- Why you no listen to me? You're killing yourself and your family slowly. 1

Every time I walk into some local restaurants in Hong Kong such as Cafe de CXXal, FaXXXood, MXXXms, etc, they would have these big posters on the wall promoting their hotpots during winter time. Hotpot is good and I love them. However, on those posters, there are always these few words in Cantonese - 美國穀飼牛 (US Grain Fed Beef). These restaurants are smart enough to make these words powerful marketing tool to attract uneducated customers and they obviously succeeded making millions of dollars.

Check out the words on the right hand side highlighted in  Red - US Grain Fed  Beef

People without much knowledge about the food supply nowadays would think this is the shit because these beef products are affordable and they actually taste pretty decent. However, in fucking reality, this shit literally is the real shit. Let me tell you some facts about the food supply nowadays. The food industry doesn't want you to know the truth because if you knew, you wouldn't eat. Most food you are eating doesn't come out from a farm but a factory full of chemicals and pollution. These food factories are owned by some (actually a few) multinational companies who don't care about your health or our environment, well they actually don't give a fuck about anything but money or profit.

When you go into the supermarket and you see all the varieties of food products that you can buy, this is only an illusion. I could confidently say that 90% of our food come from the same few places and only a few crops are involved (e.g. corn, soy beans). If you don't believe it, just go into a supermarket and pick up some food and check the ingredients labels. High Fructose Corn Syrup, Ascorbic Acid, Fructose, Vanilla Extract, Baking Powder, Sucrose, Calcium Stearate, Maltodextrin, Gluten, Citrus Cloud Emulsion, etc are all made from CORN. Corn is also the main components of the feeding ingredients to animals because they are so cheap. This is why we always see the holy grain fed beef nowadays. Sadly, most people think grain fed beef is like the God of beef and have to make a big deal of it by highlighting the words on a fucking poster. The funny part is customers would without thinking, go into these restaurants and have this hotpot because US grain fed beef is highlighted and they think it must be fucking good. So when next time these restaurants promote half lb fucking shit hotpot and they highlight the word "shit" in red, people would also think that shit is good too. Wake up!

"THE FUCKING THING I FUCKING LIKE 

MOST IN THE FUCKING ENGLISH 

LANGUAGE IS THAT YOU CAN FUCKING

PUT THE FUCKING WORD “FUCKING” 

EVERY FUCKING PLACE YOU FUCKING

WANT AND THE FUCKING SENTENCE 

WILL STILL MAKE EVERY FUCKING SENSE."

The stomachs of cows are not designed to digest corn (grain). They are designed to digest GRASS. But why? Why do the "farmers" feed grain to the cows but not grass? That is what they call Economy. Corn is extremely cheap and they can make the cows grow in a faster rate but this is not the end of the story. When you feed corn to cows, E.coli (大腸桿菌) which is a very common bug evolves and becomes a more powerful and harmful deadly bug which we call it E.Coli O157:N7. This new type of E.Coli didn't only kill numerous of people but also spread to other kinds of food. And don't forget, these cows are routinely given antibiotics and hormones such as Bovine Growth Hormone rBGH for more milk production, ever heard of Mad Cow Disease? The animals in the factories are merely a product, all these drugs and "supplements" are employed just to make the operation more profitable. By the way I still haven't mentioned the corn the cows eating are not natural. They are all genetically modified food. This is what multinational companies call innovation while actually killing literally every bit of our environment. And yes, we eat genetically modified (GM) food everyday. These companies don't give a damn on our health and by consuming their products, we are actually supporting them indirectly while putting our own health in danger. It doesn't make much sense.

Taking a nap, maybe?

Cow treated with rBGH lead to deformation. Just sad.

Antibiotics on Animals"To combat mastitis and other diseases, cows and other farmed animals are given regular doses of antibiotics as a preventive measure. If a single animal in a herd or a flock is diagnosed with an illness, the entire herd receives the medication, usually mixed in with the animals’ feed or water, because it would be too expensive to diagnose and treat only certain individuals.Another concern is “subtherapeutic” doses of antibiotics that are given to the animals to cause weight gain. Although it is not clear why small doses of antibiotics cause animals to gain weight and the practice has been banned in the European Union and Canada, it is legal in the United States.All of this means that healthy cows are being given antibiotics when they don’t need them, which leads to another health risk.Excessive antibiotics are a concern because they cause the spread of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Because antibiotics will kill off most of the bacteria, the drugs leave behind resistant individuals, which then reproduce more rapidly without competition from other bacteria. These bacteria then spread throughout the farm and/or spread to people who come into contact with the animals or the animal products. This is not an idle fear. Antibiotic-resistant strains of salmonella have already been found in animal products in the human food supply." (Why are factory farmed animals given antibiotics and hormones such as rBGH?, Doris Lin, Animal Rights Guide) AWESOME!

Not sure if you have heard of Monsanto, since Natural Society has awarded Monsanto the Worst Company of 2011 award for its ongoing work to threaten human health and the environment, I will tell you briefly more how fucked up the world has become. Monsanto currently responsible for 90% of all GM seed on the planet, the company is also the leader in developing GM seeds and the resulting crops worldwide. Yes, most of our original food source comes from this biotechnology giant. Monsanto is not only the leader of GM seed but also the leader of herbicide glyphosate. The main herbicide brand name is Roundup. "Monsanto also produces Asgrow, DEKALB, Deltapine, and Seminis seeds. Other products have included Agent Orange, the now ubiquitous PCB, DDT, Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) and Aspartame." (Monsanto, sourcewatch.org). I am really glad to hear that most of our food sources are linked with all these poisons, chemicals and shit and we have not much choice but to eat them. Just simply brilliant. 

