Eye-Catching Designs Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles
The company sells a range of eco-friendly items like leggings, rash guards, and board shorts that are made using recycled post-consumer plastic bottles. There are currently 16 causes represented by distinct marine-life patterns, from whale shark research and invasive lionfish removal to sockeye salmon monitoring and abalone restoration.
One such organization is Get Inspired, a nonprofit that specializes in ocean restoration and environmental education. Get Inspired founder, marine biologist Nancy Caruso, says supporting on-the-ground efforts is one thing that sets Waterlust apart, like their apparel line that supports Get Inspired abalone restoration programs.
"All of us [conservation partners] are doing something," Caruso said. "We're not putting up exhibits and talking about it — although that is important — we're in the field."
Waterlust not only helps its conservation partners financially so they can continue their important work. It also helps them get the word out about what they're doing, whether that's through social media spotlights, photo and video projects, or the informative note card that comes with each piece of apparel.
"They're doing their part for sure, pushing the information out across all of their channels, and I think that's what makes them so interesting," Caruso said.
And then there are the clothes, which speak for themselves.
Advocate Apparel to Start Conversations About Conservation
Waterlust's concept of "advocate apparel" encourages people to see getting dressed every day as an opportunity to not only express their individuality and style, but also to advance the conversation around marine science. By infusing science into clothing, people can visually represent species and ecosystems in need of advocacy — something that, more often than not, leads to a teaching moment.
"When people wear Waterlust gear, it's just a matter of time before somebody asks them about the bright, funky designs," said Waterlust's CEO, Patrick Rynne. "That moment is incredibly special, because it creates an intimate opportunity for the wearer to share what they've learned with another."
The idea for the company came to Rynne when he was a Ph.D. student in marine science.
"I was surrounded by incredible people that were discovering fascinating things but noticed that often their work wasn't reaching the general public in creative and engaging ways," he said. "That seemed like a missed opportunity with big implications."
Waterlust initially focused on conventional media, like film and photography, to promote ocean science, but the team quickly realized engagement on social media didn't translate to action or even knowledge sharing offscreen.
Rynne also saw the "in one ear, out the other" issue in the classroom — if students didn't repeatedly engage with the topics they learned, they'd quickly forget them.
"We decided that if we truly wanted to achieve our goal of bringing science into people's lives and have it stick, it would need to be through a process that is frequently repeated, fun, and functional," Rynne said. "That's when we thought about clothing."
Support Marine Research and Sustainability in Style
To date, Waterlust has sold tens of thousands of pieces of apparel in over 100 countries, and the interactions its products have sparked have had clear implications for furthering science communication.
For Caruso alone, it's led to opportunities to share her abalone restoration methods with communities far and wide.
"It moves my small little world of what I'm doing here in Orange County, California, across the entire globe," she said. "That's one of the beautiful things about our partnership."
Check out all of the different eco-conscious apparel options available from Waterlust to help promote ocean conservation.
Melissa Smith is an avid writer, scuba diver, backpacker, and all-around outdoor enthusiast. She graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in journalism and sustainable studies. Before joining EcoWatch, Melissa worked as the managing editor of Scuba Diving magazine and the communications manager of The Ocean Agency, a non-profit that's featured in the Emmy award-winning documentary Chasing Coral.
Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) in Old Pearl River near Slidell, Louisiana on May 16, 2014.
As a wildlife ecologist, I am interested in how feral pigs alter their surroundings and affect other wild species. In a recent study, members of the lab I directed through mid-2019 at Mississippi State University showed that wild pigs are a serious threat to biodiversity.
Using trail camera surveys to monitor 36 forest patches between 10 and 10,000 acres in size, we determined that forest patches with feral pigs had 26 percent less-diverse mammal and bird communities than similar forest patches without them. In other words, many wildlife species seem to be excluded from areas where pigs are present.
This finding is concerning because feral pig populations, which have been present in North America for centuries have rapidly expanded over the past several decades. Recent studies estimate that since the 1980s the pig population in the U.S. has nearly tripled and expanded from 18 to 35 states. They also are spreading rapidly across Canada.
Omnivores on the Hoof
Much concern over the spread of feral pigs has focused on economic damage, which was estimated in the early 2000s at about $1.5 billion annually in the U.S. Since then, feral pig populations in the U.S. have grown by about 30 percent and the area they occupy has expanded by about 40 percent, so their economic impact likely has increased.
