Did the BUG Hit ???

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Just emerged from my underground bunker - been isolated down there since 11:55pm EST Dec 31. Did we get thru top the 'Other Side' intact ? Have noticed that friends (and even strangers) are giving me funny looks - have thet been been infected by some maniacal, millennial malady ? I just can't shake the feeling that something abominable, yet unmentionable, has transpired in my absense; or is it just me ?

-- BetterSafeThanSorry (gloom@doom.com), January 09, 2000

Answers

It's the flu... Quick, rush to your decontamination chamber then stay in your bunker for a couple more months, heh.

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 09, 2000.

It's just you. Speaking for those who stayed "topside," Y2k/NWO/Chemtrails was (so far) a big fizzle. So far. Other than, perhaps, this new arm which seems to have started growing from my navel.

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), January 09, 2000.

Report to your District Commander IMMEDIATELY!

-- GruppenFurher (WeHaveWays@OfMakingYouTalk.com), January 09, 2000.

hey better safe.. better go back and grab all your gubment buddies.. you did see them in the bunker with you didn;t you?? or are you so blinded by their lies that EVERYTHING is a little fuzzy?? oh and tell them to bring out all of that extra money that they had printed up too.. .. better safe than sorry right??

-- taxman (I don;t think@about taxes.com), January 09, 2000.

Chicken

Think the subject of contaminated chicken has been done to death?

Think again.

Find out just how foul eating fowl can be.

Consider these realities:

The average North American eats more than 50 pounds of chicken per year roughly double the amount consumed just 20 years ago.

At least 1,000 US citizens are killed each year by contaminated chicken. As many as 80 million others are sickened.

Inspectors have about two seconds to visually examine the inside and outside of each chicken. At this rate, inspectors may examine 12,000 or more chickens in one day.

There are presently 1,370 unfilled federal meat inspector positions. In 1994 and 1995, more than 1.9 million inspection tasks went unperformed because of these vacancies.

A 3-ounce serving of chicken breast contains 75 mgs of cholesterol. A 3-ounce serving of ground beef contains 72 mgs. No plant foods contain cholesterol.

The owner of the nation's largest chicken producer Don Tyson earns about $5 million in salary, dividends and bonuses each year. Pay for workers on the poultry line are less than for any other manufacturing industry except apparel.

More than 90 percent of US chickens and eggs are produced on factory farms. Roughly 7.5 billion chickens were slaughtered in the US in 1995.

In a single year, US poultry operations use enough water to meet all the domestic needs of nearly 4.5 million North Americans.

Producing one egg takes about 63 gallons of water.

Full citations for this brochure are available upon request or see www.earthsave.org.

Eating chicken is proving to be an especially hazardous enterprise...

For starters, approximately 30 percent of chicken is tainted with Salmonella and 62 percent with its equally virulent cousin, Campylobacter.

Time magazine calls raw chicken "one of the most dangerous items in the American home," and each year in the US alone, contaminated chicken kills at least 1,000 people while sickening as many as 80 million others.

It's no surprise really that chicken is decidedly foul. Desperately crowded factory farms--where more than 90 percent of US chickens and eggs are raised--are fertile breeding grounds for disease. Additionally, slaughterhouses do an excellent job of spreading pathogens from one bird to the next.

Even if chicken was pathogen-free (clearly an unsafe assumption for any shopper to make), it would hardly qualify as wholesome. Not only is chicken nearly devoid of health-promoting compounds found only in plant foods--things like complex carbohydrates, antioxidants, phytochemicals and fiber--it also contains other suspect ingredients rarely recommended as part of a healthy diet.

Cholesterol. You'll find just as much artery-filling cholesterol in chicken as in beef and pork. Cholesterol is found exclusively in muscle tissue and can't be trimmed away.

Protein. People can meet or exceed their protein requirements simply by choosing a varied plant-centered diet and eating ample calories, says the American Dietetic Association. No animal foods are necessary. Many North Americans already eat twice the protein they need, and excessive protein has been linked to osteoporosis, kidney disease and other medical problems.

Antibiotic Residues. Roughly half of all antibiotics used in the US are fed to farm animals. If meat contains drug residues, it's highly unlikely to be detected, as these tests are rarely conducted.

Mystery Feed. Each year billions of pounds of slaughterhouse leftovers are made into animal reed, much of it for chickens. Chickens are also sometimes fed manure, which may contain pesticides, drug residues, pathogens, heavy metals, hormones and microbial toxins.

If you took a raw chicken and dropped it in a cow pile or in a pile of chicken manure, would you pick it up, wash it off and cook it for dinner? That's just about what's happening at these plants. -- Pat Godfrey, Inspector Tyson's chicken processing plant, Springdale, Arkansas

Despite millions of people falling ill each year, the US Department of Agriculture (the government agency responsible for meat safety) continues to stamp every thigh, breast and wing with its seal of approval, prompting many to ask, "Who's minding the henhouse?" Sadly, USDA has historically placed the interests of the influential poultry industry ahead of those of the poultry-consuming public. A new, more- scientific governrnent meat inspection system has been agreed upon in principle, but tangible improvements remain years away.

A poultry plant is not a good place to work. When you miss a day they punish you. If you're sick they punish you. The supervisors holler at you, but you can't say anything. They treat you like a child. -- Wonder Sims, 23, poultry worker.

