by Dr. Josh Axe edited by Dr. Brian Bartholomew

If you’ve been watching the news lately there’s no doubt you’ve heard about the massive egg recall.  To date there are 1,300 cases of salmonella linked to tainted eggs from two farms in Iowa, with a third rumored to also be involved.

And while it may appear that two farms in Iowa out of the thousands of farms producing eggs nationwide don’t account for a large percentage of farms, the problem with tainted eggs and sickness is much bigger.

According to the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC,) poultry is the number one cause of food poisoning in the United States.  Eggs are the number one source for dangerous salmonella.  And salmonella is the leading culprit for food poisoning related deaths in the U.S. which come in yearly around 500 deaths.

In the United States alone we spend an estimated $150 billion dollars a year on food borne illness resulting in 15,000 yearly hospitalizations.  If you survive difficult salmonella you’ll have experienced at least one, but most likely all, of the following symptoms:

Symptoms of Salmonella

• Vomiting, Nausea, Diarrhea, Constipation, Headaches
• Body aches. Stomach Cramps, Fever, Blood in stool

Not a pretty picture and one that can leave you down and out for much longer than you may imagine.  Salmonella can have many long lasting health implications.  Chronic arthritic joint inflammation in adults and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) in children have both been known to persist well after the acute case of salmonella has passed.

Salmonella is a serious health risk. The United States own Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns, “Egg associated illness caused by salmonella is a serious public health problem.”

Maybe you think that to avoid salmonella you’ll be sure to cook your eggs?  Well think again, according to the America Egg Board salmonella can easily survive in eggs that are cooked sunny side up, over easy, and even scrambling eggs.

Salmonella can infect the ovaries of sick hens and the eggs can actually come with salmonella pre-packaged inside ripe for your consumption.

It’s time to think carefully about the eggs you choose to consume and feed to your family.

Free Range Eggs 98% Less Likely to Carry Salmonella

When it comes to salmonella and eggs, the living conditions of the hens play a huge part.  The standard living conditions of hens in the United States that are raised for meat or eggs are in battery cages.  According The Humane Society of the United States, 95% of hens in the U.S. live in these disease producing battery cages.

What is a Typical Battery Cage for Hens in the U.S.?

• 67 square inches of space per hen
• Vertical cages piled up to 8 levels high
• Manure pits often 4 to 8 feet deep
• Infestation of flies, maggots, and other disease carrying insects
• Infestation of rodents

In these cages the hens are unable to engage in their natural, instinctual behaviors such as nesting, dust bathing, perching and more.  In fact the amount of hens jammed into these small spaces prohibits the abused birds from doing many of the following:

Hens in Battery Cages Cannot:

• Lie Down, Stand Up Fully, Stretch, Turn around, Flap Their Wings, Groom themselves

So often these cramped, unnatural living conditions cause such enormous amount of stress and strain on the birds that they resort to previously unheard of behaviors with the extreme being cannibalism.

The cannibalism and plucking each other – at times to death – is so common that it is industry standard practice to burn, cut, or laser off the beaks of these helpless hens.  A painful, debilitating, and abusive process I can’t support. Once you know the facts, I doubt anyone will want to buy eggs from hens raised in these conditions again.

It’s Not Just Salmonella to Fear

While salmonella is a serious health threat, hens raised in this way that escape dangerous salmonella have a host of other health problems.  When we buy and consume the eggs of these hens, the health problems are passed onto us.

Every year in the United States these battery caged hens are fed billions of pounds of antibiotics to counteract the contaminated and stressful living conditions (The Humane Society of the United States Report: Food Safety and Cage Egg Production.) 

The eggs produced by these hens contain traces of antibiotics which in turn we consume.  Could this be part of the problem with the new age of antibiotic resistant diseases?

In addition, many of these poor hens are fed what’s called ‘slaughterhouse waste.’ (And by the way, this is a legal practice in the United States despite the World Health Organization recommended guidelines to prevent outbreaks of deadly diseases such as mad cow disease.)

Slaughterhouse waste includes animals that have been slaughtered due to sickness, diseases, or being crippled.  It also includes blood, fecal matter, and whatever else is in the ‘waste’ of the facility.  Is this really what you want to eat or feed to your family?

Free Range Eggs vs. Battery Cage Eggs

When it comes to quality of life, there’s just no comparison between the life of free range hens and that of battery cage hens. Free range hens are free to wander, nest, perch, groom themselves, and generally live a happy life engaging in their natural behaviors the way they were intended to live.

This higher quality of life shows up in the eggs too.  The nutritional value of free range eggs has been shown time and time again to be much higher than battery cage eggs.

