Too Many People Demanding Meat are to Blame for Tainted Beef

Once again beef is being recalled from many shops due to concerns with E.coli, a bacteria. In the most recent case (fall 2012) the tainted beef is coming from the XL slaughter plant in Brooks, Alberta. This plant is also known as Lakeside Packers.

Some people are blaming the cattle producers but ultimately contamination comes from processing, not the producers (the people who raise cattle). And if we go further into it, perhaps the consumers themselves have to share some of the blame.  More people = more demands = more short cuts taken.

If you have never seen a slaughterhouse I assure you it is horrific. On certain days in Brooks the whole city has the smell of the slaughterhouse. XL Foods process (kill) 4,000 animals per day. Each worker on the kill floor has one job (such as gutting the animal) that they may have only seconds to perform before sending it to the next worker).

The XL Foods plant, Lakeside Packers, has been in the news many times, including an issue of violating human rights. At that time Lakeside Packers had a different owner and workers were not allowed bathroom breaks, indeed many reported they were being forced to urinate in their pants while on the production line.

Back then fewer than 3,000 cattle were slaughtered per day, but a new owner has increased production. 

The workers at XL Foods, Lakeside Packers are reluctant to complain about safety concerns or other issues. Most are immigrants, sometimes there is a language barrier, other times they do not know who to talk to, or that there is anything wrong, but mostly it comes down to the fact that they fear for the loss of there jobs – as being immigrants finding work elsewhere can be challenging.

I use to live near Brooks and remember hearing horror stories, with production being increased I can only imagine how much worse things have become. Corners are undoubtedly being cut, and for sure this must be to blame for the current E.coli outbreak.

But do we blame the plant? Ultimately the XL Foods plant must accept responsibility but so too does the consumer. The consumer creates the demand, they are the reason for 4,000 cattle to be killed per day, and 3,000 steaks processed per minute at this plant.  Growing populations mean more demand, no wonder some producers are pumping animals with growth hormones!

Most people in North America eat 4 times as much meat as they should. A steak that feeds one person here is enough to feed a family of four in Japan.

How to Protect Yourself from Tainted Meat

Tainted meat can come from any slaughterhouse, but for sure the larger ones where things are rushed are bound to be more of a concern. With ground beef you are safer to buy it from the butchers and grocers where the beef is ground on site rather than arrives there preground.

Eat less meat, if more people would reduce the amount of meat they ate the slaughterhouses could lower their quota, putting safety quality ahead of quantity. Have two to three meatless days per week, or have smaller portions of meat when you do have it. Currently most people eat more meat than their body needs, this is also a waste of money.

Cook your meat well. Raw hamburger in particular is the most dangerous source for E.coli.

Ultimately we also need to consider the need to stop adding more people to the planet.  More people means more demands for food, and forces producers to cut corners.

We have standards for safe food handling we just have to make sure people are not burdened so much that they cannot meet those standards.

The Ignorance of Humans Makes More Humans Seem Like a Good Idea

Over 7 billion people.  By most accounts that is too many.  But yet when talking to people about over population a good number of people talk as though a decline in population is a bad thing.  I guess their ignorance is bliss but for the rest of us it is horror.

Nobody seems to understand that unless you drop dead the day you become a parent every birth is adding to the population.  They always seem to go back to saying that some people die, but let us be honest, in modern times, and with modern medicine the percentage of people dying has dropped in developed nations.  People are living longer than ever before, there are fewer infant deaths, and as such the population is sky rocketing.

I asked a question on WebAnswers a while ago - you may want to click here to see all the answers http://www.webanswers.com/relationships/parenting-kids/for-maintained-population-how-many-kids-per-couple-729bb1 - I was quite amazed to see how ignorant people were and how many of them remarked that a drop in population was a "bad thing".  Feel free to click here to join WebAnswers and post your own answer to the question if you want to do so.

Here is the problem people are having, I ask how many kids can a couple have to maintain the population.

Suppose they have two kids.  That is doubling the population because two parents is now four people.  Okay, suppose this is a very closed society and forget the rules of inbreeding and incest, let us imagine the two kids get together and have two kids.  The parents are likely still alive, so two people is now six.  Since people are living longer than ever before it is likely that the two kids will reproduce and have two more kids while the original couple is still alive, bringing the total people to eight.  By then with any luck somebody will die, but the population was not maintained it will never go back to being just two!  The population has risen and will remain high in a cycle as long as people do not have more than two, but the initial birth of two kids was growth and should not be denied as such.

