It doesn’t seem to matter much these days which direction you take. The human race is eating up our resources and worse, we seem to be trying to modify the natural world to bend it to fill our pockets. Corporations, particularly in the US seem bent more than ever on owning, not just ruling but owning the world.

Corn in the US is being grown in staggering amounts. We’re not only feeding our people, more so we’re feeding our cattle, pork and poultry corn. Those animals did not evolve to eat corn. Crops are being subsidized by the US government so that corporations can actually purchase corn for less than it costs to grow it. So who pays the difference? We do. Yes, food is cheap. If you go to any of the major hamburger joints you can get a burger, fries and a soda for less than you can cook a meal for. But what’s in it? How is it grown or raised? The largest fast food hamburger company is the largest purchaser of beef and of potatoes. There are four corporations that control the entire beef industry in the US. What they say goes. If you want to raise cattle, grow corn or grow potatoes, then you’ll do what they tell you to do, period.

Cattle are not bred on ranches anymore. They stand ankle deep in their own feces, side by side, stuffed into corrals barely large enough to contain them. They don’t move, they just stand and eat corn as it travels past them in conveyors. The FDA has put laws into place that demand procedures to make sure the food is sanitary. Ranchers say they’ve had their beef tested using the same kinds of tests the FDA requires without using the FDA mandated procedures The ranchers beef was significantly more sanitary than the beef producing giants. So why the regulations? Because for smaller numbers of cattle the procedures are prohibitively expensive. That is, the FDA is protecting the large corporations by making it too expensive for small ranchers to stay in business.

The poultry grown in the US is so inhumane that the big poultry purchasers will not permit their growers to allow news media to take pictures inside the buildings where the poultry live. They are also not allowed to make any comments on the procedures. Some have come forward out of a feeling of obligation toward common decency and have lost their contracts. A lady who is not a poultry grower was at a fair. She was given a few chicken eggs to watch them hatch, which they did. She said the chickens grew in 3 months so big that they could barely move. All they did was sit and eat. In a short time they all died.

In fact, the average chicken grown for the market grows to twice the size in half the time as they did just 10 years ago. They are weak and frail and high percentages of them die due to extremely inhumane conditions.

Many believe that the food industry is causing most of the top fatal illnesses that are common to Americans, such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and more. With the anti-biotics, hormones and steroids being pumped into our meat; preservatives put into our food and water and drastic genetic altering of our meat and vegetation, it is no wonder. The FDA, the EPA and the AMA all know this. Some speculate that the immoral practices of the food industries in the US are causing many different illnesses. Until recently, the answer never seemed to be prevention, you only ever heard about treatments. Ways to cure the flu, different types of hemorrhoid treatment, acid indigestion relief and it goes on and on and on.

Fishing doesn’t look any better. Fish farms are becoming more and more popular as commercial fishing boats consistently deplete the fish populations. Fish that less than 100 years ago were plentiful are barely existent now. The great blue marlin for example is in serious danger. Tuna fish are being pulled out of the sea by the millions. Our reefs are being severely over fished. Government organizations have sprung into action to try to preserve the resources in our oceans. For example, the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary just south of Key West is showing great success with bringing back populations of red snapper, mutton snapper, red and black grouper and many other species of fish that were on the brink of extinction. The Key West sport fishing charters have even been claiming that the red snapper, still highly protected is taking over the reefs off Key West.

The European Union, the single greatest influential power in the commercial fishing industry has determined that drastic measures need to be taken to preserve their trade. They have started efforts to completely rewrite the Common Fisheries Policy which is currently way too lax. People all over the world depend heavily on fish to survive. When fish disappear from one area, they disappear from our oceans completely.

It appears that corporations involved in farming and breeding meat for food are exclusively interested in making high profits in the short term. They show no compassion at all for the common people, the animals they are raising or anything else. The US government seems to have been wholly purchased by these corporations and organizations like the FDA and the EPA serve to protect their interests and not our interests, health or environment. They don’t seem at all concerned with the long term effects they will have on the very industries that are bringing them those profits.

Conversely, the commercial fishing industry seems to be aware of the fact that they are currently fishing themselves out of business. They, not without exception are taking measures to stop over-fishing, to establish fisheries around the globe to breed more fish and to set up sanctuaries where fish can replenish their populations. The corporations and organizations involved in the fishing industry are in cooperation with governmental agencies, and even urging them to put viable sanctions into place to protect the resources in our oceans and seas. In many cases, around the globe, governmental agencies are being pressured into reforming their regulations to better help solve the problem of over fishing.