Feral pigs have a unique collection of traits that make them problematic to humans. When we told one private landowner about the results from our study, he responded: "That makes sense. Pigs eat all the stuff the other wildlife do — they just eat it first, and then they go ahead and eat the wildlife too. They pretty much eat anything with a calorie in it."
More scientifically, feral pigs are extreme generalist foragers, which means they can survive on many different foods. A global review of their dietary habits found that plants represent 90 percent of their diet — primarily agricultural crops, plus fruits, seeds, leaves, stems and roots of wild plants.
Feral pigs also eat most small animals, along with fungi and invertebrates such as insect larvae, clams and mussels, particularly in places where pigs are not native. For example, one recent study reported that feral pigs were digging up eggs laid by endangered loggerhead sea turtles on an island off the coast of South Carolina, reducing the turtles' nesting success to zero in some years.
And these pigs do "just eat it first." They compete for resources that other wildlife need, which can have negative effects on other species.
However, they likely do their most severe damage through predation. Feral pigs kill and eat rodents, deer, birds, snakes, frogs, lizards and salamanders. This probably best explains why the decrease in diversity we observed was similar to other studies of invasive predators. And our findings are consistent with a global analysis showing that invasive mammalian predators — especially generalist foragers like feral pigs — that have no natural predators themselves cause by far the most extinctions.
Ontario is getting the public involved with helping track and manage their wild pig problem. https://t.co/nQ6m6BDpF4— TWS Manitoba Chapter (@TWS Manitoba Chapter)1563148681.0
Altering Ecosystems
Many questions about wild pigs' ecological impacts have yet to be answered. For example, they may harm other wild species through indirect competition, rather than eating them or depleting their food supply.
In one well-known case, feral pigs indirectly caused the near extinction of indigenous foxes on California's Channel Islands. The pigs were released on the islands over 150 years ago, but did not apparently affect fox populations for over a century. That changed when golden eagles began breeding on the islands in the mid-1990s, after hunting and exposure to the insecticide DDT eliminated bald eagles, which were golden eagles' natural enemy.
Unlike bald eagles, which eat mainly fish, golden eagles hunt on land. Wild pigs served as easy prey for them allowing the eagles to become established. The eagles also ate island foxes, and nearly eradicated themas a result.
Ultimately the foxes were restored through an elaborate initiative. First, wildlife managers removed pigs from the islands. Then they restored bald eagles to ward off the golden eagles. Finally, managers reintroduced foxes that had been raised through captive breeding.
Feral swine damage native habitats by rooting up grasses and rubbing on trees. Their activities can create opportunities for invasive plants to colonize new areas.
Another major concern is feral pigs' potential to spread disease. They carry numerous pathogens, including brucellosis and tuberculosis. However, little ecological research has been done on this issue, and scientists have not yet demonstrated that increasing abundance of feral pigs reduces the abundance of native wildlife via disease transmission.
Interestingly, in their native range in Europe and Asia, pigs do not cause as much ecological damage. In fact, some studies indicate that they may modify habitat in important ways for species that have evolved with them, such as frogs and salamanders.
So far, however, there is virtually no scientific evidence that feral pigs provide any benefits in North America. One review of feral pig impacts discussed the potential for private landowners plagued with pigs to generate revenue from selling pig meat or opportunities to hunt them. And it's possible that wild pigs could serve as an alternative food source for imperiled large predators, or that their wallowing and foraging behavior in some cases could mimic that of locally eradicated or extinct species.
But the scientific consensus today is that in North America, feral pigs are a growing threat to both ecosystems and the economy.
Marcus Lashley is an assistant professor of wildlife ecology at Mississippi State University.
Reposted with permission from our media associate The Conversation.
