There is an increadible book that I first read a couple of years ago. The book is NOT ON THE LABEL by FELICITY LAWRENCE. Reading this book WILL make you think twice about what you buy to consume & may put you off eating some things completely, for life.

I re-read the chapter on chicken this week & want to share some of the information given in this book. Felicity exposes some of the grossly unethical conduct of the meat industry, by doing undercover investigations & even taking low paid shifts in meat production factories to gain the inside knowledge of what actually happens to the meat that we eat. So often blissfully unaware , we often are, of what has happened to our meat before it goes anywhere near a packing factory or supermarket shelf. Felicity is /was a reporter for The Guardian Newspaper & writes very factually about her investigations.

In the early stages of poultry processing, the birds are put into a scold bath. 180 dead birds a minute are dipped into this to make the plucking process easier. The water in the scald bath is changed, just once a day so try to imagine if you wish, the amount of excrement & feathers that float around in the bath for hours. The temperature of the bath is 52 degrees, which is an ideal temperature for salmonella & campylobacter contamination.

During the next stage our  chickens are ridded of what feathers are left by a rubber fingered plucking machiene. Lots of faeces gets squashed out of the carcasses during this process. If just one of these birds is colonised with campylobacter the rest will be contaminated also. Organic & free range birds go through the same process, same machienes, same day, no less at risk of contamination than mass the produced, cheap, factory chicks.

Felicity went undercover, on shift, at a family run, Devon factory whilst doing a report for The Guardian. This factory supplied to Sainsburys & also produced West Country &  Organic Poultry for supermarket sales. Their website quotes ” total control & traceability “. Word had gotten out that chicken breasts from Dutch crates had been seen there, re packed, labeled with new use by dates & sent out for a Sainsburys special offer. A Brittish red tractor logo stuck onto them to identify the meat for un suspecting shopper to buy. Under UK food labeling law it is NOT ILLEGAL to label foreign meat with a Brittish red tractor logo as long as the meat is from the EU.

Annother company, Denby Poultry was annonymosly tipped off to Derbyshires Chief Envorionmental Officer. The caller reported that Denby Poultry was taking condemned chicken, diseased & contaminated birds ( which should have been sent for rendering or for pet food production ) . Denby Poultry was trimming it, washing it with bleach and selling it back to the human food chain. Denby poultry products was a pet food processing plant. It sold, cleaned up, waste meats to annother company who applied illigitamate health marks before selling it again to other companies. The owner of Denby poultry was found guilty in his absence at Nottingham Crown Court ( suspected of having fled the country ).

The tumbling industry is even more scary. Tumbling is the process where the ” bulking up ” of a chicken takes place. Most of this takes place in The Netherlands as chickens arrive their from Thailand & Brazil via Dutch ports.The chickens are often salted, as the tarrif on salted meats is significantly lower than that of unsalted. Tumbling helps to dilute the salt. During the tumbling process chickens are defrosted, then injected with additives & water & tumbled in huge, concrete mixer type machienes. Then they are re frozed and shipped for further processing. Tests conducted by Hull City Council & The FSA have found chicken breasts that have contained pork & beef waste & hydrolyzed proteins. Hydrolyzed proteins are skin, hyde, bone even ligaments and feathers, where the proteins are extracted through exposure to high temperatures or by chemical hydrolysis. Yep! then it’s injected into a chicken. Yum! By the way, adding proteins from other animals is NOT ILLEGAL either. Some of the concerns & implications of this are, with alduterated beef waste in our chickens, could that spread BSE ?   With antibotics being injected into our chickens, is that lowering our human tollerance to antibotics ?  And with pork being added to chickens that have even been labeled ” halal ” is that not an outragous abuse & insult to Hindus & Muslims?

We have the right to know what is in our food. The governments do not protect us on this issue and despot supermarkets have outragous levels of control.

 The chapters in this book are: 1) chicken, 2) salad, 3) beans, 4) bread, 5) apples and bananas, 6) coffee & prawns 7) the ready meal. All the chapters listed have raised my eyebrow several times at what the food industry gets away with.

An essential read.

Unfortunately not fresh strawberries a lot of the time.

This example shows what is in a typical strawberry shake from burger king. ( source.. fast food nation.)

