Every Corruption a Health Hazard
Whenever a food or forage crop is corrupted in any way in the interest of unnatural, greedy, excessive profit, the animal or plant proteins are one of the first factors to be diminished. The carbohydrates are, in turn, increased. Is it any wonder that many of us have difficulty building muscle while others have problems with an excess of fat? "Protein deficiency in a parent animal causes a one-generation mutation — a degeneration — in the offspring — a loss, not a gain. Choosing breeding stock for fattening ability, with its failing physiologies, rather than for health and survival degenerates a species" (Albrecht, pp. 199-200).
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We must build both health and character: they cannot be bought. Besides the protein loss, there is also the loss of trace elements when the soil is depleted or the heredity of plants is forcibly altered. Many of the trace elements are vitally needed to help the animal or human body make proper use of all the nutrients in food. In some cases, experimenters have recently been able to tell us that certain deficiency diseases in animals and humans can be caused by the loss of certain trace elements. But man does not yet know to what extent our multitudes of new diseases are brought on by these deficiencies.
In some cases, both degenerative breeding and deficiency are associated with the same disease. Degeneration weakens the animal so that it is more likely to become ill by malnutrition.
Instead of using manure and natural rock fertilizers containing major, minor, and trace elements in proper proportions, men have tried to offset soil depletion by use of water-soluble chemical fertilizers, containing unnatural combinations of major elements which deposit in the soil poisonous residues ranging from washing soda to sulphuric acid (Make Friends With Your Land by Leonard Wickenden, pp. 63, 117).
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Wide World Photo
Mineral starvation can bring on a multitude of diseases,
even if the animal is able to maintain normal weight.
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Antibiotics Can Harm You
In a vain attempt to offset the harm he has brought upon his livestock, man has resorted to chemicals and drugs, which have no food value and serve no actual beneficial purpose. Doctors readily admit there is no drug without harmful side effects.
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Wide World Photo
Many cattle herds are sprayed en masse with DDT and other insecticides which
breed resistant strains of insects and also build up poison residues
in the animals' fat and internal organs. Some farmers avoid
this contaminant by having healthy cattle that do not suffer from pests.
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Dr. Harry E. Kingman, Jr., Executive Secretary of the American Veterinary Association, stated that "medications in feed have done about as much harm as they have done good.
"Livestock owners are [now] being encouraged," he continued, "to look to feed additives as disease control agents. This is an area where feed additives can do more harm than good (even from the viewpoint of veterinary medicine).
"Continued administration of drugs is inclined to produce resistant strains of bacteria so that when you really need treatment, the drug is not as effective as it could and should be.
"[There is also] the residual problem in which these drugs are found in human food, either in the milk, or in the meat. People who are sensitized to these drugs can have severe reactions to antibiotic contaminated foods." From D-X Sunray Farm Information Center, #312, July 24, 1959.
It has been proved by government-backed and private experiments that chemicals in foods are partly responsible for many of our modern allergies, which were virtually unknown in the last century, before the advent of all these corruptions.
Just how harmful are the chemicals in YOUR meat and milk? Notice this admission from Western Farm Life:
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"The presence of antibiotics in market milk is recognized as a danger by the Food and Drug Administration.
"Accumulation of antibiotics in the human system reduces the immune response of non-specific infections. This could mean more colds, more influenza, more pneumonia, more of almost anything. [And that is exactly what we have been having] Coupled with this is the fact that the use of antibiotics to cure mastitis is not killing the bacteria, but simply breeding more resistant strains. The most dangerous of these is a staphylococcal microbe (staphylococcus aureous), a human killer.
"Thus, as antibiotics are lowering our resistance to disease, their use on animals is also creating more dangerous disease bacteria." With such a drastic DOUBLE RISK forced upon the consumer, is it any wonder that we have so much sickness today? Who can blame those few hardy individuals who have turned against today's system and have moved out to the suburbs to produce their own food?
Why Use Chemicals
Some ask, "Didn't the authorities prohibit the use of harmful additives in raising livestock?" The answer is a definite "No." What the Food and Drug Administration specifically prohibited was not antibiotics or chemical additives in general, but stilbestrol pellet implants in chicken necks. When it was proved that growth stimulants used in the feed of 80% of our cattle and poultry causes cancer, the government made the feed manufacturers reduce its use to supposedly safe levels. Stilbestrol is frequently disguised under the innocent-sounding term "plant sterol." Being a plant derivative does not make a chemical harmless. Many of our potent poisons, drugs and chemical contaminants are derived from plants.