I had one kid, then had my tubes tied.  Two parents plus one kid is growth and I am not too stupid to deny that.  However my husband died early when my daughter was 5 so I guess the population did balance itself then.  But let us not kid ourselves into saying that two kids is maintaining the population. 

Maybe the Rapture is a Good Thing

For the most part I do not believe in “The Rapture” (I often thought it was just one of those bribe / threat things used by some religions to control people), however I started to think about it and maybe it would not be such a bad idea after all. In an instant a small percentage of people would vanish, and, if it is anything like in the movies, their clothing would be left behind in a neat little pile.

Not only would we benefit by losing these “holier than thou” folks who look down on everyone else, but this is a great way to reduce the population without having to do anything drastic.

By all accounts the Rapture could whisk away between 30 million and 100 million believers. While not enough by some standards, it is still a dent in the population.

Another benefit, if the Rapture is actually real (and not the delusion of a teenager Margaret MacDonald), is that many of the people who would be “taken” are those who are least concerned with the environment. If you watched the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, you saw how some parents were home schooling their children, telling them that global warming is real, is human caused, but not to worry about it because Jesus will return and save them from the mess they have created upon the earth. They are the head-in-the-sand kind of people that really have chosen to live in denial so they can excuse their wasteful or greedy lifestyles.

A lot of the people who believe in the Rapture are also those who think that the more kids they have the more God will favor them, so they are not really the kind of people the planet needs in terms of sustainability.

So, while I have never believed in the Rapture, I am starting to think that maybe it would not be such a bad idea after all.

Please Don't Kill the Wolf that Killed Me

Have you noticed that when a person in North America is attacked by a wolf (or any wild animal), not only does it make the news, but people form groups and go out with one purpose in mind: kill the wolf!  In fact we are more likely to kill one wildlife animal for being a risk, than we are likely to kill another human being who has killed several other humans...

It does not matter what the circumstances were, the intent is to kill the wolf. You can almost hear people chanting “Kill the Wolf, Kill the Wolf”. Heck, it could be a cougar or bear, for that matter. People just seem to want revenge on the animal, or to prevent it from killing more humans I suppose.

Oh and sharks too – never mind that getting attacked by a shark is pretty easy to avoid – stay out of their water and you won't get eaten!

Let us do some animal math; there are over 7 billion people in the world. There are only 55,000 Grizzly bears, 50,000 cougars, and 100,000 wolves (most of which are in Canada).

 

If a person decides to enter bear territory, and maybe even comes between a mother bear and her cubs, and gets hurt, we blame the bear, we kill the bear, we form mobs that go out looking for the bear and are not satisfied until it is dead.

We have already pushed wild species out of the best parts of the wilderness, which we have claimed for ourselves. We build developments around the best lakes, we plop cities in the river valleys that wildlife have migrated through for generations.

Now, I am not saying I want to go out and get eaten by a wolf, bear, or cougar, I am just saying that if that ends up being my fate, please do not blame the animal. I do not want a murderous mob of people going on a wolf killing rampage through the forest just because one wolf took my life. It should not be front page news either, it is not anymore news worthy than if I die of old age, and natural causes. If we think about it, death by a wolf should be considered a “natural cause”, what's more natural than nature?

As populations of humans continue to grow and expand in to what use to be wildlife territories, we can expect to see more problems with these animals, but are they really the problem, or is it us?

Overpopulation is a Life Changer

This is just a rant.  A rant about people and how they (we) live their (our) lives.

I remember hearing this summer about a drought in Texas, farm animals were starving to death because there were no crops.  If we suppose this is an act of global warming and we can link it to human activity, I wonder how many people affected by the drought changed their way of living. 

Did any of them drive their car less?  Did any of then consume less junk that they do not need anyhow just for the benefit of reducing factory emissions, or did they continue their consumer happy, greedy, lifestyle? 

Did anyone in Texas think "Whoa this is getting worse, gotta do something."?  Probably not.

A lot of people only live for the here and now, I want this, I want that, they do not think of long term implications such as destruction of the planet used to make the item, waste, or even debt.