According to a study by Mother Earth News in 2007 (conducted by an independent and accredited Portland, Oregon based lab) free range eggs are much healthier – and not just because you won’t get salmonella or unwanted antibiotics when you eat them. As compared with battery cage eggs, the eggs of free range hens contain the following:

Free Range Eggs Contain:

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• ¼ less saturated fat
• 2/3 more Vitamin A
• 2 times more Omega-3
• 3 times more Vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

It’s clear that free range eggs are much better than battery cage eggs for numerous reasons – really there’s just no comparison.

It’s important to distinguish between the various egg labels that can often mislead the consumer.

Free Range, Organic, Cage Free – Know Your Egg Labels

Despite what you may think, just because the egg label says ‘cage free’ doesn’t mean it’s being treated humanely or raised in healthier living conditions.

According to the Humane Society these labels can be confusing and often deceiving for consumers. Today there are no guidelines for how long the hens are outside, what they are fed (with the exception of organic), and they are still allowed to have their beaks cut or burned off and forced molting is permitted.

The guidelines for these facilities are very limited at best. To clearly understand what each of the labels on egg cartons means visit the Humane Society page explaining in detail each label.

Sources

The Humane Society (2010)

Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (2010)

Mother Earth News (2007)

Organic Consumers Association (2003)

Wageningen University (2009)

Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (2000)

The Humane Society (2009)

Action Steps:

1. Visit The Humane Society’s site to get a clear understanding of what egg carton labels mean.
2. Go to a local farm that sells eggs.  Ask the farmer about how the hens live, what they are fed, how long they stay outdoors, and if he or she feeds the hens antibiotics.
3. Buy free range, organic eggs at your local farmer's market, farm, grocery store or health food store.
4. Spread the word!  Forward this email along to a friend of family member, you can make a difference!!

Why You Can't Lose That Last 10 Lbs:

Leanness Law No. 3: Go Lean
Always choose pasture-raised grass-fed meats, which, studies show, have less fat than their confined, grain-fed counterparts and none of the weight-promoting hormones. Plus, grass-fed beef contains 60 percent more omega-3s, 200 percent more vitamin E and two to three times more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA, a near-magic nutrient that helps ward off heart disease, cancer and diabetes, and can help you lose weight, according to a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition) than conventional beef. If you must choose a conventional cut of beef, choose lean cuts top sirloin, 95 percent lean ground beef, bottom round roast, eye round roast, top round roast or sirloin tip steak. Bison burgers and veggie burgers are also great substitutes when grass-fed beef isn’t available. And select sustainable lean fish with low toxic loads (meaning low levels of toxins like mercury and PCBs). A study in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that even though the pesticide DDT was banned in 1973, the chemical and its breakdown product DDE can still be found today in fatty fish. Bigger fish eat smaller fish, and so carry a much higher toxic load.

Avoid or try to limit ahi or bigeye tuna, tilefish, swordfish, shark, king mackerel, marlin and orange roughy — and focus on eating smaller fish like anchovies, Atlantic herring and mackerel, and wild-caught Alaskan salmon. Choose Pacific cod, Pacific Halibut, Tuna (canned light) and mahimahi. Also, when you cook the fish, broil, poach, grill, boil or bake instead of pan-frying — this will allow contaminants from the fatty portions of fish to drain out.  [If you are going to fry use coconut oil as it has a higher smoke point and will not turn rancid as easily.]

Leanness Law No. 4: Filter Your Water
The best way to eliminate EDCs from your tap water is an activated carbon water filter. Available for faucets and pitchers, and as under-the-sink units, these filters remove most pesticides and industrial pollutants. Check the label to make sure the filter meets the NSF/American National Standards Institute’s standard 53, indicating that it treats water for both health and aesthetic concerns. Try The Brita Aqualux ($28, brita.com), Pur Horizontal faucet filter ($49, purwaterfilter.com) and Kenmore’s under-sink system ($60, kenmore.com). However, if you have perchlorate (a component of rocket fuel!) in your water (you can find out by asking your municipal water supplier for a copy of its most recent water-quality report) you’ll need a reverse osmosis filter.

The Problem with Factory Farms

By CLAIRE SUDDATH Friday, Apr. 23, 2010

Hogs are raised on a farm in Elma, Iowa Scott Olson / Getty Images

If you eat meat, the odds are high that you've enjoyed a meal made from an animal raised on a factory farm (also known as a CAFO). According to the USDA, 2% of U.S. livestock facilities raise an estimated 40% of all farm animals. This means that pigs, chickens and cows are concentrated in a small number of very large farms. But even if you're a vegetarian, the health and environmental repercussions of these facilities may affect you. In his book Animal Factory, journalist David Kirby explores the problems of factory farms, from untreated animal waste to polluted waterways. Kirby talks to TIME about large-scale industrial farming, the lack of government oversight and the terrible fate of a North Carolina river.