The horrors found routinely inside chicken slaughterhouses are not limited to grisly scenes of disassembled chickens. They also include treacherous working conditions and dismally low wages. In 1994, a Wall Street Journal writer described the work he experienced first-hand in several slaughterhouses as, "faster than ever before, subject to Orwellian control and electronic surveillance, arid reduced to limited tasks that are numbingly repetitive, potentially crippling and stripped of any meaningful skills or chance to develop them... The work was so fast-paced that it took on a zany chaos, with arms and boxes and poultry flying in every direction."

Chicken production also exacts a steep environmental toll. It takes up to 700 gallons of water, six pounds of grain, and the equivalent of about one-fifth a gallon of gasoline to produce one pound of chicken. In addition, manure from the chicken industry is directly responsible for wide-spread pollution of waterways and groundwater.

Unless we dramatically curb our appetite for chicken, the future seems grim. We can expect more people hospitalized and killed by contaminated chicken, and more families mourning the loss of loved ones. We can look forward to more rivers ;and drinking water fouled with manure, more workers facing perilous tasks and lousy pay, and much more animal suffering. Despite the present horrors and bleak forecast, however,



-- ... (...@...com), January 09, 2000.



"Chicken production also exacts a steep environmental toll. It takes up to 700 gallons of water, six pounds of grain, and the equivalent of about one-fifth a gallon of gasoline to produce one pound of chicken. In addition, manure from the chicken industry is directly responsible for wide-spread pollution of waterways and groundwater. "

Wow, this would be news to my folks who have 16 free range chickens on their place. Wonder what the one fifth gallon of gas is used for.

Best to take your Peta-logic somewhere where it might be appreciated.

-- (formerly@nowhere.zzz), January 09, 2000.


I have 14 free-range chickens, I get pretty green eggs and I don't feed much. I am curious as to what the gas is for?

-- terry (slickchick@home.net), January 09, 2000.

YOU GUYS ARE A BUNCH OF DGI's!!! Gas is used to move product from Chicken Factory to Market. You guys just dont get it when it comes to being healthy and keep from having a monthly doctor bill. Just keep on paying those monthly bills until you kick the bucket. That is when the chickens finally come home to roost!

-- ... (...@...com), January 09, 2000.

The gasoline is to transport the feed to the chickens, the chickens to the processing plant, the processed chickens to the store, the manure to the field/creek/wherever, etc., etc.

-- Y2kObserver (Y2kObserver@nowhere.com), January 09, 2000.

I have 43 chickens, part-time free range--open pen mid-day and close them in again at nightfall. Even in mid-winter I get a dozen eggs a day from the 25 hens. They get 5 gallons of water every other day--sometimes every 3 days. I refill their waterer whenever it looks like it's about to go dry. I give them scratch in one hopper and high-protein laying mash with oyster shell added in the other, refilling when they empty, again usually every other day. They get their grit from foraging. Absolutely the best eggs I've ever eaten. Yes, some aspects of chicken processing are unsanitary, but the standards of cleaning the carcasses have been raised to the point where much of the operation is now automated. As for the water usage, most of the water per chicken comes from keeping their environments clean and washing the eggs and/or the meat. As my chickens show, the actual amount of water drunk per chicken is probably a cup per mature chicken per day--maybe a bit more in the summer.

If you wish to debate sanitary vs unsanitary--vegetable processing, if anything, is worse and less supervised than any meat operation. I grew up in California and my grandmother was involved extensively with the agricultural industry in the San Joquin valley. Farm workers would urinate on crops or worse, then load the freshly 'watered' lettuce in with the rest. Often dirt was not thoroughly washed out, either, carrying worms, insects, and other fauna inside the produce.

The final point is at the grocery store (or is it grosser-y store?) where anyone can paw over fruit and vegetables without limit, while at least meat is sealed behind a glass counter or under polypropylene wrap. Perhaps the last flu or cold came not from that 'other kid in school or church,' but from your salad.

It's a risky world, and I support vegetarians' choices to not eat meat, however raising vegetables to a pedestal of cleanliness above that of meat is ludicrous. Yes, vegetables don't have cholesterol, but it's our own livers that make the vast majority of what cholesterol we use. In fact, if vegetarians use margarine, they get a larger dose of cholesterol from the trans-fatty acids (which can only be metabolized as parts of cholesterol molecules assembled around them by our livers) that make them semi-solid like butter, than they would from a similar amount of butter. As for vegetable pickers, their salaries make meat processors look rich in comparison--migrant farm workers, illegal aliens--paid $2/hr and glad for every cent.

I abhor feed-lots and other confined animal feeding operations, as indeed they do breed disease and the animals suffer, but it's mostly at the swine and beef level--here's where the excess antibiotics are administered because of lack of cleanliness. Chicken operations, however, must be kept clean or the lack of growth and/or egg production will bring down the operation--even if antibiotics are administered in the feed. Droppings fall through the bottoms of their cages and are washed away daily if not many times a day. Chicken droppings are also some of the best fertilizer--about twice as efficient pound for pound than manure. Indeed salmonella, E. Coli, and camphylobactr are sometimes a problem, but cooking the chicken until the pink is gone will eradicate these pathogens. I probably won't try to run a broiler factory or an eggery--as I like to see my chickens enjoying weeds and bugs, and know they are happier for it. However, chicken production is far safer and more sanitary than ever, and nobody should be afraid to have eggs or roast chicken. I'm not--I often eat chicken from the store despite havin

-- One of the Pair (PairoDocs@eworld.com), January 09, 2000.



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