Feeling the pressure of the growing number of small-scale farms and activists concerned with food safety and the effects Big-Ag farming has on the environment, some of the largest U.S. farming groups have joined forces in the formation of new organization called the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance.

I wish I could tell you that the ongoing egg recall is under control, with all affected egg brands clearly delineated and successfully pulled from market shelves.

Unfortunately, Iowa-based Wright County Egg sold its products to a slew of major grocery chains, retailers and distributors, and additional recalls are likely to be announced. To wit: Hillandale Farms of Iowa yesterday issued a new recall, as did Los Angeles-based Country Eggs, Inc. on Thursday.

Investigative journalist David Kirby, author of Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment, noted in Thursday’s Huffington Post that cheap eggs are destined to make us sick. As he writes:

“Salmonella is largely a problem for factory-farmed eggs. Laying hens raised in organic or sustainable conditions are allowed to peck around outdoors for grubs and high-quality feed provided by farmers who are as concerned about animal health and the safety of the food they sell as they are about keeping their costs—and prices—to a minimum. These eggs are less likely to carry disease, and to me at least, they taste a whole lot better.”

Be sure to check out Kirby’s July 15 post, American Factory Farming: You Owe It to the Animals to Watch This (Video). It makes a trip to McDonald’s all the more maddening.

Photo: George Grinsted

This Academy Award nominated film is a powerful eye opening documentary about the truth behind America's food supply. It questions whether America's industrial food system produces healthy, nutritious, life-sustaining stuff we call food. If you take one look at America's current health care crisis you might ask the same questions.

Food Inc., features several poignant interviews that caution us about  the nutritional value of America's food supply and question if our food products, including processed foods, fresh meat and produce, are in fact a threat to public health and safety. Interviews include Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) (two food movement heroes), sustainable, organic farmer Joel Salatin of Virginia's Polyface Farms and mother, Barbara Kowalcyk. Kowalcyk's 2 1/2 year old son died 12 days after eating a hamburger contaminated with E. coli.

The documentary also raises serious questions about ethical business practices of food giants Monsanto, Tyson, Perdue and Smithfield companies. When these companies were asked to tell their side of the story to filmmakers, they declined to comment.

This past week California public health officials issued another recall on ground beef products sold at WinCo food stores in six western states, stating it could be contaminated with E. coli.

Despite some of the heavy issues Food Inc tackles, the film is driven by visionaries of alternative businesses and activists that are leading the food movement to delicious, healthy, safe food for America.

Read More On America's Food Safety Issues:

Monsanto’s Seedy Business

Tyson Foods Lied To Consumers About Drugs Used To Raise Their Chickens

FDA Fills New Position with Monsanto Hormone Guy

Monsanto is Hogging Hawaii’s Water

Big Agribusiness Dictating U.S. Food Safety

A Chemical Reaction to the White House Garden

E. coli Outbreak and Our Contaminated Food Supply

Most Chicken Producers’ Safeguards “Inadequate”

Russia and China Say Thanks, But No Thanks, to U.S. Poultry

Antibiotics: Tyson Chicken Wants to Lie to Consumers

USDA Allows Contaminated Chicken in Stores

The incidences of drug resistance infections have literally sky rocketed in the past twenty years. Last year alone 65,000-70,000 Americans died as a result, more than prostate and breast cancer combined. ²Many are now asking questions about the safety of Big Ag and factory farms using common antibiotics to promote animal growth and fight off infections before they occur.

According to Katie Couric's report, there is evidence that MRSA has now been found in the nation's meat supply. Because only a small fraction of meat has been tested, it is not clear just how widespread it may be.

More and more reports are turning up like these. Which leads us to ask the same question Couric did to Liz Wagstrom, a veterinarian for the National Pork Bord, "Some people say giving animals antibiotics to prevent illness or promote growth is like putting antibiotics in a child's cereal," Couric said. "You know, save them so they'll work when they are needed."

Wagstrom's response, "I'd say we do strategically place them......It's not an all day, every pig gets antibiotics every day of his life."

"So you don't think they're being overused by farmers anywhere in this country," Couric asked.
Wagstrom replied, "the vast majority of producers use them appropriately."