When you enter Monsanto's official website, you can see all these fancy seeds names, SMARTSTAX' Corn, VT Double Pro' Corn, and also VT Triple Pro Corn, Roundup Ready 2 Yield' Soybeans, Bollgard II with Roundup Ready Flex Cotton and more. When I was a kid, soybean seed were called er.... soybean seed. The question is why do we have all these GM seeds around the Globe now. Thanks to Monsanto and its herbicide, Roundup. Roundup is used to kill unwanted plants and known as weedkiller, so in order for the crops to resist the application of this poison, the company needed to a solution - GM seeds. Anything unnatural is unhealthy because consumers like us would never know the truth behind it, we would never know what chemicals are involved or the manufacture process. These GM seeds obviously are damaging our health and environment in a very serious way but Monsanto is powerful enough to cover every fucking ugly fact.  I mean quite a lot of the people in the FDA right now have worked for Monsanto before. 

 - Nice Revolving Door -

What are "some" of the risks of GM food? (Based on real facts and research)

• Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome (EMS) - an incurable flu-like neurological condition killed 37 people and over 1500 where reported serious illness in late 1980's. It is believed to have been caused by a GM version of a supplement L-tryptophan. 
• Soy allergies skyrocketed by 50%, soon after GM soy was introduced.
• Even though scientists warned that injection of rBGH into dairy cows could result an increase of the hormones IGF-1 (we are talking about an increase of up to 1000% here and IGF-1 is a very potent chemical hormone that has been linked to 2.5 to 4 times higher risk of human colorectal and breast cancer),  FDA still approved Monsanto's genetically modified rBGH. No surprise here.
• Cows injected with hormones are prone to infections. "Farmers" will often need to use more antibiotics which may eventually end up in our dairy products. Milk isn't as healthy as you think. They are actually disgusting.
• Superweeds - weeds that are Roundup/herbicide resistance largely because of repeated exposure.
• Increased food allergies -  The loss of biodiversity in our food supply has grown in parallel with the increase in food allergies. This can be explained as follows. The human body is not a machine-like "something" that can be fed assembly line, carbon copy foods. We eat for nourishment and vitality. What is alive interacts or changes with its environment. Unnatural sameness - required for patenting of genetic foods - are "dead" qualities. (50 Harmful Effects of GM Foods, Nathan Batalion, ND).
• Birth Defects and Shorter Life Spans - "...The experience of actual GM-fed experimental animals is scary. When GM soy was fed to female rats, most of their babies died within three weeks—compared to a 10% death rate among the control group fed natural soy. The GM-fed babies were also smaller, and later had problems getting pregnant.When male rats were fed GM soy, their testicles actually changed color—from the normal pink to dark blue. Mice fed GM soy had altered young sperm. Even the embryos of GM fed parent mice had significant changes in their DNA. Mice fed GM corn in an Austrian government study had fewer babies, which were also smaller than normal.
  Reproductive problems also plague livestock. Investigations in the state of Haryana, India revealed that most buffalo that ate GM cottonseed had complications such as premature deliveries, abortions, infertility, and prolapsed uteruses. Many calves died. In the US, about two dozen farmers reported thousands of pigs became sterile after consuming certain GM corn varieties. Some had false pregnancies; others gave birth to bags of water. Cows and bulls also became infertile when fed the same corn. In the US population, the incidence of low birth weight babies, infertility, and infant mortality are all escalating..."(Genetically Modified Foods Pose Huge Health Risk, Institute for Responsible Technology, May 22nd, 2009)
• Disappearing of bees? Some GM crops produce the natural insecticide Bacillus Thuringiensis (BT) toxin, which has been hypothesised to affect bees.
• Food nutrition - Study has shown that GM foods have lower levels of important nutrients and also an increase of estrogen levels (high amounts of estrogen could result in breast cancer). 
• These biotechnology companies claim that there aim is to HELP the environment, but in the reality they are destroying the whole world in a rate that you can't imagine. Ever heard of terminator trees? These are herbicide-resistance trees that can spread toxic chemicals to kill insects, destroying the wholesale ecology of forest life. 
• Less natural, healthy soil to grow natural food worldwide. Organic farming losing its purity.
• Decline and destruction of self-sufficient family farms.
• Losing of natural pesticides.

These are only a few risks GM food and companies like Monsanto have brought to our world and yes, you are eating them everyday and you really should stop. Just remember you are the one who is paying these companies to consume their mutated food and when one day you get really sick because of their food products, not a single fuck will be given by them I promise.  In the next installment of this series, I will talk about the nutritional side on both grain fed and grass fed beef and probably more facts about the world food supply and hopefully I could cover the solution too. 

you aren't eating that, are you?

Sources:

Le monde selon Monsanto, Marie-Monique Robin, 2008

Food, Inc.,  Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and Richard Lobb, 2008

Monsanto Wins Worst Worst Company of 2011, Care2.com, Michelle Schoffro Cook, Feb 2012

Monsanto, www.monsanto.com

Monsanto, Wikipedia

Monsanto, Sourcewatch.org

The Health Risks of GM Foods: Summary and Debate, Seeds of Deception

Roundup(herbicide), Wikipedia

50 Harmful Effects of Genetically Modified Foods, Nathan Batalion, ND

Latest GMO Research: Decreased Fertility, Immunological Alterations and Allergies, Dr Gregory Damato PhD. W.A., Nov 2008

Potential health hazards of Genetically Engineered Foods, Stephen Lendman, Feb 2008