Consider the life of a chicken trapped on a factory farm. If she is one of the 9 billion chickens who suffer and die on U.S. factory farms for their meat, she is committed to a life of unending misery, fed an unnatural diet to spur abnormally rapid and painful growth. Perhaps she is one of the 26 to 30 percent of chickens raised for their meat who can't even walk normally because their skeletons are not able to support their rapidly growing bodies. She will live an average of just 42 days. If she is one of more than 300 million chickens raised in factory farms every year for their eggs, most of her beak was cut off with a scalding hot blade when she was just hours or days old. As a hen, she lives her entire life in a tiny wire "battery" cage, with up to 10 other hens. She may be sick or injured, but she will receive no medical care. She is forced to live alongside dead and dying cagemates. After about two years of this unimaginable suffering, she is considered "spent," and sent to a slaughterhouse. After her brief life, she must endure a terrible death as she is stunned in an electrified water bath before her throat is slit. (There is no law requiring chickens to be rendered unconscious before slaughter.)
Consider also the life of a mother pig trapped on a factory farm, where she is confined to a gestation crate barely larger than her own body. She is unable to turn around or even lie down comfortably for almost her entire life. Once she gives birth, she is impregnated again, in a cruel cycle that goes on for up to four years before she is killed for her meat. Her piglets are ripped from her when they are just 10 days old, and their tails cut off and their teeth clipped. Her sons have their testicles ripped out without any anesthesia or painkillers.
These are the brutal realities for millions of animals trapped on factory farms. But how do parents and teachers address these realities of our broken and inhumane food system with children? Journalist, editor and author Leslie Crawford has answered that call with two books published by Stone Pier Press, an environmental publishing house with a focus on food and sustainability. The first, Sprig the Rescue Pig, tells the story of a factory farm pig who escapes the truck bringing him to a slaughterhouse, before being rescued by a young girl and her family, who show him love and kindness. The second, Gwen the Rescue Hen, published this month, is about a chicken who escapes from an egg factory farm and is rescued by a young boy who decides to make her—and some of her fellow escapees—a part of his family. Both books include special sections filled with fascinating facts about pigs and chickens to help educate kids and adults about how incredible pigs and chickens really are.
In telling these heartwarming tales of resilience, compassion and love, Crawford avoids the more brutal realities of factory farming, showing simply that these farms are extremely unhappy places for such intelligent and emotional beings. She focuses instead on how truly wonderful these overlooked and poorly treated animals are—that they're way more than just bacon and nuggets.
In this interview, Crawford discusses what inspired her to write these books, what messages she wanted to convey to kids and parents, and what it's like living with chickens (and pigeons and a bearded dragon).
Reynard Loki: Your 13-year-old daughter Molly is an animal lover, and it was through her that you got interested in writing about animals. Tell us a little bit about Molly, how she fell in love with animals and how she helped get you to write about them.
Leslie Crawford: From the age of four, she was a fierce defender of pigeons, chasing away the little kids who chased away the pigeons. A couple years ago, she asked if we could adopt rescue King pigeons since she had learned about the organization Palomacy, which saves racing, homing and King pigeons who can't survive in the wild. (Many are the "doves" they release at ceremonies. Others escape from factory farming for squab. And others from racing pigeons.) I have six chickens and so was already more bird-minded … [so] I impulsively said yes … I'm a pretty impulsive person, which is why we now have four pigeons who live in an aviary right outside of our kitchen. Sometimes they fly into the kitchen. Yes, it's weird. Well, I don't see it as weird, but friends tell me they think it is.
Gwen the Rescue Hen is your second book about farm animals published by Stone Pier Press, following Sprig the Rescue Pig. As you developed these books, did you find inspiration from other children's books?
Absolutely. I also have a 21-year-old son, and so for 21 years, have been reading children's books. It's a particular art—children's books—and not at all obvious to get the language right and tap into the mind of a child without being condescending or cutesy. My inspirations were Roald Dahl, E.B. White (who, of course, authored the ultimate pig book, Charlotte's Web), Margaret Wise Brown, Louis Sachar. My ideal children's book is honest and funny and a bit strange. I don't think Gwen or Sprig is strange, though. We were mostly trying to help children and their parents to really see these remarkable animals. I identified a superpower that each animal has. For pigs, I chose their extraordinary sense of smell and for chickens, their remarkable vision. Pigs smell better and more than we do—they can smell truffles three feet underground. Similarly, chickens have Technicolor vision and are more alert to detail and movement than we are. These, of course, are survival techniques so they can find food (bugs!) and avoid danger.
The illustrations by Sonja Stangl are really great. How did you connect with her, and what attracted you to her work and style?
