Animal Factories

I'm currently reading Animal Factories by Jim Mason and Peter Singer. Together they also wrote The Ethics of What We Eat and Peter Singer wrote Animal Liberation. Peter Singer is a philosopher who as written extensively on the subject of animal ethics, Jim Mason is an environmentalist, lecturer, journalist and attorney who specializes in human/animal concerns.

I am enjoying the 3rd in this "series" of animal ethics based examinations into animal factory farms, science labs and everything in between. Animal Factories is an in depth look at the details of factory farming covering issues such as the environmental impact of all we do to these poor animals, the ethics of creating "biomachines" and the human health risks of consuming factory farmed meat/poultry/dairy have.

As always, I am going to be sharing interesting things as I read them...

Here's a great explanation of the downfalls of factory farmed eggs. If the environmental benefits of eating organic weren't enough, here's a health reason:

"Most commercial poultry operations therefore use feed additives containing xanthophyll or beta-carotene to enhance the yellow color of skin and egg yolks. The brighter color may be attractive to the shopper's eye, but there is evidence that color additives actually lower the quality of eggs. More important, eggs from caged layers may be lower in some nutrients-particularly vitamin b12 and folic acid-than eggs from free-ranging hens."

-Jim Mason & Peter Singer

(Image: www.historycooperative.org)