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Michigan State University Photo
This poor calf, horribly deformed by
rickets, is a victim of malnutrition.
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Some will wonder why chemicals known to be dangerous are used in the production of our food supply. The answer is — money!
"Cost of stilbestrol is low in respect to its average return. Each dollar spent for stilbestrol can be expected to return about $15 to the producer. No other feed additive has given as large or as consistent benefits in beef cattle supplements. Its use is almost standard practice in feedlots over the nation." Gulf Farm Review. These artificial hormones rob men of virility and make men effeminate and weak-willed.
A whole host of chemicals, however, are profitable enough to make their use prominent despite these dangers. Experimenters in Mississippi State College proved that "use of a tranquilizer fattened steers 14 per cent faster, and gave a 23 per cent decrease in the amount of feed required per pound of fat."
Experimenters and producers alike are interested in money, and in fat because it makes more money. If God had intended livestock to be just moneymaking machines to satisfy the lusts of men, He would not have said: "A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel" (Prov. 12:10). Most men are not interested in the welfare of their livestock; and they have also forgotten that Christ commanded: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." (Matt. 22:39) Men are legally selling as food many products that are not fit to be put in the human system.
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We have too long been told that to be "well stuffed" is to be healthy. Proof of the opposite is all around us. Many supposedly well fed people in their thirties and forties are dropping dead of heart attacks all around us. Livestock are even more susceptible than man to corruptions that are standard in our diets. In a herd of 28 fine cattle, 13 DROPPED DEAD in three years when fed the degerminated grain so universally used in our nation (Annals N.Y. Academy of Science, 1948, V. 52, pp. 256-259).
God created foodstuffs in a perfect, harmonious balance. Everything in nature — mineral, plant, and animal — has its working partners in the whole interdependent creation: nothing is complete when isolated. God is the author of cooperation and community spirit of a right sort. His whole creation eloquently attests to this fact. Soil feeds plants; plants feed animals and man; byproducts of plants and animals decompose in soil and feed myriads of microorganisms that turn inert minerals into balanced plant food. Then the cycle is repeated.
All foodstuffs are composed of many mutually helpful component parts. Many times one part is useful only in helping the human or animal system use the other parts. But men want to isolate everything and then call it "pure." When one part is taken away by soil depletion, hybridization, chemical pollution, processing, or any other factor, there is a chain reaction of sickness and inadequacy throughout the whole interdependent life cycle. By actual test even the manure of a poorly fed animal has been proved to produce plants of inferior quality (Albrecht, pp. 179-182).
We cannot breed plants to tolerate a starvation diet of chemicals and depleted soil. Neither can we breed animals to tolerate a starvation diet of corrupt forage crops. An animal of degenerate heredity cannot be made totally healthy by good feeding. We must have both fertile soil and good breeding in order to produce good animals and foodstuffs fit for human consumption.
God holds the producer responsible for growing quality foods. He intended that farmers should be studious, progressive, well educated individuals fully capable of handling the responsibility of properly nourishing humanity. Health is important! God intends the farmer to be a pillar in his community. One who doubts this has only to study the complicated structure of the agricultural laws in the Bible. No other secular occupation has been given a set of Biblical laws even remotely comparable to the laws of agriculture. These laws cannot be fully understood without considerable educational progress. The production of the food that gives either health or degeneration is certainly an honorable position worthy of the dedicated effort of top quality men. God commands: "If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are" (I Cor. 3:17).
In these days of utter corruption, many consumers will be willing to throw up their hands in defeat and cooperate with producers and processors — by continuing to use foods that are making the populace effeminate, cowardly, sick, and crippled. But it is still possible to obtain quality food if one is willing to put forth effort.
The world's system was just about as corrupt in Christ's day as it is now. Leprosy and other degenerative diseases ran rampant. Yet Peter was able to boast that he had never eaten corrupt food (Acts. 10:14). Peter had been blessed with parents who were diligent in their efforts to rear healthy children. His resultant physical virility enabled Peter to accomplish great things in the New Testament Church. Are you doing as much for your children?
To be continued next issue, with proof that wrong methods of selection and breeding are now critical factors in this crisis.