The ingredients are:

amyl acetate

amyl butyrate

amyl valerate

anethol

anisyl formate

benzyl acetate

benzyl isobutrate

butyric acid

cinnamyl isobutyrate

cinnamyl valerate

cognac essential oil

diacetyl

dipropyl ketone

ethyl acetate

ethyl amyl ketone

ethyl butyrate

ethyl cinnamate

athyl heptanoate

ethyl heptylate

ethyl lactate

ethyl ethylphenylglycidate

ethyl nitrate

ethyl propionate

ethyl valerate

eliotropin

hydroxyphenyl-2-butanone ( 10 percent solution in alcohol )

a-ionone

isobutyl anthranilate

isobutyl butyrate

lemon essential oil

maltol

4-methylacetophenone

methyl anthranilate

methyl benzoate

methyl cinnamate

methyl heptine carbonate

methyl naphthyl ketone

methyl salicylate

mint essential oil

neroli essential oil

nerolin

neryl isobutyrate

orris butter

phenethyl alcohol

rose

rum ether

y-undecalactone

vanillin

and finally …………. solvent

Every day over 1 billion bottles or cans of coca-cola are comsumed, that equals 12,500 every second. Thats a lot of cola! They spend a whopping $2 billion a year promoting themselves with a healthy, wholesome image. Sponoring a range of sporting events such as the world cup and the olympic games. Remember the world cup 2002 & they were exposed for using child labour for stitching the “coca-cola footballs”. As if adding aspartame to their diet drinks wasn’t apauling enough coca-cola are responsible for a lot more when it comes down to sickening entire nations from the production & comsumption of their “oh so lovelly fizzy drinks. ” live on the coke side of life” NO THANKS.

It takes almost 3 litres of water to produce 1 litre of coke. Think of all the industrial cleaning involved,and they control aquifiers in communities around the globe. They give a very negative impact on farmers & communities where there is short enough rainfall for the peoples needs. Protesters in Varanasi in India peacefully marched to a coca-cola plant to demand it’s closure and were beaten & jailed by armed police in November 2004. The people of Varanasi in Utta Pradesh said that the companys activities were causing wells to dry & harvests to be poor. And that is alongside the fact that coca-cola plants produce a sludge like waste that contains toxic chemicals like cadmium and lead and levels of DDT 9 times higher than the EU limit. Yep, no wonder there are so many starving people in this world. Greedy, corporate suckers taking peoples livelyhoods & health with no shame.

Shame on them.

There is a free booklet report on coca-cola and it’s conduct on the “war on want” website. This will also go into coca-colas conduct in Guatemala and mentions, threats, arrests, kidnaps, shootings and torture.A bit of light reading. But the adverts for this wholesome, happy drink that shares the love around the world still work. I am feeling a little uptight now… To read more about coca-cola here are a couple of webistes:

www.killercoke.org

www.cokewatch.org

www.indiaresource.org

I have never been as disgusted with the food industry as I have been during the last 24 hours.

I saw a DVD.  ASPARTAME  SWEET MISERY and was not overly surprised but I got progressively concerned.

What is Aspartame:

Aspartame is a chemical sweetener which is used massively by the soft drinks companies.

It is made up by  aspartic acid, phenylalanine & methyl ester. Methyl ester is meth alcohol i.e wood alcohol which is a very serious poison. When the body breaks down methyl ester it turns to formaldahyde ( used as an embalming fluid).

Major rise in brain tumours:

In the US in 1984 6,900,000lb of aspartame was comsumed and this amount doubled by 1985.

Between 1983-1984 brain tumour were up by 10% in the US. Diabetes up by 30% and brain lymphoma up by 60%.

Aspartame also causes MS, & seizures and much much more including ( as shown in a research study ) occular bleeding i.e bleeding from the eyes.

GRAS:

Aspartame is listed as being  a GRAS product. GRAS meaning generally recognised as safe.

When something is classified as “generally recognised as safe” it means that it only kills 1 in 1 million people!

The FDA claim that Aspartame is the most thoroughly tested foodstuff, although there has been an awful lot of testing on this product the test results are very freightening. And bear in mind that a lot of the research on this produt has been funded by Nutrasweet and soft drinks companies.

In one study conducted on monkeys that consumed the aspartame in milk 1 monkey died and 5 had gran mal seizures.

MSG:

MSG, monosodium glutamate was removed from baby food as it was shown that MSG caused holes in the brains of rats that were being tested. It has been shown that Aspartame does the same thing!