Many however are questioning  whether this is true. ABC News did a report In December, '09 entitled Pressure Rises To Stop Antibiotics in Agriculture. In 2009 three government agencies in charge of protecting human health, the Center for Disease Control, Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, affirmed that drug-resistant diseases ensuing from overuse of antibiotics in animals is a "serious emerging concern." Last summer, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, FDA deputy commissioner, told Congress that farmers need to stop feeding antibiotics to healthy farm animals.

¹ http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/understanding-mrsa-methicillin-resistant-staphylococcus-aureus
² http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=9435333

Tyson Foods has been marketing their chickens as being raised without antibiotics. However Tyson uses a  poultry feed additive known as ionophores, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture classifies as an antibiotic. Ionophores are given to poultry to control the parasitic disease coccidiosis. It is also used as a growth promoter for cattle.

Because ionophores  have been shown not to be harmful to humans (and are supposedly not a threat to antibiotic resistance) , Tyson wanted to advertise its chicken as being "without harmful antibiotics." In December 2007, the USDA approved the phrase for marketing purposes, but competitors Perdue Farms and Sanderson Farms filed lawsuits one month later. Consumers followed with a class-action suit.

A federal judge has signed off on a preliminary agreement that could net consumers $5 million in refunds and coupons from the nation's largest poultry producer. Individuals who bought Tyson chicken products labeled as having been raised without antibiotics from mid-June 2007 through April 2009 would be entitled to refunds. This settlement also includes Tyson's fresh, frozen or deli chicken along with Cornish hens or tenders during the same time period.

Concerns about antibiotic resistance has European regulators concerned enough that they have banned several in-feed antibiotics for their animals. Legislators in the United States are considering a similar action with The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would prohibit the use of many non-therapeutic antibiotics in animal feed.¹

Feeding animals a daily dose of antibiotics also has an environmental impact.  Colorado State University researchers showed that ionophore drugs are getting into public waterways.² In the study, the ionophore monensin was found at sample sites near agricultural regions. Additionally, ionophore drugs were found in surrounding streams with higher concentrations in the sediment vs. the overlaying water. Researchers concluded this study raises questions about whether antibiotics can accumulate in sediment and impact stream health.

I can't help but ask, do we really need to feed our animals a constant, steady supply of antibiotics in their food and water when they are not sick? We will have a severe problem on our hands if we continue this practice.

In case you missed it, ABC News ran a story about one farmer who fought for his life after becoming infected with an antibiotic resistant form of strep after being gored in the knee by a bore.  After two months of unsuccessful antibiotic treatments, Kremer's doctors were baffled.  The answer was found in the bore.  A drug resistant strain of strep ran through the boars veins after being fed a steady, daily supply of penicillin.

Antibiotics save lives when used properly. Do we really want to continue to risk human lives by feeding our livestock a steady supply of drugs when they aren't needed? The conditions of animals that are raised in Big Ag  (Big Agriculture) are atrocious and disgusting.  Something has got to change.

You can make a difference buy buying more certified organic foods and continue to raise the demand for truly healthy foods. The American dollar is the most important voting tool we as consumers have.

¹ http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/solutions/wise_antibiotics/pamta.html
² http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041025120141.htm

Here’s a special message for the United Egg Producers: Get over yourselves.

The group is threatening consumers with a 25% hike in egg prices if cages are banned, while blaming animal-rights activists for snatching school breakfasts from the mouths of needy children.

The egg producers’ ultimate threat: importing eggs from overseas.

“I don't think American consumers really want to play Russian Roulette with every carton of eggs they buy, which is essentially what would happen if we allow special interest groups to force a ban on the most modern, sanitary egg housing systems in the world,” said UEP President Gene Gregory in a hyperbolic press release. “Those systems are used to produce 95% of the eggs that American consumers buy every day."

And therein lies the problem. California has already banned battery cages—a move that prompted Gregory to tell a U.K. audience that voters were “uninformed.”

I, for one, am willing to pay more for eggs that don’t require hens to be abused. As a child, I would accompany my mom to the local dairy farm in suburban New York, where we would buy our milk and eggs. Watching the chickens and cows roam free was the highlight of the trip. Somehow, the farm managed to get it right.

