This blog entry is not intended to be a boot in the bum. At the end I tack on the truth: we cannot judge each other for the choices we make. The choice to eat meat is a personal decision. Fire up the barbecue if you want.

I’m not a total saint as though I don’t eat meat I have chicken and turkey. They are not without controversy either.

My goal is to make followers think for five minutes about what each of us can do to promote the health and welfare of Americans. Seeing beyond our own plates is called for.

The book shown above is an expose of the food industry where a handful of corporations earn billions of dollars at the expense of their loyal customers who buy their food “products.”

Apart from what I believe is the health risk of eating meat I won’t eat meat for other reasons. I stand in solidarity with homeowners living right near the CAFOs–slaughterhouses.

Negative health effects of the people living near these confinements include “a lower life expectancy and higher rates of infant deaths, asthma, kidney disease, tuberculosis, and blood poisoning” according to the book which everyone should read.

Workers falling into manure pits die from the fumes. Industry-bought economists at college universities tout the economic growth that CAFOs bring to these areas. That is a lie.

Income inequality thrives where CAFOs exist in rural areas like these. Elected leaders are in cahoots with these big food businesses via deregulation and rubber-stamping the building of new slaughterhouses.

“High poverty rates and anemic job growth” follow these CAFOs. Undocumented workers comprise the employees here as no Americans want their kids to work there. The fallacy is that CAFOS promote good jobs. In fact indentured servitude is more likely what these kinds of jobs are.

The solution is voting with our wallets and pocketbooks like always. We don’t have to buy what these billionaires living in mansions are selling: ill health and income inequality.

Elected leaders who don’t want undocumented people coming here are colluding in allowing undocumented people to work in CAFOs. This hypocrisy is not funny.

What else can we do?

Some of us will tout the benefits of eating a nice juicy steak and continue to do so. We cannot judge each other for the choices we make.

However we can open our eyes to what is going on. Lobby for workers’ rights and the ability to form a union at a CAFO.