Are you ready for a picture of the preparation of cows and chickens before they make it to your dinner table?

The calves are born to mothers who have pesticide tags stuck in their ears for flies. They eat grass from land that has toxic fertilizers and is probably sprayed with herbicides to kill the weeds. (If the soil was healthy and fertile, you wouldn’t have weeds). The calves are supplemented with grains from fields without trace minerals and exposed to herbicides, pesticides and fungicides – unhealthy plants.

They are weaned from their mothers and put into a feed lot. There they have steroids and/or hormones injected into their ears, are fed a very concentrated grain diet with a little fiber, and ingest antibiotics which are added to the food to prevent disease because they stand around without exercise putting excrement on each other.

They have chemical wormers sprayed on from their heads to their tails to prevent parasites. Their feed also has to be sprayed with Arm and Hammer (TM) baking soda to prevent gas (from the grain diet) that can kill them. Because of the super-acid stomach, they produce E-coli in their guts that if leaked into the meat can kill us. I need to add here that because of the grain diet these animals have no essential beneficial fatty acids – the good stuff for our health.

Now, measure chickens against beef. Chickens have been bred to grow and mature quickly. With their diet (50% chemicals and grains grown with toxic chemicals) they mature in 6 weeks. They have to be harvested at 6 weeks because if they go to 8 weeks, they will die of heart attacks (the heart does not grow at the same speed as their bodies).

They also have part of their beaks removed so they don’t kill each other. They are confined in houses (usually 100 feet by 40 feet wide), and walk on manure and shavings from previous lots.

One of my favorite things about their diets is the arsenic (a heavy metal) put into their feed to make them eat more. They stop feeding the arsenic 5 days before slaughter, and want you to believe that there is no residual in their bodies – NOT TRUE!

Also, if you read on the label that store bought chicken is Free Range, don’t believe it. The latest deception is that they build a little sun room on the side of the industrial chicken house so the chickens can go into this room – hence Free Range. Real Free Range chickens are allowed to graze on grass, eating bugs, and allowing their manure to fertilize the land as nature would normally allow.

The next issue of Health Builder will discuss soy beans and some toxic chemicals that affect our health. Stay tuned!

Dr. Robert Bard OD is a licensed optometrist and has been for many years. For the past 20 years, he has been researching the effects of toxic chemicals on the environment, animals and people. He has become an avid reporter and speaker covering topics on toxic chemicals as they relate to food, disease, medicine, water and land. Along with his wife Judy, he raises miniature Hereford and Lowline cattle, as well as goats that are grass fed without drugs or chemicals. He also restores hay meadows and pastures with organic fertilizers. For more information, visit Dr. Bob’s site at http://www.drbobthehealthbuilder.com and sign up for his free weekly newsletter.

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