Stone Pier Press did an online audition, and after studying more than 100 portfolios, we chose Sonja. Her drawings, and her Sprig, were so beautiful, with an almost old-fashioned sensibility. She has a soft spot for farm animals and knows how to communicate this with kids and parents. She also has a great sense of story, which we drew on to craft the book.
Gwen the Rescue Hen is brand-new and available this month. How has the reception been for Sprig the Rescue Pig?
Fantastic. There are so many kids' books about animals, but not many about animals in which we are inviting the reader to really get a sense of what it's like to be a pig and to be a chicken. Animals at the mercy of a big industrialized system who are afraid and confused because they don't know our language—as I write about in Sprig—and are smart enough to figure out that something is very wrong.
We got an especially warm reception from parents who are vegetarians and vegans because there are very few [children's] books about the plight of these animals. But the bonus section on cool things to know about pigs seems to captivate everyone. (We also include one about chickens in Gwen.) Most people have no idea how smart, affectionate and curious these animals are, and they seem to like finding out. As for Gwen, the early reviews are great…. Of course, I used my own flock of six hens as inspiration.
What was the most surprising thing you've learned about pigs and chickens in writing these books?
For pigs, how astonishingly smart they are. Their IQ, by some measures, is the same as or above a three-year-old child's and dogs. In fact, they are among the smartest animals, up there with chimpanzees and dolphins. With that intelligence comes a particular emotional intelligence that is evidenced by their curiosity and sensitivity. Like dogs, they like to be scratched. They cuddle, play fetch, come when called, have been taught to paint and play video games.
As for chickens, I thought I knew everything, but I learned much more. They have remarkable eyesight and can see colors and detail that we can't. I learned that their earlobes (yes, they have them) indicate the color of their shells. They can add, subtract and recognize shapes. This is interesting since people think they are so stupid, but they have really good memories, especially for other chickens and the people they like. I already knew what strong, individual personalities they have. My [chicken] Alice B. Toklas is sassy and curious, Fullerton is skittish and shy, Jasmine is a little irritable. James is sweet but dim. In contrast to their idyllic life in my San Francisco backyard, researching Gwen, I learned much more about how farm animals by the millions, even billions, are treated, which is in the most brutal, horrific and filthy way.
I learned even more what I already knew—that they are creatures with the wide range of feelings and perceptions that, while not all like humans, are remarkable in their own right and for that reason are worthy of our empathy and respect as fellow creatures on the planet.
Have you found that there is a need for books about farm animals for children? How would kids normally learn about what's happening to animals on factory farms?
Well, most people—adults and kids—don't know what is really happening on factory farms. As for teaching kids, it's a fine line because factory farming is such a brutal system. Just as learning about that is almost too much for most adults, it absolutely is way too much for kids. So we chose to teach more about the animals themselves, the rare few that get to leave that system and live a full life as a pig at a sanctuary or a chicken in a boy's backyard. My hope is that as people become even a little more aware about factory farming, they will see the damage factory farming is doing—to animals, yes, but also to the environment, the climate and our health. Once you start putting these pieces together, those can collectively become reasons to make more of us change the way we eat.
Have you found that kids are receptive to learning about factory farms and what happens to animals inside them?
This is a delicate subject. It's so horrifying, and no one wants to give their children nightmares. With our books, the goal is to inspire conversations about where our food comes from—not by using fear or guilt, but by drawing on our compassion.
What would you tell parents who want to avoid purchasing meat produced in factory farms, or parents who are considering switching their families' diets to more plant-based eating?
I'd tell them they are helping not only the planet but themselves and their children by encouraging them to eat more fruits, vegetables and grains. Factory farming heats up our planet, pollutes waterways and air, and eats up land used to grow the grain that feeds livestock—and lots of water too. It also hurts the people who live near and work at [the farms]. Even if a family isn't vegetarian or vegan, just reducing the amount of meat and dairy we eat can make a difference, and there are so many good plant-based options these days, with many more coming to market every week.
Consumers are becoming more aware of the horrors inside factory farms. Consumer sentiment has helped push many food corporations to upgrade their animal welfare policies. Are you hopeful for the future of animals raised for food?
For so many years [Americans] were focused on efficiency. Now more people are recognizing the dangers factory farming has created for our world. One result is the surge in support for clean meat technology and the development of more tasty plant-based alternatives. There's also a new and growing awareness of the difference eating less meat can make.
