Cattle Shipping "He who loves God not only will love his fellow men but will regard with tender compassion the creatures which God has made. When the spirit of God is in man, it leads him to relieve rather than to create suffering." —E. G. White   In the process of shipping cattle, they are exposed to one of two extremes: scorching heat in the summer, and freezing cold in the winter. They may spend as much as three days and nights without food or water on the trucks. 1 Often the calves have recently been weaned and/or castrated, adding to their stress and fear. Many die from a form of pneumonia, appropriately called "shipping fever." Rather than remedy the cause of the problem, they are given a very dangerous antibiotic called chloramphenicol to keep the deaths down. 2 By the way, this drug has proven fatal in some people in as small a dose as 32 milligrams. One can easily get this amount in a quarter pound of beef with a residue count of eight parts per million. 3 However, commercially shipped animals have been found to have residue counts as high as 100 parts per million! The animals who do make it to the end of the journey are not doing as well as those who didn't. Many have broken legs, cuts and bruises, but as long as the injuries do not effect the profits, no one cares. 4   Animals are packed into overcrowded feedlots where they are fed things like sawdust, ammonia, feathers, shredded newspaper, toxic ink, plastic "hay," processed sewage, tallow, grease, poultry litter, cement dust, cardboard, insecticides, antibiotics, hormones, artificial flavors and smells (to entice them to eat this "food"!) 5 Although it is recognized that the food is making the animals sick, no one is concerned as long as the animals make it to market before they finally die. 6   We are told that the hormones are natural, and therefore healthful, but what we are not told is that they are given in unnatural amounts. The body manufactures what it needs, and is very sensitive to them. If our taste buds were as sensitive to various flavors as our target cells are to hormones, we would be able to detect one solitary grain of sugar in a swimming pool full of water. 7 Extra hormonal amounts are very harmful, whether obtained directly or indirectly, as is the case with just about any and all animal products. I strongly believe that one of the reasons we see kids entering puberty at increasingly younger ages, and see such high rates of cancer in adults, is the high amounts of growth hormones pumped into the cattle and other animal products that are then eaten. These hormones can cause premature development in the young and abnormal growths in those who are no longer growing. All rights reserved Copyright © 2006 By J. Lee