Today’s post is inspired by the movie embedded above. Five minutes spent on a tour with a Perdue Factory Farmer is all it takes to strengthen my resolve to not eat factory meats.

This week I purchased a naturally raised hog from a farm in the Topeka area of Kansas. I also purchase chickens from this farm that are raised in the way that nature intended. My chickens arrive frozen, dressed and sealed in a vacuum bag. They are not as large as the factory birds, which is not a bad thing. I may spend anywhere from seven to ten dollars on each chicken.

When you hear a number like that, ten dollars for a frozen chicken, you are tempted just as I am to think, “That’s expensive”. That reaction is from comparing real chicken to factory chicken only using the yardstick of dollars. Dollars are not really a good gauge of value, though. The market for chicken is tilted in the favor of the factory chicken because your tax dollars are keeping the price of artificial chicken feed and antibiotics for livestock at unnaturally low levels. Feeding corn and soy, along with ground up dead chickens and chicks to raise your food, gives you these same chemicals. Corn and soy contain Omega 6 and are a large part of why in the US we eat about ten times more Omega 6 essential oil than we should. Ideally, we would all have an Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio of 1:1. Yours is about 10:1 if you eat factory meats, processed foods, sweetened drinks. Omega 6 is an inflammatory in your body, Omega 3 promotes your body to make good cholesterol and is good for you heart. Getting Omega 3 from animals that graze on grasses is how nature intends you get your Omega 3. Buying natural eggs, natural chicken, naturally raised beef and pork are the best ways to reform your essential oil balance. Doing it will cost more dollars every week at the grocer, or wherever you get your meat. Not doing it will lead you to high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease.

When I look at the video of chickens raised with only one thing in mind, maximizing profit, I realize that the only thing I can do to make it not worth Perdue’s trouble to torture all of those animals for their whole lives is to not buy their product. Not buying their product will make them reform their production methods. Nothing else short of government intervention will do that job. Government is not going to intervene, it is going the exact opposite way.

The meat from a factory farm is dangerous to your health because it is not fed natural foods, it is fed sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics which are passed on to you, because they are raised in filthy conditions that sometimes the meat is contaminated in the processing plants. Natural meats are good for you because you need the essential oil that only comes from animals eating grasses, they contain no antibiotics, the chances that their bowel will contain dangerous pathogens is very small, so the meat will not be contaminated. In my mind, these facts make the meats that I buy even more valuable to me than what I pay for them.