Eye Opener: CSPI

1. I was absolutely shocked and awed after reading many of the statistics from the food supply website. I am going to jot down some of the assigning and mind blowing stats that the website provided when it comes to supplying our foods: 

• The energy required to manufacture 22 billion pounds of fertilizer could provide one year's worth of power for about 1 million Americans.
• Massive quantities of pesticides, fertilizers, and water are used to produce livestock feed. These chemicals often end up polluting the soil and water.
• Excessive use of animal manure as fertilizer can pollute waterways with nutrients, that cause algal blooms, and with bacteria that are harmful to human health.
• Irrigating feed-grain crops and raising livestock requires about 15 trillion gallons of water per year-over half of all irrigation water used in the United States.
• Pesticides that kill weeds may also kill beneficial insects and plants.
• Huge cattle feedlots foul the air with smelly and harmful gases and pollute water with run-off from manure.
• Hamburgers, cheese, whole milk, egg yolks, and other fatty meat and dairy products promote heart disease and some types of cancer. The saturated fat and cholesterol in those foods cause about 50,000 to 75,000 fatal heart attacks annually.
• Poor sanitary practices in modern slaughterhouses-combined with the presence of dangerous bacteria from animal remains-can transmit those bacteria to the meat that ends up in our supermarkets and restaurants. If not cooked well enough or handled properly, that meat can be the source of food-borne illness, some of which can be life threatening.
• The annual medical and related costs of food-borne illnesses and deaths from pathogens in animal products in the United States are over $7 billion.

     2. After reading through the website and its statistics I learned that the effects and damages that our food supply process causes are astronomical to not only our environment but to our overall well-being as humans. I hope that more people become aware of these environmental factors and health risks that our food supply process causes and that more people advocate for a healthier way of producing our food supply.
Source: (CSPI)