You don't need meat Part 1 – Willis Ceramics

Book review

Leo Hickman in A Good Life: The Guide to Ethical Living points out that: “Ethical living means taking personal responsibility; considering ‘sustainability’ of everything you do; making sure that your actions do not have a negative influence on you or the wider world; reducing one’s demand for resources; consuming a fairer and more proportionate slice of the pie; leading more considerate, thoughtful lives.” “In 2001 humanity’s ecological footprint exceeded global biocapacity by 21%. If the whole world lived as Americans do we would need 6 Earths to meet the demand for natural resources.” “For each cow raised within the EU, the farmer receives about €2 a day in subsidies – more than the daily income of 75% of Africans.” “Our choice about what we eat is one of the most important, and most frequent, ethical decisions we can make.” “About 51 billion animals were slaughtered in 2003 – 10 animals a year for every person on the planet. 70% of the world’s agricultural land and one third of the world’s grain crop is used to rear livestock.” “It takes 24 acres (9.7 hectares) of land to sustain an American, 9 acres (3.6 hectares) an Italian and just under an acre (0.4 hectares) for an Indian.”

In Proof Positive: How to Reliably Combat Disease & Achieve Optimal Health Through Nutrition & Lifestyle Neil Nedley, M.D. we learn that “There is 15% less chronic diseases among vegetarians when compared to non-vegetarians. Athletes were fed different diets for 3 days and their endurance tested to exhaustion.

v The high protein and high fat diet (high in meat) gave 57 minutes

v A mixed diet (lower meat, fat and protein) gave 1 hour 54 minutes

v A vegetarian diet (high carbo-hydrate) gave 2 hours 47 minutes

Vegetarian elephants can run at 25mph for 10-12 hours while meat-eating big cats such as cheetahs and tigers have good initial speed but fatigue within a short time.”

In Why You Don’t Need Meat by Peter Cox provides additional reasons why we should be cautious about our meat intake. Here are some snippets: “Meat is a terribly wasteful commodity. For every 100 pounds of plant protein that we feed to cows (soya beans and other animal feed), only 5 pounds of it is converted into meat. The rest – 95 pounds – is turned into slurry. What a criminal waste of basic food in a hungry world.” “The evidence was now absolutely conclusive. DES could cause cancer and a wide variety of other diseases in the children of women who had been unlucky enough to be dosed. But it didn’t necessarily show up for years – sometimes in children as young as 7, but sometimes not until the mid or late twenties. For the poor children, it was a silent time bomb, ticking away for years, until something (often puberty) happened to make it go off. It is estimated that about 2 million women were treated with DES before the full facts were known. But where human greed is concerned, some people will always want just a little bit more, regardless of the cost in suffering or human life.” “From the meat producer’s point of view, the attraction of DES as a drug is that it is a terrifically powerful growth promoter – it can make an animal put on weight incredibly quickly. And more weight equals more profit.” “The doctor sighs, and tells her. He’s seen lots of cases like this recently. Her son is one of over 900 young boys, aged between 6 and 10, who show the same symptoms (growth of breasts). And there are over 2000 young girls – 6 years of age – who are also affected. That’s 1,100 young children, just in Milan, who have begun to develop breasts. The cause? Something about a greedy meat producer who gave his veal calves too much of a drug called DES.”

WHY YOU DON’T NEED MEAT

PETER COX

THORSONS PUBLISHING GROUP 1986

PART I

In this comprehensive analysis of the role that meat plays in our diet – how it got there and why we no longer need it – Peter Cox in Why You Don’t Need Meat presents medical evidence about the effect that meat consumption is having on our health, including its connection with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and other killers of Western civilization. He exposes the shameful abuses of animal growth hormones and antibiotics that now contaminate up to 80% of the meat on sale. This is a positive book that can change your life for the better. It will show you how to construct a healthier, nutritionally balanced diet without meat, and how your personal action can start to solve the crisis of world hunger that we now face.