What are the most important takeaways you'd like kids and parents to get from Gwen the Rescue Hen and Sprig the Rescue Pig?
That chickens and pigs deserve, as we do, to live a good life. That we recognize them as fellow creatures sharing the planet, not just products for our consumption.
In addition to your two children, you live with six chickens, four foster pigeons and a bearded dragon lizard. What have you and your kids learned from living with these animals? Do you get eggs from your chickens? I've heard that chickens make great pets; is it true?
Yes, two children (Gideon and Molly), six chickens (Jasmine, Fullerton, James T. Baxter, Matilda, Summer and Alice B. Toklas), four foster pigeons (Guru, Paix, Marco and Ajax) and Georgia, the bearded dragon. When you live with any animal, you step more into their worlds, their weird way of being that is so different than ours and so interesting. You see how pigeons court and groom each other and that they parent, the males and females sitting on the eggs in equal time, and how chickens know to go into their coop at dusk and take care of each other. You realize that it's not all about us humans!
And yes, chickens are wonderful pets. Very low-maintenance and so entertaining. I love sitting with them in the morning, petting them, feeding them grapes and safflower seeds. They are funny and happy, or so they seem to me. Just watching a chicken sitting in the dust in the afternoon sun is entertaining.
I do eat their eggs but am less and less inclined to do so. Maybe because they are my pets. I give a lot of eggs to friends. While most of my adult life I've been a roller coaster vegetarian, I'm no longer on that ride. I am a committed vegetarian, trying to be a vegan….
Is there another book in the works for this series? What's next for you?
We are focusing on getting Sprig and Gwen more out into the world. We've talked about other animals. We'll see. I have talked about McDow the Rescue Cow with Clare Ellis, the publisher of Stone Pier Press (who had the inspiration to do these children's books as a way to reach children and parents). But for now, we just want these two books to get into the hands of many happy families.
This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute, and originally published by Truthout. Reprinted with permission. To receive a discount on Gwen the Rescue Hen and Sprig the Rescue Pig, use code GS30.
Reynard Loki is a senior writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy's "Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow" in 2016. His work has been published by Truthout, Salon, BillMoyers.com, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others.
Center for Food Safety
A new, peer-reviewed study has been released in the June 2013 Journal of Organic Systems detailing adverse effects of genetically engineered (GE) feed on pigs. Center for Food Safety has long advocated for more robust safety testing prior to introducing GE foods into the food supply. Currently, no GE safety testing is required in the U.S. The long-term study revealed that pigs fed a GE diet suffered higher rates of severe stomach inflammation and had on average heavier uteri. The findings were biologically and statistically significant and mirror what many farmers have been reporting for years. The study was performed over the course of five years by independent researchers in Australia and the U.S.
“This study raises serious questions about the long-term health impacts of genetically engineered foods,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of Center for Food Safety.
“It is grossly negligent that neither the companies nor the government have conducted these rigorous types of studies in the 15 years that GE products have been on the market. Until further long-term, independent studies are done, the public are unwittingly participating in the safety testing of these products.”
According to the study’s authors:
The research was conducted by collaborating investigators from two continents and published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Organic Systems. The feeding study lasted more than five months and was conducted in the US. 168 newly-weaned pigs in a commercial piggery were fed either a typical diet incorporating GM soy and corn (2), or else (in the control group) an equivalent non-GM diet.
The pigs were reared under identical housing and feeding conditions. They were slaughtered over 5 months later, at their usual slaughter age, after eating the diets for their entire commercial lifespan. They were then autopsied by qualified veterinarians who worked “blind”—they were not informed which pigs were fed on the GM diet and which were from the control group.
What little study has been conducted on the safety of GE foods has largely been limited to industry funded studies involving rats for only 90 days. In addition to the studies being inadequate in their rigor, the data is tightly controlled by the companies under the pretense of Confidential Business Information, limiting external review. Some independent scientists have conducted studies over the years, but much more is needed.
Visit EcoWatch’s GE FOODS page for more related news on this topic.
