The World Peace Diet: Eating For Spiritual Health And Social Harmony

190 / the world peace diet
genetically modified and have become the main components of animal
feed, with over half of all U.S. farmland devoted to just these two feed
crops alone. 22 They’re genetically engineered to be herbicide-resistant so
that agribusinesses typically spray two to five times more toxic chemicals
on these fields than on non-GMO crops, killing wildlife and polluting
water at ever-higher levels.
These toxic fields are the foundation of the dairy products and eggs
we eat, as well as the beef, poultry, pork, and many fish, like factoryfarmed
catfish, trout, and tilapia. The carcinogenic residues of the
chemical fertilizers and pesticides used on these fields contaminate our
rivers and oceans. They concentrate in the animal foods we eat and in
our own flesh and milk as well. In addition, the manure that is used to
“enrich” animal feed concentrates toxins to an even greater extent than
the plant foods that the animals are forced to eat.
Fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizer residues
concentrate in livestock excrement. Anyone building a house knows
how strict most communities are about human sewage disposal, and yet
disposal of livestock sewage is virtually unregulated. The ten billion
land animals confined and killed every year excrete massive quantities
of feces and urine, not just equal to what we humans produce, or even
two or three times greater, but according to a study by the U.S. Senate,
130 times greater. 23 This farm animal waste can be hundreds of times
more concentrated than untreated human sewage. 24 It is more highly
toxic because of its high bacteria, chemical, and drug residues. For
example, the high levels of antibiotics running into streams from livestock
manure have been shown to contribute to more dangerous
antibiotic-resistant bacteria in rivers. 25 The dairies in central California
create more sewage than a city of twenty million people, and just one
mega pig factory farm creates more sewage than New York City! 26
Farmed animal waste disposal is much less regulated than human waste
disposal because animal agriculture industries are supported in their
resistance of regulations by their friends in governmental agencies and
politicians beholden to them for campaign contributions. This unregulated
toxic waste pollutes groundwater, rivers, lakes, and oceans. 27
When gigantic open lagoons of pig excrement spill, the resulting out-