Introduction

Every year in this country the meat industry spends a staggering sum of money – running into countless millions of pounds – trying to ensure that you keep on eating meat. When I worked in the advertising business we’d call it ‘saturation coverage’. So in comparison, the millions they spend on promotion is really quite small – almost chicken feed in fact.
Quite simply, they can’t afford to let you stop buying it, or even to allow you to cut back on the quantity you buy. And they will do virtually anything they can to prevent you from changing your buying habits.
Joe came back from school not wanting to eat meat because it involved killing animals. A few days later, Joe’s mother found herself in the doctor’s surgery. “Don’t worry about it”, he advised her. “I’d prefer Joe to stop eating hamburgers rather than to stop eating fresh vegetables. He’s growing, but he can get all the nourishment he needs from a meatless diet”.
Many say their arthritis disappears by giving up meat. Rheumatic and aching joints are eased. People chronically ill, some with cancer, are experimenting with a fresh food diet, and getting physical and spiritual renewal from it. Other people – those who are concerned about our world and environment – are also acting in a personal way to try and bring about positive change.
Meat is a terribly wasteful commodity. For every 100 pounds of plant protein that we feed to cows (soya beans and other animal feed), only 5 pounds of it is converted into meat. The rest – 95 pounds – is turned into slurry. What a criminal waste of basic food in a hungry world.
But even so, most people still don’t know the complete story. They don’t know the full horror of an industry that puts profit before health and morality. They don’t realize the overwhelming weight of evidence against meat – evidence that I’ve pieced together from all over the world, and which has never before been assembled and made public in such a comprehensive way.

Chapter 1: Connections

“You know,” said the paediatrician, ‘I’m seeing more cases of vaginal cancer in young girls than I’ve ever seen before. It makes me think that there must be some sort of common factor to it. Nothing I can track it down to, though.”
“Really?”, said the gynaecologist. “I suppose you’ve checked on their mother’s medical history, have you?” “These girls are all going through puberty. I can’t imagine that anything their mothers would have done 10 to 15 years ago could make a difference now. Although most of them were difficult pregnancies. I think quite a lot of them took stilboestrol.”
“It’s an artificial hormone. I’m sure its safe. There’s been at least one study about it. We used to prescribe stilboestrol for certain complications, but the thinking nowadays is that it doesn’t seem to make much difference except to make the pregnancy a bit longer.”
A few days later the two doctors met up again. The drug – diethyl stilboestrol – was now their main topic of conversation, and they were both very excited about the pattern they could see emerging. They found that diethyl stilboestrol (or DES for short) had been prescribed to women ever since a paper published in an American gynaecological journal had recommended it to prevent repeated reproductive failures and other complications of pregnancy.
They found that a clinical trial of the artificial hormone, involving some 2000 women from 1950 to 1952, had concluded that it had no effect on pregnancies except to prolong them a little. But there was no mention of side effects. Then, in 1971, the evidence started to fit together. A previously rare cancer, clear-cell adenocarcinoma, began to be seen with increasing frequency in young women who had been born between 1946 and 1951, and whose mothers had been given DES.
Then other, non-cancerous changes in the genital tracts of other young girls began to be reported, too. And finally, it was also proven that tumorous effects could even be traced in the sons of women who had been treated with the hormone. Cases of prostate cancer, male bladder cancer and cancer of the testicles were diagnosed and positively associated with DES.
The evidence was now absolutely conclusive. DES could cause cancer and a wide variety of other diseases in the children of women who had been unlucky enough to be dosed. But it didn’t necessarily show up for years – sometimes in children as young as 7, but sometimes not until the mid or late twenties. For the poor children, it was a silent time bomb, ticking away for years, until something (often puberty) happened to make it go off.
It is estimated that about 2 million women were treated with DES before the full facts were known. But where human greed is concerned, some people will always want just a little bit more, regardless of the cost in suffering or human life.

The meat connection

From the meat producer’s point of view, the attraction of DES as a drug is that it is a terrifically powerful growth promoter – it can make an animal put on weight incredibly quickly. And more weight equals more profit.
We pick up the thread of the next connection in a doctor’s surgery in Milan, in early 1978. The doctor sighs, and tells her. He’s seen lots of cases like this recently. Her son is one of over 900 young boys, aged between 6 and 10, who show the same symptoms (growth of breasts). And there are over 2000 young girls – 6 years of age – who are also affected.
That’s 1,100 young children, just in Milan, who have begun to develop breasts. The cause? Something about a greedy meat producer who gave his veal calves too much of a drug called DES.
Puerto Rico 1979. Like the Milan case, children were starting to show signs of grossly premature sexual development. All the children were under 8 years of age, yet they were developing breasts, starting to go through puberty, and show high levels of the sex hormone oestrogen in their blood. Some of the young girls had ovarian cysts. Some of these symptoms were even seen in girls who were just 6 months old.
Perhaps one of the most poignant symptoms was that many of them had advanced ‘bone age’. Growth hormones like DES are known to accelerate the ageing process – and these young people’s bodies were getting old before their time. DES was – quite literally – robbing them of their youth.
At first the authorities tried to deny that DES was the cause of the scandal. They reported that DES just couldn’t be the cause of the problem. But one local doctor knew differently. She knew that DES was strongly implicated in the disaster and set out to prove it. She hired a private detective and quickly confirmed that you could buy DES just about everywhere, no questions asked. It was being used by farmers in a really big way – they thought of it as a ‘miracle drug’ that boosted their profits no end. The nightmare is not yet over for Puerto Rico.
If by now you are feeling angry about this sordid hormone business, you will be even more outraged by the current situation that exists here and now in Great Britain. First, let’s reconsider what we’ve learnt about DES – and remember, this knowledge has been learnt the hard way, by performing experiments on unknowing human subjects.
We know that DES can be a long-term timebomb, whose symptoms may not be revealed for anything up to 29 years after a dose has been received. We know that DES is quite capable of causing cancer and other mutations in the children of women who have been exposed to it during their pregnancy. We also know that DES can cause grossly premature sexual development and ageing in very young children. So why is it still being used by the people who produce our meat?