What exactly is a factory farm?
The industrial model for animal food production first started with the poultry industry. In the 1930s and '40s, large companies got into the farming business. The companies hire farmers to grow the animals for them. The farmers typically don't own the animals — the companies do. It's almost like a sharecropping system. The company tells them exactly how to build the farm, what to grow and what to feed. They manage everything right down to what temperature the barn should be and what day the animals are going to be picked up for slaughter. The farmer can't even eat his or her own animals. People who grow chickens for Perdue in Maryland have to go down to the market and buy Perdue at the store.

We collectively refer to these facilities as factory farms, but that's not an official name. The government designation is CAFO, which stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. Basically, it's any farm that has 1,000 animal units or more. A beef cow is an animal unit. These animals are kept in pens their entire lives. They're never outside. They never breathe fresh air. They never see the sun.

What are the health and environmental hazards of CAFOs?
For one, you're often no longer feeding animals what they're genetically designed to eat. CAFO cows eat a diet of milled grains, corn and soybeans, when they are supposed to eat grass. The food isn't natural because they very often put growth hormones and antibiotics in it. That becomes a problem when you put that manure on the ground.

And the fact that there are thousands of animals packed into one farm is also a problem.
Oh, definitely. There are simply too many animals in too small of a place. In a traditional farm, a sustainable farm, you grow both crops and animals. There is a pasture, and you have a certain number of animals per acre. But when you have 2,000 cows per acre instead of two, you have a problem. You can't fit them in a pasture — you fit them in a building. You can't grow enough crops to feed them — you have to ship in their feed. You don't have enough land to absorb their waste. It has nowhere to go.

So what happens to it?
The manure is liquefied. It gets flushed out into an open lagoon, where it is stored until farmers can use it on what few crops they do grow. There's just so much of it, though. I've seen it sprayed into waterways and creeks. These lagoons filled with waste have been known to seep, leak, rupture and overtop. This stuff is untreated, by the way. We would never allow big, open cesspools of untreated human waste to just sit out on the ground near people's homes and schools. And yet because it's agriculture, the rules are different.

You write at length about North Carolina's Neuse River. What happened there?
Hundreds of massive pig farms came into North Carolina in the 1990s. In Animal Factory, I tell the story of Rick Dove, a former Marine who retired and bought a fishing boat. One day he noticed the fish were dying in really weird ways. First there were the algae blooms. Algae creates oxygen during the day through photosynthesis and expels carbon dioxide at night. When that happens, there's literally no oxygen in the water. Everything comes crawling up to the shore in the shallowest part of the river, trying to pump water through their gills. By the morning, they're all dead. Everything — shrimp, crab, little fish called menhaden, eels, bass. People call it a "fish jubilee," 'cause they can just wade into the river and pick up free food.

Soon after this started happening, Rick Dove noticed the menhaden fish were developing round red circles on their flanks. They'd go into what was called a "death spiral." They just start swimming into little circles and just die. Nobody knew what was causing this. Pretty soon after that, the fishermen, including Rick and his son, noticed they were getting round red sores on their skin in the parts that touched the water. Then they'd get very disoriented. Fishermen would forget where they lived or where they'd docked their boats. Rick started to do some research. One day he read in a science magazine about pfiesteria, this very odd plankton that emits toxins that stun a fish so it can suck the fish's blood. That's what the lesions were. But the toxin also gets in the air, and that's why fishermen were getting disoriented.

Rick wanted to know the source of this problem, so he went up in an airplane. That's how I open Animal Factory, with him looking down at these massive pig farms. Sometimes you can even see the waste runoff going directly going into the water. Other times they're out there spraying night and day because nobody is watching them. You can't see this from the road. There are very few inspectors, and they're not going to go out there and monitor everyone.

People probably assume this kind of stuff is regulated, but it's not. Or at least not enough. What should the government be doing?
A lot of the laws are on the state and county level, so it depends on the political will and political culture of the individual state. That doesn't mean Democrat or Republican. That means agriculture state vs. a state with not a lot of agriculture. What kind of laws have agriculture-friendly states passed? Some states say that if a company spills its manure, it doesn't have to pay to clean it up. The taxpayers pay. If you try to pass pollution standards, the industry complains that they're already too heavily regulated. They claim that if you force them to reduce how much they pollute, they're not going to be able to operate. They're essentially saying they can only make money by polluting and breaking the law. That should be unacceptable to everybody.

You spent three years reporting this story. What stands out?
One time I visited a pig farm, a regular farm — not a factory farm — in Illinois. Right across the street was a hog CAFO. The owner didn't live there, of course. There's no farm house on a factory farm, just business offices. At night, all the workers would leave, and all I'd hear as I was trying to fall asleep was the sound of the pigs fighting each other, biting each other, squealing, screeching all night long. It was like nothing I've ever heard before in my life, and it just didn't stop. It sounded like kids being tortured over there. I'll never forget that sound. It was very sad.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1983981,00.html#ixzz0o9DZkaux