2.com Editor\u2019s note: This Care2 favorite was originally posted on\u00a0September 26, 2013. You know the statistics that eating red meat will take years off your life, and you\u2019ve probably\u00a0heard\u00a0of\u00a0pink slime. If, for some reason,\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0still hesitating, here are seven reasons why you might want to\u00a0think twice\u00a0before eating your next steak. 1.\u00a0SUPERBUGS Thinking about turkey […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}