Your POULTRY may be PALTRY!

Well today is circumstantially the BEST day to be continuing our discussion of America's tainted meat supply by talking about poultry--chicken and turkey, specifically.  Why is today such a grand day to talk about our feathered friends, you ask?  Not sure if you've happended to hear about the recent discovery of salmonella-tainted turkey that has lead to over 70 cases of illness and 1 death in the past week or so; BUT, this morning it was released that the USDA (your Government, people!) has known about this threat at this particular processing plant since last year!  As it turns out, the USDA doesn't classify salmonella as harmful enough to warrant a halt in production--as it does with another common threat, E. coli.  Thus, it seems, plants like the one under examination in Arkansas aren't technically at fault for continuing production of tainted turkeys!  Lovely!
Back to the task at hand:  taking a peek into our nation's commercially-operated poultry providers.  I'm not going to go into details about the rancid, putrid, AWFUL "living" conditions that both turkeys and chickens are kept.  We have heard it all before and, frankly, even though it paints a clear enough picture as to why we should avoid giving money to that industry, I don't think I can bear having to type the words.  (Side note:  I own free-range chickens that are well-kept, happy and fabulously entertaining.  I can't even believe there are people/corporations out there that are OKAY with how they treat these animals!)  If you're in need of a brief outline, take a look at the list below:

• Sheds with no light
• De-beaking with no anesthetic
• Confined wire cages, stacked on top of one another
• Forced molting using near-boiling water
• Near suffocation from confines
• Dehydration before mass-slaughter

Is that enough--because that's only a smidge of what all goes on!  Now to "...what we eat has eaten."  One of the things in commercially-administered chicken feed is roxarsone--a form of ARSENIC additive.  Guess what...arsenic doesn't GO AWAY--it stays there...in the chicken flesh...for us to consume later.  YUM!  This is in addition to the myriad of antibiotics given to these chickens to avoid/treat yet another myriad of disease-causing viruses and bacteria that run rampant in their disgusting living conditions.  What's worse is that some of these harmful micro-organisms have become resistant to the antibiotics and can still make their way onto our dinner plate, hitching a ride on that mass-produced chicken breast!  Which would you like to have for dinner tonight:  disease-causing micro-organism OR commercially-injected antibiotics--you'll probably end up with both (and let's not forget the ARSENIC!).
Luckily, more and more actual farmers are catching on the fact that humans should not consume what comes out of these factories and are raising free-roaming chickens and turkeys for sale to reputable retailers and individual consumers.  Although chicken is touted as some of the best, most nutritious forms of protein we could eat, free-range turkey actually ranks higher on the scale!  Here's something you'd probably never guess:  pasture-raised, antibiotic-free turkey is an excellent source of CALCIUM--who'da thunk--AND there's more high-quality protein in one gram of this turkey than in one gram of beef!  Don't forget chicken altogether, however; it's still a powerful protein--as long as it's free-range, antibiotic-free, and humanely-raised.  (Eventually I'm going to discuss dark vs. white and the great debate--not enough time or space today!)  Do you feel like poultry tonight?
We'll cover seafood next time.