The MEATrix

Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

- KENNETH E. BOULDING

If the UN-FAO Report on "Livestock’s Long Shadow –Environmental Issues and Options" does not mean anything to you, you might find this award winning movies interesting: The Meatrix I, II, and II1/2 (Indonesian subtitled). Whether we (represented by Leo) take the blue pill and remain in a fantasyland or will he face the bitter pill reality? ... it's all in our hands. Some may say that the movie is a crap or not a serious one, still there are truth in it. Just read several articles and find the facts and statistics relating factory farm issues. There are disturbing facts and several dangers on factory farming and food safety: artificial hormones, antibiotic resistant germs, massive pollution/environmental problems, cruelty treatment, antibiotics overuse, mad cow disease and community destroyed. We should save the environment and our health by considering not consuming cow-meat again.

Fast Food Nation, published in 2001 and a New York Times bestseller, was an incendiary nonfiction exploration of the factory farming and fast food industry. Fast Food Nation is a Recorded Picture Company production directed by Richard Linklater and written by Eric Schlosser and Linklater. With several issues shown in the book and in the 'documentary movie', I’ll be quite surprised if they're not vegetarians in real life. The same surprise, if I found that Morgan Spurlock is continuing his rituals having meals in McDonald resaurants after being supersized at the 30th day period. He is an American independent filmmaker who wrote, produced, directed and starred "Super Size Me", an Academy Award-nominated 2004 documentary film.

Other things to chew on (other than the french fries you're lovin' it!):

[The statistics are showing those in the US, but they should be approximately applicable to any place in the globe. Btw we all have only one earth]

• More energy is consumed by the beef industry than any other single industry in the US,
• If we were to reduce by 50% our meat consumption, we could totally eliminate our reliance on nuclear power throughout the US,
• The same resources that are used to produce one pound of beef can produce sixteen pounds of grain,
• Rainforests account for an astounding 80% of the eart's vegetation, and are critical to our ecosystem. The US imports 10% of its beef from Central and South America. In order to meet this need, rainforests are being eliminated at a pace of one acre every five seconds.

The decision about what to put on your dinner plate tonight is one that has profound processional effects. It sets in motion a whole series of events and activities that are shaping the quality of life on earth. Behind the chuck steak hides the forests that have been cut down, our children's food and water supply, our children's top soil, their future environment. And we have to look at the steak and say, 'That costs too much.' Real power lies in the decisions you make in the supermarket and in restaurants and in your kitchen.
(Robbins, John, "Diet for a new America"; Robbins Research Report, "The Fate of Our Planet" - cited from Anthony Robbin's "Awaken the Giant Within")