Torturing Animals with GMO Feed

Katherine Paul of The Organic Consumers Association asks, “what happens when animals are confined in cramped, filthy environments and force-fed monoculture diets of genetically modified corn and soy?”

A lot can happen. Calves are born too weak to walk, with enlarged joints and limb deformities. Piglets experience rapidly deteriorating health, a “failure to thrive” so severe that they start breaking down their own tissues and organs – self-cannibalizing – to survive. Many animals suffer from weak, brittle bones that easily fracture. Dairy cows develop mastitis, a painful udder infection. Beef cattle develop liver abscesses and an excruciating condition referred to as “twisted gut.”

It all adds up to a lot of misery for animals unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of industrial agriculture’s Big GMO Experiment.

She shares some of the findings conveyed in Leah Dunham’s new book, America’s Two-Headed Pig: Treating Nutritional Deficiencies and Disease in a Genetically Modified, Antibiotic Resistant, and Pesticide Dependent World. Drawing on her father’s clinical notes, and the work of scientists like Dr. Don Huber,  professor emeritus in plant pathology at Purdue University, Leah Dunham outlines some of the ways in which humans are adding to the suffering of farm animals by feeding them a glyphosate-tainted, GMO diet.

“My father has pored over thousands of research papers in attempts to remedy the underlying causes of the illnesses described in this book. His work has embodied a commitment to healthy lands, creatures, and farms, as well as the hard work necessary to sustain them. After years of listening to him talk about his attempts to solve reoccurring health problems, I realized that most people don’t have a clue as to how modern disease complexities affect farm animals. We both hope that this book will help all medical professionals, farmers, and consumers better address the true roots of various medical conditions, including nutrient deficiencies, clostridial infections, diabetes, and Parkinsons disease.”

In her book, Leah Dunham argues we can do better:

“As other food advocates have pointed out, we have learned how to dissociate what we spend from the farmers and citizens our food dollars affect. In doing so, we can avoid thinking about how our actions affect actual creatures.

I suspect that one day future generations will remember the last three decades as a ridiculous age in American agriculture. This has been an age during which too many human beings treated animals and children like guinea pigs, feeding them genetically modified, chemically coated, antibiotic resistant experiments, despite the overwhelming evidence that these foods are serious risk factors for illness and disease. In today’s world of widely accessible research and technological advances, the ability to produce abundant amounts of food without threatening biodiversity and our basic biological rights should be an expectation, not a goal.