A quick trip to the corner shop:

I was telling my dad the other day what I had come accross and told him a little about Aspartame and the dangerous effects it has on the body. He asked if it was on the label so I went to my corner sho & within 5 minutes I found Aspartame in the following:

Diet pespsi, diet coke, pepsi light, robinsons fruit shoots ( this is designed for kids!), edbull, fanta, powerade isotonic drink ( made by coca cola), nestle milk straws,trident splash gum, wrigglys extra, wrigglys airwaves, hubba buba bubble tape and muller light yoghurts. This was in just 5 minutes.

Last night I was even more angered when I saw the official FDA list of what Aspartame can cause and what foodstuffs contained it.

Official FDA list: Coutesy of www.dorway.com

When I saw this list and read at the bottom of the table that Aspartame is used in chewable vitamin tablets I went to look at my bottle of vitamin C and read label. IT DID contain Aspartame. How angry was I.

Methyl Ester in nature:

Methyl Ester in nature is found in larger quantities in fruit but, in nature methyl is bound to pectin. Humans lack the enzyme to break down pectin so the methyl the naturally occuring Methyl can pass through the human body doing no harm whatsoever. Nature is so clever like that but Methyl ester on its own is highly dangerous.

Death by methyl ester:

Diane Fleming got a 50 year jail sentence for murdering her husband by methylanol poisoning. You can see her interviewed in the film Aspartame sweet misery.

Her attorney neglacted to mention that her husband was a big consumer of aspartame products. It does look very likely that consuming these products did cause his death.

Where can I find out more?

There are many sites on aspartame but a good one to chect out is www.dorway.com

Watch the film:

Here is a link to watch the film.  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-566922170441334340

Contary to my post fish farms fuck fish

Shell fish, unlike Salmon and Trout can be successfully farmed off the West Coast of Scotland without screwing up the eco system in said waters.

Mussles:

The mussles are grown by suspending ropes, under rafts which collect the drifting spat. The spat ( young mussles ) which normally attach themselves to rocks or the seabed then grow on the ropes. As the mussles are farmed suspended in the water this way they remain totally grit free.

Oysters:

Here seed from a hatchery is put into mesh bags and put onto low tessles at the low tide mark on the shore.

They are thinned out to allow for optimum growing conditions.

Shellfish farms along the West Coast of Scotland are therfore able to produce both oysters and mussles all year round and guarantee good quality meat, untarnished and can do this without causing excess toxic bloom ( a by- product from some other ways of industrial sea farming ).

Nutrition:

Shellfish are a rich source of vitamins and minerals and are low in fat. Consuming oysters and mussles as part of your regular diet can help promote good eyesight and boost the immune system.

Toxic algal blooms:

As more algae and plants grow, others die. This dead organic matter becomes food for bacteria that decomposes it. With more food available, the bacteria increase in number and use up the dissolved oxygen in the water. When the dissolved oxygen content decreases, many fish and aquatic insects cannot survive. This results in a dead area.

Algal blooms may also be of concern as some species of algae produce neurotoxins. At the high cell concentrations reached during some blooms, these toxins may have severe biological impacts on wildlife. Algal blooms composed of phytoplankters known to naturally produce biotoxins are often called Harmful Algal Blooms, or HABs.

( The above text & pictures was taken from wikipedia ).

Nutrition:

Shellfish are a rich source of vitamins and minerals and are low in fat. Consuming oysters and mussles as part of your regular diet can help promote good eyesight and boost the immune system.

Recipe:

Below is a recipe from http://www.scottishshellfish.co.uk/index.asp

This tasty looking dish is one I will have to try !

Bothy Oysters

Ingredients

4 oysters, shucked, reserving juice and shells
4 x 30-55g (4 x 1-2 oz) slices black pudding
2 x 5ml spoon (2 teaspoons) apple sauce
salt and black pepper
50ml (2 fl oz) malt whisky
30g (1oz) Highland Cheddar cheese
4 lemon wedges
parsley, to garnish

Serves 2

Method

Microwave Power: 800 Watt
Preheat the grill

Microwave black pudding for 1 minute.

Remove skin and mix with the apple sauce, salt and black pepper.

Poach oysters for 1 minute in their own juices along with the whisky. Remove oysters and set aside.

Add whisky liquid to black pudding mixture and beat well.

Shave a few fine slices of cheese using a vegetable peeler. Place 2-3 x 5ml spoon (2-3 teaspoons) of black pudding mixture into each oyster shell, top with an oyster and cover with cheese shavings.

Grill for 1-2 minutes until the cheese melts.

Serve with lemon wedges and more malt!