The same thing is true of family planning, or more correctly, lack of family planning.  "I want a kid" is the thought, never mind if the person is ready (financially, emotionally) to be a parent, or if the planet even needs more kids.  All that matters to a person is that they want a baby, then another, and another.  The next thing you know they are complaining about how tired they are, how much work three kids are and how they have no money.

How is this connected to the drought in Texas?   I almost forgot.  I guess what I am saying is that if we are having more weather problems, and if they are related to human activity, why would anyone who is so concerned continue to pump out children?  If thousands of cattle are dying because we cannot feed them, what are we going to feed our people if we have drought after drought knocking off cattle, and more and more people wanting to be fed? 

It's a no brainer really, less people equals fewer problems, but most of us will be dead before the real crisis hits, it will be felt by our kids and grandkids - and the more of them we have made, the sooner the real problems will be realized...

Will Water be More Valuable than Gold?

Have you ever wondered what substance on earth is the most valuable? Is it oil, is it uranium, is it gold or diamond? The things we value today will not be what we value in the future, because in the future there is one substance that will very likely be more valuable than oil, uranium, gold, or diamonds, and that substance is water!

Although we often think our planet will never fail to provide us with enough drinking water, this may not be true, at least not if we continue adding people and polluting our water. Even today some people pay more for bottled water than they do for gas for their car.

It's not just drinking water we need, we also use water in agriculture; to grow plants, and for our livestock animals. As we add more people to what many would say is an already overpopulated planet, we will continue to require more fresh water.

How Much Fresh Water is there?

About 98% of our water is in the oceans, leave 2 % as fresh water, of which 1.6% is frozen in icecaps and glaciers. 0.36% is ground water, leaving only 0.036% available to us in our rivers, lakes, and streams. Other water is in cloud form, or actually in the bodies of animals, and in plants.

Many people look naively at the oceans and think we have an unlimited amount of water. Even those that are smart enough to realize our fresh water resources are at risk sometimes are ignorant to the risks that our oceans face, and the problems of relying on ocean water to solve the impending crisis of not having enough fresh drinking water. In other words desalinization plants may not be the answer if we continue to add to the population at the rate we currently are.

The Water Crisis will be Fueled by Human Overpopulation

Today we live in a paradox, we are finding ways of bringing fresh, safe, drinking water to more people, but industrialization is resulting in more and more chemicals finding their way into streams, rivers, and eventually the ocean. More people means more demand for fresh water, and it means more people polluting the water we have.

People in some nations (such as El Salvador) are spending over 10% of their total income on safe drinking water. In a world with a growing population and increased pollution, water is becoming a premium resource. For now it might seem that we are improving the supply of fresh water to people who have not had it in the past, but at the same rate we keep adding people to the planet, and making demands of a valuable resource.

Terra Nova got it Wrong

If you have been watching FOX network (American TV) show Terra Nova, you will have seen an overpopulated, over polluted planet in the year 2149. The show is fun to watch but has some flaws, one flaw being that while the people in 2149 live in domed cities and require masks to breath the air they sent people back into the past (through a portal in time to the time of the dinosaurs) to rape the planet for minerals. It seems far more likely to me that the resources they would most want would be fresh drinking water and perhaps even a few dinosaurs to feed all the people.

A Wake Up Call

I just know somebody who is reading this is probably thinking: “What about desalinization?”, Sure we can remove salt from the sea, but desalinization plants cost money how far inland will we pump the water, how much will it cost the consumer, will coastal countries pump water inland to countries that do not have coastlines?

photo source - Whitechuck glacier, Washington - 1973

If you think we can rely on streams, and rivers to continue to supply us with our water, think again. Thanks to global warming glaciers are melting at alarming rates, this includes glaciers in mountain ranges. Snow fall is less and less, and drought is more and more common. Eventually the streams and rivers will run dry for most of the year. Some of our world's glaciers have already vanished, others have shown great rates of retreating since 1980.

The images shows an area of the Whitechuck Glacier, that has retreated more than 1.2 miles (1.9 kilometers) between the times these two photos were taken.

photo source - Whitechuck Glacier - 2006

Have you ever heard of the Aral Sea? If you haven't it is probably because the sea barely exists anymore compared it to what it was years ago. Although it is in a state of recovery now (due to pressure to save the Aral Sea) it was almost gone, due to water being diverted from it for agricultural purposes. It is still mostly too salty for life (having become salty due to the lack of fresh water reaching it for years). It is alarming that so few people have even heard of it since, at one time, the Aral Sea was one of the four largest lakes in the world.

