Vegans Don't Eat Bugs, Worms or Parasites in Animal Flesh

The large liver fluke, is a parasite that attacks the livers of beef cattle. The only way to find the 1-inch wide and 2- to 3-inch long, reddish-brown, leech-like liver flukes are found after a cow has died or been slaughtered. U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations state the liver must be condemned and removed from the food supply if the fluke is found. The rest of the carcass can be processed as meat products.

Flukes are not to be confused with tapeworms, pinworms, roundworms, whipworms, or hookworms, fleas and ticks which can all be found in/on farmed animals as well. But not to worry... the meat industry has drugs for these too! But with all the chemicals fed to animals to control these nasty little organisms, one must wonder - is it not better to just go vegan?

CATTLE TICKS, GLOBAL WARMING & BUGS IN YOUR FOOD - GO VEGAN

Here's what's bugging me: Canada's forests are now contributing to climate change. The trees are pumping out more carbon dioxide than they are absorbing. 1.2 million square miles of trees, Almost 10% of the earths forests are in Canada and are now stressed due to global warming. Insect infestations and persistent fires have crossed an ominous line and are now pumping out more climate-changing carbon dioxide than they are sequestering. So this establishes that we are in a global climate crisis.

And what does the U.N. report as the number 1 contributor to global warming? Livestock. But livestock, cattle in particular - has it's own issues with a bug threatening their cows. It's the cattle tick. Cattle tick fever, is a disease that can kill up to 90 percent of infected animals. And in the past two years, 128 new cattle fever tick infestations have been detected. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Texas officials will receive $4.9 million to help fight fever ticks, a pest that can transmit a deadly parasite to cattle.

$4.9 million dollars (more) to help the cow people - And what do the cow people use to eliminate ticks? Another poisonous insecticide, or rather an ixodicidal compounds. Ticks are now resistant to arsenic, organochlorine, organophosphorus and carbamate compounds. Even effecting dairy cows, there is a very real probability that these resistant strains will continue to thwart cattlemen as ticks adapt to each exposure to new chemicals.

So here... I think - poor cows :(

And finally, on the 7th, the FDA has announced that from now on it will require food processors to include on it's label the ingredient of either "carmine" or "cochineal" if it is actually in the product... Food industries use the female pulverized insect cochineal, a flat, wingless beetle-like creature native to Mexico and South America to dye certain foods. There is no nutritional value, however if you're allergic - it could be potentially fatal to ingest. Two foods mentioned that use "carmine" are the dairy products: Dannon and Yoplait. Here's a much better (bug free) Vegan alternative:

So why would anyone want to contribute to global warming? Why would anyone want to eat a "food" that is so destructive to the environment? Or eat an animal that has to suffer so to become "meat"? Don't eat animals - Don't eat insects -

Go Vegan! Canada Pine Beetles Texas lands $4.9M for ticks FDA: Food makers to acknowledge bug-based additives

40% of Packaged Meat is Tainted with Gut Bug C.difficile

Tainted meats point to superbug C. diff in food - Health care- msnbc.com "A potentially deadly intestinal germ increasingly found in hospitals is also showing up in a more unsavory setting: grocery store meats. More than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Arizona chain stores tested positive for Clostridium difficile, a gut bug known as C. diff., according to newly complete analysis of 2006 data collected by a University of Arizona scientist. Nearly 30 percent of the contaminated samples of ground beef, pork and turkey and ready-to-eat meats like summer sausage were identical or closely related to a super-toxic strain of C. diff blamed for growing rates of illness and death in the U.S. — raising the possibility that the bacterial infections may be transmitted through food. Contamination ranged from 41 percent of pork products and 44 percent of turkey products to 50 percent of ground beef samples and more than 62 percent of samples of braunschweiger, a type of liverwurst. Nearly three-quarters of the C. diff spores were toxinotype V, a type linked to illness in pigs and calves and, increasingly, in humans. C. diff is a tricky bug, hard to kill with anything but bleach in the hospital and able to survive most cooking techniques in the kitchen."

Nature's little reminder: Go Vegan!