Am I willing to boycott egg producers who cage their hens? In a New York minute.

Want to get involved in the cause? Farm Sanctuary is pressing for national legislation to prevent animal cruelty.

Compassion Over Killing (COK), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit animal advocacy group, has exposed cruelty at an egg factory farm owned by Michael Foods, one of the nation’s largest egg producers and a major supplier to Dunkin’ Donuts. (Click here to view the video.)

While employed at the facility in August, an investigator with a hidden camera shot footage of farm conditions for more than 1 million birds in battery cages, including:

• Hens immobilized in the wires of their cages, unable to access food or water
• Decomposing and “mummified” corpses left in cages alongside live birds
• Overcrowding
• Severe feather loss
• Untreated injuries
• An employee decapitating a hen

“No responsible company should support this animal cruelty,” says Erica Meier, COK’s executive director. “Dunkin’ Donuts can—and should—make the right decision by removing eggs from its doughnuts and offering more humane vegan menu items.”

Earlier this year, COK asked the donut chain about how the hens in its supply chain were treated and whether the company could offer egg-free donuts.

Dunkin’ took no action, so COK launched DunkinCruelty.com. You can protest the ongoing hen mistreatment by completing an email form.

Photo courtesy of DunkinCruelty.com

Another reason I love grass-fed beef is that it’s simply cleaner.

Feedlot cattle stand all day long in dirt and manure. You can imagine how much harder it is to remove all the fecal contamination given that scenario.

Pasture-raised animals are much easier to clean "because they come from small herds raised in relatively clean pastures," according to Meat Marketing and Technology’s associate editor. Most U.S. cattle, he said, "are raised in far larger numbers in congested and typically less sanitary feed lots."¹

The E. coli Question

E. coli contamination occurs when manure from an animal comes in contact with meat in the slaughterhouse. The less manure on an animal when it enters the slaughter house, the less likely the meat will become contaminated.

Some studies show that grass-feeding (vs. grain feeding) may reduce the number and acidity of E. coli in the digestive tract of cattle.

Another study shows that E. coli from grass-fed cattle is more likely to be killed by the natural acidity of our digestive tract and therefore might be less likely to survive and make us ill. The reason for the greater persistence of E. coli from grain-fed cattle, the researchers speculated, is that feeding grain to cattle makes their digestive tracts abnormally acidic. Over time, the E. coli in their systems become acclimated to this acid environment. When we ingest them, a high percentage will survive the acid shock of our digestive juices. By contrast, few E. coli from grass-fed cattle will survive because they have not become acid-resistant.²

Science and the Senate: HR 2749

Time after time, scientific evidence proves that it’s industrialized animals that spread E.Coli 0157:H7 and Salmonella. Let’s hope that the senate, who will soon be voting on HR 2749 – the so-called Food Safety Enhancement Act – take these types of facts into consideration.

¹"The Future of Food Safety," by Joshua Lipsky. Meat Marketing and Technology, April 2001

² Russell and Diez-Gonzalez (Microbes Infect 2, No. 1 (2000): 45-53.)

Farm Aid is sponsoring a petition that calls on the U.S. government to suspend taxpayer funding of factory farms.

As the petition states:

Factory farms pose a real danger to our communities, our natural resources and the livelihood of hardworking family farmers. A current USDA program is funneling taxpayer money to fund new and bigger factory farm operations that lead to the gross overproduction of hogs and poultry. So much livestock is being churned out that it has caused a long-term depression of producer prices, forcing family farmers out of business.

The longer the USDA continues this misguided policy, the greater the threat to small farmers who are already being squeezed in this economy.

By signing the petition, you’ll add your name to a letter that will be sent to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. It urges the USDA “to suspend all direct or guaranteed farm ownership or operating loans for the construction or expansion of specialized hog or poultry production facilities.”

In other Farm Aid news, there’s still time to order tickets to the Oct. 4 concert in St. Louis, where performers like Jason Mraz, Dave Matthews, Neil Young and Willie Nelson will rock the house. And if you’re a photography buff, consider entering the Farm Fresh Pics photo contest; the winner will receive an expenses-paid trip and two front-row concert tickets.