The hormone risk business

This is the current picture as it exists in Great Britain and the rest of the European Economic Community, today. DES is not supposed to be used on livestock, although it is common knowledge that it still is.
There is no clinical or therapeutic reason for giving animals growth promoters. It is not in the interest of consumers. It adds to the already colossal meat mountain within the EEC. But it is very much in the interests of meat producers who get at least £30 more profit per cow.
Testing an animal’s carcass for DES-type residue costs £100 per animal, although a new test brings it down to £5. But the Americans use hormones in a big way, selling over 100 million pounds of beef to European countries and they have threatened ‘grave retaliations’ if this trade is jeopardized.
The large pharmaceutical companies profit from the use of synthetic hormones. Each time attempts have been made to impose a total prohibition on the use of growth hormones, attempts have been blocked. The consumer has two choices – to eat meat mildly contaminated with growth hormones or meat that may be extremely contaminated with growth hormones. Some choice.
Estimates range between 30% and 80% of meat intended for domestic consumption has had hormones implanted. Research was being conducted on the effects of eating meat contaminated with growth hormones on human beings but the government decided to scrap it.

Winning the battle but losing the war

On December 20 1985, the Council of Ministers of the EEC finally agreed to overrule Britain’s objection, and gave approval to a prohibition of the use of growth promoting hormones on meat animals. Britain obtained special exemption from the ban until 1989. There is a booming black market in animal growth hormones in this country. A drug like DES is not difficult to make in an illicit laboratory and the profits make the risk worthwhile.
In most countries there has never been any prosecutions for illegal manufacture or trading in DES. Inspectors have discovered 5 major drug rings within the last 10 years. The usual fine does not exceed a few thousand pounds. No trafficker has ever been sent to goal.
It seems as if the only group within society who will benefit when hormones finally become illegal will be the person who peddles the drugs – and of course the meat industry which keeps him in business.
You may have wondered why it is that no tests are performed on the carcasses of animals to establish whether they are contaminated. Well, a few tests are performed. My information is that 300 are carried out every year. 300 tests – on an industry that kills and processes 1,400,000 animals each day.
But the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food seems quite satisfied with this amount. They say it would be impossible to do any more because no cheap test has been devised to detect hormones on a larger basis. And it is unlikely that any such test will be developed – because the only place of research in the world that was developing such a test – the Institute for Research in Animal Diseases has had its funding cut away.
It’s not surprising that the cynics are saying that the European decision to ban hormones has, in reality, more to do with trying to reduce the EEC’s massive 75,000 tonne beef mountain, than with protecting the legitimate interests of the consumers.

The Darkness Deepens

All these connections are coming together to paint a very dark picture indeed. A chance meeting between two doctors in a hospital lift; the tragic cases of 1100 little boys and girls in Milan; a Puerto Rican doctor who was so horrified by what she saw in her surgery that she hired a private detective to investigate; and the shabby political manoeuvrings within the EEC.
It is a story of powerful interests acting to protect themselves and their profits, regardless of the true cost to the consumer. In the meat industry it’s a depressingly familiar pattern. By the time you’ve finished reading this book, it’s quite likely that many of your preconceptions about meat (and about the people who sell it) will have been shattered.
We tend to think of it as a ‘pure’ food, possessing a high degree of nourishment, and virtually an indispensable part of the modern diet. So, of course, when we learn about it being contaminated with a substance such as DES, we are quite naturally shocked.
This image of meat as being ‘essential’ and ‘wholesome’ is a relatively recent one, owing much to the long periods of scarcity when meat was virtually unobtainable both during and after the second world war – a period which, ironically, was one of the healthiest in recent British history. Let’s take a closer look at this ‘mythology’ of meat and find out just how close it is to reality.