As such I suggest that the most valuable substance on earth is not oil, uranium, gold, or silver, but is one thing we take for granted:  Fresh water.

Human Overpopulation, what do we owe Nature?

As human populations increase, populations of other species fall.  Although few people are aware, we are living in a time scientists have called the Holocene extinction event.  Plants and animal species are going extinct at alarming rates. Undoubtedly some species have gone extinct before we were even aware of their very existence. Other species we wiped out and watched them vanish from the face of the earth, the passenger pigeon being a perfect example of such an extinction.

Some scientists have suggested that over 50,000 species are going extinct every year. Most of these extinctions will be unnoticed and undocumented as they represent flora and fauna we never even knew existed.

Today we continue to control the populations of other species; sometimes directly as when we control the population growth through systematic slaughter, culling, and spay/neuter programs, sometimes indirectly, as when introduced species become invasive and kill other species.

We select which species are important to us, which we dislike, and have decided that the human species is the most important of all. It is extremely ironic that our own species is allowed to reach the numbers it has, topping 7 billion people as of October, 2011, while we try to control so many other populations.

We find it easier to kill off seals so they do not eat “our fish” rather than restricting our population growth, or our consumption of fish. For some reason we have decided that we need to cut the rain forest at a rate where we consume nature faster than it can recover. We decide what are weeds, and remove them because they do not benefit us.  We have allowed humanity to build a large dept to nature that few are interested in repaying.

Do we have the right do destroy other species to maintain our own?

What Debt do we Owe Nature?

I beleive we owe nature a huge debt, one which it seems only a few are trying to repay by living a more sustainable existance, while others are content to consume all they want, have all the kids they want, and live like there is no tomorrow.  Indeed there may be no tomorrow if people do not change their ways.

Controlling our own population is key to our own survival.  If we continue to destroy the environment we doom ourselves to extinction.  Sadly many people reject the notion of human overpopulation, they see it only as an issue of food, not an issue of larger proportions.  If we can control the population of so many other species why do so few people realize there is an issue with the population of the human species and the impact it has on nature?

We owe it not only to nature to control our population, but to ourselves.  We need to realize that we need nature for our own survival and cannot continue to upset the balance of things.  A good example of this would be the Aral Sea, were an entire ecosystem was destroyed, just so we could have a bit of cotton.

We need to realize that it is nature that keeps us alive, not the dollar bill, or large house we live in, or the car we drive.  We need to place the same interest on controlling our population as we do that of other species if we want to continue our existance here, because currently we are consuming resources at alarming rates and driving other species to extinction, and for what?

What debt do we owe nature?  We owe nature our lives.

The Georgia Guidestones Rule of 500,000,000 People

Created in 1979 and unveiled to the public in 1980, the Georgia Guidestones have held a sense of mystery.  Made from 6 granite stones weighing more than 110,000 kg (240,000 pounds) these stones have been inscribed with a message not only written in English, but in 7 other language as well, and shorter messages written in 4 older languages such as Sanskrit.

The Georgia Guidestones stand on a hill in Elbert county, Georgia, approximately 140 km (90 miles) to the east of Atlanta.  They can be accessed from Georgia Highway 77 via Guidestones road.

The 10 inscriptions on the Guidestones are mostly about treating others well, and being respectful of the environment, but the one line that gets the most attention, is the first one, which states: "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature."

Georgia Guidestones

 Some people fear that this suggests an extermination of roughly 6.5 billion people on the planet and have called the writings Satanic.  Others feel no such genocide is being called for and rather the suggestion is made to naturally reduce our population overtime, and simply not allow it to expand beyond that number.

The Georgian Guidestones are not the only place a population of 500,000,000 is suggested.  Philanthropist, and media mogul, Ted Turner, has been linked to the stones through speculation due to him reportedly suggesting a sustainable world population of 500,000,000.  But Ted Turner was not the only one to publicly voice this idea.

