4 Things Being Fed to Pigs to Keep to Costs Down and Profits High

Michael Parkes, Staff Writer
Waking Times

We’ve all heard horror stories associated with the pig, porcine, pork and swine industry. The global collusion of governments, public health systems and food authorities is clear, if we pay attention to the patterns in government announcements, research, media and reports.

The basics of the collusion start with research the WHO completed in 2015 revealing that simply eating 50 grams of red or processed meats daily increases the chances of cancer by almost 20%. Eggs, pork, beef, fish, legumes, nuts and seeds are all placed in our public health food pyramids under the same category. As if plant and meat based proteins are the same.

  • So how does the pig industry make the perfect lean pork chop you see in the food pyramid? Creating this shining object to sell is critical for commodity driven swine markets. It needs to meet economic requirements in agriculture and supporting systems, while being marketable to the masses. It’s not rocket science or nutritional medicine, its capitalism.

    There are government approved recipes for pig farmers to make the perfect pork chop. Supplied by feed producing corporations, percentages are offered for the right combination of amino acids and vitamins to make the perfect piece of bacon. These recipes are sales and marketing collateral for other sectors in agriculture, such as corn or soy. That said, some farmers, feed producers and national pig associations over the years have been known use the term ‘feed’ loosely.

    Four Things Being ‘Fed’ to Pigs

    During the 2008 Irish pork crisis feed supplies were contaminated with dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls, molecules often found in plastics. It was assumed the use of industrial oil in the pig feed supplied to beef, pig and dairy farms across Ireland led to 3 months of pork supplies being shipped around the UK and Europe before a recall was issued. 

    The UK’s Food Standards Agency yesterday warned families not to eat Irish pork and ordered shops to remove all products from shelves immediately. But the FSA was unable to give a list of which brands use Irish pork and could not say when a list would be made public. [Source]

    Pigs shouldn’t eat meat or other pigs. Put simply, the reason mad cow disease was a problem for the beef industry was because the economic drivers for cheaper meat production led to cows eating cow by-products. As a result swill, food scraps or meat production by-products became illegal in Australia, UK and the EU. Let’s hope research doesn’t bring it back by suggesting it could save food waste sustainably. 

    Swill is the traditional name for food scraps or food waste that contains or has come into contact with meat or meat products. Put simply, pigs must not be fed or be allowed to eat meat or meat products. [Source]

    To avoid sick pigs, antibiotics are a regular part of the standard pork sausage recipe, this is leading to antibiotic resistance. A known problem when dealing with mass feeding and housing of swine MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) is a bacteria which kills humans in hospitals because of the overuse of antibiotics. LA-MRSA is the equivalent in pigs and it is possible for ‘Swine to Human’ transfer of disease. Remember the injection of fear about the Swine Flu.

    The Danish pig industry accounts for 57% of the total live pig exports to other EU countries. It is the main source for the spread of LA-MRSA across the European Union. [Source]

    Mass agriculture feeds mass agriculture. These leads to cheap GMO and chemical latent feed approved and sold for the pig recipes across the world. If this is causing chronic inflammation in pigs, we can be confident it is leading to cancer in humans.

    ‘Pigs fed a diet of only genetically modified grain showed markedly higher stomach inflammation than pigs who dined on conventional feed.’ & ‘the DNA changes made to the transgenic plants engineer novel proteins that can be causing the digestive problems in animals and possibly in humans.’ [Source]

    So whether your Sunday pork roast has been feed molecules of plastics, by-products of dead pigs, regular antibiotics or chemical coated GMO feed, you need to know you government approves this industry. The food pyramid has the shining perfect pork chops pictured somewhere in their nutritional guidelines for the population, but neglect to mention any consideration for what the pigs have been fed. 

    By choosing to eat meat or not, by choosing where to buy our pork and from who; by ignoring what is happening in our rural communities or not, we can collectively influence the collusion of government with the pig industry. 

    About the Author

    Michael Parkes is a staff writer for Waking Times, the author of the blog, Michael works at the intersection of environment, sustainability, food production, nutritional impact and human behaviour. He is the Director of Sustainable Behaviours for The Global Leadership Practice, a trained Organisational Analysis Consultant, the Grubb Institute of Behavioural Studies, UK; Masters of Environment, Bachelor of Medical Sciences, Post Graduate Diploma of Applied Science; Australia. Practitioner Ashtanga yoga; Digital Creative and Global Citizen.

    References:

    http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf
    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/poison-pork-panic-irish-pigs-364423
    http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/feeding-food-waste-to-pigs-could-save-vast-swathes-of-threatened-forest-and-savannahhttp://australianpork.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FACT-SHEET-Swill-feeding-its-illegal_2013.pdf
    http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/opinion/2016-10-05/something-is-rotten-in-denmarks-pig-industry
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-gmo-pigs-study-idUSBRE95A14K20130611

    This article (4 Things Being Fed to Pigs to Keep to Costs Down and Profits High) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michael Parkes and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution and author bio. 

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