Posted on 04/23/2024 6:58:41 AM PDT by Twotone
If it’s true that you are what you eat, then most beef-eating Americans consist of a smattering of poultry feathers, urine, feces, wood chips and chicken saliva, among other food items.
As epidemiologists scramble to figure out how dairy cows throughout the Midwest became infected with a strain of highly pathogenic avian flu — a disease that has decimated hundreds of millions of wild and farmed birds, as well as tens of thousands of mammals across the planet — they’re looking at a standard “recycling” practice employed by thousands of farmers across the country: The feeding of animal waste and parts to livestock raised for human consumption.
“It seems ghoulish, but it is a perfectly legal and common practice for chicken litter — the material that accumulates on the floor of chicken growing facilities — to be fed to cattle,” said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist with Consumers Union.
It is still unclear how the cows were infected — whether by contact with birds, or via feed made from litter waste — but litter has been associated with previous outbreaks of disease, including botulism.
Poultry litter causing the bovine cases of avian flu is considered “very unlikely, though not impossible” wrote Veronika Pfaeffle, in a joint statement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.
Poultry litter consists of manure, feathers, spilled feed and bedding material that accumulate on the floors of the buildings that house chickens and turkeys. It can contain disease-causing bacteria, viruses (including H5N1), antibiotics, toxic heavy metals, pesticides and even foreign objects such as dead rodents, birds, rocks, nails and glass.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Fertilizer
All propaganda designed to remove god given food and instead have genetically altered and modified death snacks
I believe the author is confused.
Here in NW Arkansas chicken litter is spread in hay fields and pasture as fertilizer. I do not believe it is used in animal feeds.
Byproducts such as feathers from chicken processing is used to make kind of a protein powder which can be used in feed.
Just more evidence that liberals have not idea how food is made.
Exile them all, every one, to work on a farm for a month. Those that survive will understand, at long last, SOMETHING about life.
Those that don’t survive will have made a contribution in an entirely different manner.
Sixty years ago, I knew a man who made his living cleaning out chicken houses, Not small ones but those holding 15 to 40 thousand. He would then spread it on the fields.
BUT often a feed lot owner would have him bring the load and run it through their conveyor belt where it would be mixed with grain and fed to cattle.
In the olden days people would have a feed lot for cattle, then run hogs behind the cattle to eat the poop. Then the hogs would eat their own poop.
I remember some who used chicken litter mixed with grain to feed cattle sixty years ago in NW Arkansas. Most was used as fertilizer but not all.
Now the government declares where you can spread or not spread chicken litter. A friend of mine can spread litter on his south half of a field but not the north half because each runs into a different watershed.
And get a load of this bit, bold is mine...
....The problem was discovered by the establishment while conducting an inventory of product that was on hold because it was found positive for E. coli O157:H7. The company notified FSIS that they inadvertently used a portion of the contaminated beef to produce ground beef products that they subsequently shipped into commerce...
Holy bleeping bleep.
My cows eat only grass. No weird stuff. I like it that way. They probably don’t care.
It’s amazing these dipwads can breathe without help.
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