A religious group known as the Rosincrucians have often suggested a sustainable world population of 500 million, they too have been linked to the stone through speculation.  Other people, scientists, and people of intelligence, have suggested the same number.

When was the world human population last at 500,000,000 people?  Surprisingly only only 600+ years ago, around 1500.

It is hard to Write about Human Overpopulation

Well, I haven't really written anything on this blog for some time, so I thought I should. Overpopulation has been a concern of mine since I was young. I think I was tuned into this global problem after watching a television series called Logan's Run (it was also a movie), and watching the city I grew up in flood over onto farm land reinforced my concern.

I think I have been ignoring this blog because it seems like I am only preaching to the choir, other people who know what the problem is and are equally as powerless to stop it. The frustration behind seeing a problem that so many are in denial of is exhausting. I cannot help but wonder why so few people are aware that human overpopulation is a real problem. So many people say “Overpopulation is a myth, we are no where near the earth's maximum population”. I think perhaps they are in denial, then I think perhaps they are just stupid, or really bad at math.  No, you really cannot fit all of the earth's people easily onto a state the size of Texas. 

I guess some people think that the maximum population situation is when one person too many is born and God steps in to shut down the planet or something. They do not realize that we are already in a crisis, already relying heavily on non-renewable resources (the ones we never get back), and using up renewable ones at a rate faster than they can be renewed (do the math, that doesn't look good).

People are living mostly for the here and now, and not thinking of the future, after all most of us will be dead before things are so bad that drastic action will have to be taken. Oh wait, drastic action has already been taken, has it not? One-child policies? What about famine? Is mother nature taking drastic action just as Thomas Malthus predicted over 100 years ago?

Most countries will do nothing to stop population growth, more people mean more tax dollars flowing to the top, and of course it would be political suicide for any elected official to suggest population control measures.

What can we, as people on a planet flooded with 7 billion souls, do? I guess we can try to educate others. Educate others to be responsible, consume less, reproduce less, and maybe not try to live as long. Educating others to adopt our ways of thinking on the problems of overpopulation is really the toughest part, its easy to preach to the choir, but to get others to sing along is a bit tougher.

I guess that is why I have not written here for so long. Writing to my pet advice blog is easy, people come there looking for help, looking for information, people just do not spend the same time looking up information on overpopulation unless it is already something they know about.

Overpopulation Hypocrites

Most people recognize that there is a pet overpopulation problem. Animal shelters in the USA alone euthanize millions of pets every year to deal with this problem. Pet owners are constantly being encouraged to spay or neuter their pets, in effort to combat the growing problem of having more pets born every year than there are homes for.
 

Even when we go to countries where animal shelters are not present to euthanize excess animals, or to spay and neuter, we see “other” control measures being used. Poison is put out or the animals are tossed into pits to die slow deaths.

 

It seems odd that we, as humans, can recognize overpopulation in other species, and have no problems acting on it. We euthanize the unwanted, and we try to sterilize the masses that remain. Yet most countries do not even allow doctor assisted suicide, and laws that once saw some people sterilized (as in Alberta, Canada from 1928 to 1972) are considered outrageous and a violation of human rights.

photo source

On a planet with over 7 billion people, and over 1 billion of those living in dire need, we have crossed a line, and are refusing to deal with the consequences. Those who preach about spaying and neutering pets, need to also consider their own contribution to human overpopulation.

For the record, all my cats are spayed or neutered, and I had my tubes tied months after my first, and only, child was born.

Anyone who is concered about pet over population, and the "animal holocaust" needs to also see the problem as it exists in the human species.  People who worry about too many seals eating fish, too many deer in the forest, and too many unwanted pets, had better look at the growing numbers of humans on the planet too.

What is the Current World Population?

There is no certain answer as to what the exact human population is.  By following past data we can only predict, or estimate, what the population actually is.  Of course it may be larger than predicted due to the fact that in many nations births are not accounted for properly.

The United States has a "Clock" that reports what it thinks is the current US, and World Population at any given moment.  The Clock is updated every five minutes based on the suggested rate of births, and deaths.  Currently births exceed deaths, and the population climbs by the minute.

A screen shot shows where it is at the time of this blog posting.

So roughly 6.9 Billion people are on the This Shrinking Planet as of February 2, 2011.  To make things interesting, why not check out the ever changing Population Clock yourself, click here.