I understand the "free range" label can be a barrel full of shit, as in the chickens have access to a tiny side yard with a small door that they open for part of the day.

As for how meat is bad for our systems: Sure, a couple of ounces of red meat is not a problem....a 10 ounce steak though? 3 times a week? Our intestines, stomach acid, etc are not designed to break down that much decaying meat like say, a cats intestines would. Although we're omnivores, we have the intestinal structure more akin to herbivores, in that it is 10-15 times the length of our body, as opposed to a true carnivore's which is much less, and equipped with the means to breakdown rapidly decaying animal proteins fast (i.e. canine teeth in the plenty, very very strong stomach acid, etc)

and I understand that "organic" can mean really only a step away from industrial farming, as in it is the industrial farms producing the "organic" materials 1 field over from where they're producing everything the conventional method. Industrial organic, although I despise it, is still much better than industrial farming which gulps down petroleum at alarming rates. (As in, it takes 10-15 calories of petroleum now to produce 1 calorie of edible food)

as an animal scientist, how can you say meat production doesn't harm the cattle? They're not made to eat corn and other grains, especially in the quantities we're pumping into them. Their entire digestive track gets drastically acidic and causes them pain, including their stomachs expanding to painful, dangerous proportions because of the mucousy film that closes off the top (due to eating corn). How do we deal with this? We give them antibiotics, hormones, etc that are making medical bills skyrocket as bacteria are becoming immune as they evolve to antibiotics given to humans. Grass fed cattle are much more A) sustainable B) healthier for the environment, because they (the cattle) aren't destroying the environment with fecal lagoons, and c) healthier for the animals themselves because their digestive tracks are designed for eating grass, with a PH of 7.

I'm all about sustainability. By this, I mean: asparagus flown in from Chile, garlic from China, beef from Brazil, pigs from Mexico, etc etc are not viable options for a healthy world. Society is gorged on corn, soybeans, and petroleum and it is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. Even if you don't agree with all of this, can you not agree that CAFOs are the cause of lots of super viruses, such as the H1N1 that came from the pig factory farms in Mexico (this was not Mexico's fault, as the farms are owned by American companies)? What about the "mad cow" disease? The cows are only getting that because originally we were feeding them their own species, and when we realized that was a problem, we fed the dead cows to chickens and then the chickens to the cows instead (this is only 1 degree distance cannibalism....it still has problems).

Are you saying you disagree, Lorraine?

Industrially produced food is only cheap because it is being subsidized by the government...which makes it not that cheap for people, because we're the ones fronting the bill for all of it anyway: the corn/soybean farmers losing money on every bushel they produce, the government paying them to make sure they don't produce anything else, the whole subsidizing the entire process, the nitrogen based (produced via petroleum) fertilizers, the pesticides (petroleum based), the genetically modified corn kernels that farmers have to buy every year, because we've taken away their innate ability to reproduce (well, they always had to have our help, with spreading the pollens around...but it was still natural), the antibiotics, the fines for polluting the environment, the hormones, the feed, the cattle recycling process.... it all adds up to a whopping amount of money that might shock the public. The public is willingly ignorant though, because the information is out there to see.