Earth Policy Institute
By Janet Larsen
Half the world’s pigs—more than 470 million of them—live in China, but even that may not be enough to satisfy the growing Chinese appetite for meat. While meat consumption in the U.S. has fallen more than five percent since peaking in 2007, Chinese meat consumption has leapt 18 percent, from 64 million to 78 million (metric) tons—twice as much as in the U.S. Pork is by far China’s favorite protein, which helps to explain the late-May announced acquisition of U.S. meat giant Smithfield Foods Inc., the world’s leading pork producer, by the Chinese company Shuanghui International, owner of China’s largest meat processor. China already buys more than 60 percent of the world’s soybean exports to feed to its own livestock and has been a net importer of pork for the last five years. Now the move for Chinese companies is to purchase both foreign agricultural land and food-producing companies outright.
People in China ate 53 million tons of pork in 2012—six times as much as in the U.S. On a per person basis, consumption in China first eclipsed that in the U.S. in 1997, and it has never looked back. Now the average Chinese eats 86 pounds (39 kilograms) of pig meat each year, compared with 59 pounds in the U.S. As demand rises, pork is starting to shift from household, or farm-scale production into larger factory-like operations. Overcrowding in these facilities has been blamed for pollution and the spread of disease, as well as for the recent dumping of thousands of dead pigs into a river flowing into Shanghai.
Chinese chicken production and processing have also consolidated, as sadly seen in the recent fire at a large poultry plant in northeastern China that reportedly killed at least 120 people. China’s chicken intake just recently caught up with that in the U.S., with 13 million tons eaten in each country. It took China just 25 years to make the consumption leap achieved by the U.S. over a half-century.
Chicken is America’s meat of choice, and U.S. individual diets are four times heavier with poultry than Chinese diets are. However, as fast-food restaurants in China multiply, chicken consumption is rising. If the Chinese ate as much chicken per person as Americans do, their flocks would need to quadruple—as would the grain and soybeans used in the feed rations.
As for beef, grazing land limitations and higher costs have made this meat far less popular in China than in the U.S., with 5.6 million tons consumed in 2012, or nine pounds per person. The average American, in stark contrast, ate 82 pounds of beef that year. Total beef consumption in both countries appears to have peaked.
The Chinese eat nearly as much mutton and goat (close to seven pounds per person annually) as they do beef, while those meats barely register in U.S. diets. New steakhouses are trying to lure affluent Chinese toward red meat, but they are unlikely to reach the masses. If the Chinese ate as much beef as Americans do today, they would need 50 million tons of it, 90 percent of current world consumption.
With the average income in China poised to reach U.S. levels as early as 2035, heavier beef consumption theoretically could become economically feasible. Ecologically, though, it may never be possible. Grasslands are unable to sustain herds much larger than the existing ones, as evidenced by the vast dust bowl forming in northern China, largely from overgrazing by sheep and goats. Thus, getting more beef would mean intensive use of feedlots. But cattle take more grain and soybean meal per pound than all other livestock and poultry. In recent years China has imported some grain, though imports still make up a small share of its total supply. China’s soy production, however, has barely budged since 1995, while soy use (mostly for feed rations) has shot up fivefold. Imports have made up the difference.
Hogs put on about twice as much weight as cattle per pound of feed, and chickens grow even faster. Smithfield Foods in the U.S. has become remarkably “efficient” at fattening hogs en masse; such expertise is a big attraction for China. Yet even though the U.S. has a better reputation on food safety than China, U.S. factory farms have their problems as well in terms of the contamination of meat and the massive quantities of waste generated by large groups of animals. The widespread use of antibiotics in U.S. industrial meat production has been linked to growing bacterial resistance to antibiotic treatment. And one feed additive still used in the U.S. to help pigs gain lean weight—ractopamine—has been banned in China because of feared negative health effects. According to reporting by Reuters, Smithfield began limiting the use of ractopamine on some, but not all, of its animals last year, with an eye on the Chinese market.
Given the existing land degradation and pollution that are making it harder for China to produce more—and safer—food, it is not difficult to see why foreign acquisition of both land and food producers is becoming increasingly attractive. Yet just as the American diet has been shown to be a dangerous export—accompanied by spreading obesity, heart disease and other so-called diseases of affluence—ramping up American-style factory meat production is not without risk.
Visit EcoWatch’s FACTORY FARMING and FOOD pages for more related news on this topic.