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Thursday, June 23, 2005
Pigs
I have had the concern for a while that Romania's imminent accession to the EU will be the ruin of its traditional rural lifestyle, and that the overall effect will be for big corporate agri-business to move in. This article about Smithfield Pork seems to confirm that fear. Just to ram the point home here - these huge meat production companies are the biggest scumbags in a world not exactly lacking in scumbag corporations. These "people" who run these disgusting companies treat animals as products merely to be used as outputs and pumped full of hormones, protein and other shit so that they fatten up as quickly as possible. They disgust me. The average age - average - at which girls get their first period in Arkansas which is full of these pig factories is 9. Nine. The water supply, the earth, everything is polluted with these bastards' hormones. Sorry, if you came here today looking for some interesting news about Romania, but I can't sit silently as Romania is turned into another animal production line for factory farms.
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11 comments:
No, the reason the girls get their period at the age of nine has nothing to do with the hormones in the pigs.
It has everything to do with the fact that they are too fat at the age of nine. Puberty in females starts when they hit about 45kg of body mass. The more pig fat they eat, the quicker they attain the 45kg, the earlier puberty starts.
But, you'd never know that if you'd only listen to left-wing environazis, would you?
Ah how I love right wing abuse from anonymous individuals. "left wing environazis" indeed. Excellent stuff. I suspect from your tone that anyone who gives a shit about the planet falls into this category. Damn those "nazis" hey, wanting to ensure that our children and grandchildren have a future.
I refuse to believe that enough girls in Arkansas are obese enough to mean that the average age at which gisl get their periods is 9. If it was a few, yes, but it's not. The water supply in Arkansas is deeply polluted with growth hormones pumped into trhe pigs and chickens that characterise the "industry" of that state. But, then, as an environazi, I'm afraid I often let facts and fears about the state of the planet get in the way of my love for big business and greater shareholder profits. It's a failing I have, and I freely admit.
I think you should change your name to environazi.
Would be a good handle, or 'tag' as I believe the youths would call it.
Nice frog, varangy.
Hi Varangy, I think nojer's comment was aimed at me as a joke.
After I saw your comment yesterday I went home to see if I could find the source of that stat. The book that I thought it was in proved not to be the book that it was in, if you see what I mean. So right now I'm going to do a spot of googling and see what I come up with.
The anonymous idiot who equates people who disagree with his opinion as nazis, might choose to reflect on which approach to questioning and accuracy gets more results.
Pig farms are foul things; they produce enormous amounts of waste, and are often "hot spots" for labor and OSHA abuses.
That said, I'm skeptical of the Arkansas factoid. A reliable cite would be nice.
N.B., you can throw out the concerns about hormones and still intensely dislike pig factories, for a variety of perfectly valid reasons, and hope they don't come to Romania.
Doug M.
Yes, as it stands, I'm struggling to come up with a link to that Arkansas puberty stat, so for the time being I'll withdraw it until I can locate the source where I originally encountered it.
However, googling various combinations of pig farming, hormones, factory farming, arkansas, puberty, etc does throw up some pretty horrific data, so I'm not withdrawing any of my abhorrence of factory farms
Hello Varangy
I was being sincere in my comment about your avatar being a frog. It is a nice frog; I'm a big fan of frogs, me.
Thanks
Nojer
Andy H:"I refuse to believe that enough girls in Arkansas are obese enough to mean that the average age at which gisl get their periods is 9. If it was a few, yes, but it's not. The water supply in Arkansas is deeply polluted with growth hormones pumped into trhe pigs and chickens that characterise the "industry" of that state."
Andy,
As a teacher you should be deeply ashamed of yourself. First, you post non-sense without backing it up. (Still haven't found the factoid, have you?) Show me a reliable link! Then, your statement above shows your utter lack of knowledge regarding physiology.
The "growth hormones" in the meat do not remain hormones indefinitly. The half-life of human growth hormone is very short (about 30 minutes if I recall, though its messenger IGF-1 has a longer half-life of almost a day.) Regardless, the hormone is metabolized in the body, yielding (among other things) increased muscle mass. [I assume that this is the same in pigs. Don't know much about pig physiology, except that it is often used as a model for the human endocrine system.]
One of the reasons, that doctors INJECT hGH (the other route of adminstration is a nasal spray) into people suffering from growth disorders, is that it CANNOT BE taken per os (that is orally). Why? Because your gastrointestinal tract is very efficient (though not 100%) at breaking down hormones (which BTW are proteins) into aminoacids. Therefore, hGH administered orally HAS ZERO EFFECT.
So, even if there was growth hormone in the pig meat (there's not, it has been metabolized into muscle and other tissue), you couldn't get an effect from eating it, as your GI tract breaks it down.
Get a clue.
Ok, let's go through this slowly:
As a teacher you should be deeply ashamed of yourself. First, you post non-sense without backing it up. (Still haven't found the factoid, have you?) Show me a reliable link! Then, your statement above shows your utter lack of knowledge regarding physiology.
No, I haven;t found the factoid, and I probably won;t now. I believe I have already said so. I read it in what I considered to be a well researched and well refereed book. (I don't tend to quote things that I don;t believe to be true). I no longer have that book with me (I have recently moved from the US to Romania). Googling has been no help.
On to physiology. My statement was that I refuse to believe that enough girls in Arkansas are obese enough to mean that the average age at which girls get their periods is 9. You'll note, if you are able to read, that I haven't disputed the point about physiology. I have merely raised a question as to whether so many girls in Arkansas are as obese as you claim (I regret "refuse to believe" and would like to replace it with "don't believe"). At no point have I claimed any knowledge of physiology. I have absoultely no idea what me being a teacher (which I'm not, actually) has to do with anything. I was a teacher. A teacher of English as a foreign language. When I trained to be so, I must have been absent during the section of the course in which they taught us physiology.
My understanding on the hormones thing is that it is a factor because it is in the water supply (due to the fact that these places have massive factories churning out pigs, which as a by product churn out massive quantities of waste, which enters the water supply. Not from eating meat, per se. (If it were the meat, the effects wouldn't be localised around the factories, but across the whole country).
I'm off to get a clue. If I thought you were actually reading what I write rather than just banging out a load of invective, I'd find this debate quite interesting.
andy h: "My statement was that I refuse to believe that enough girls in Arkansas are obese enough to mean that the average age at which girls get their periods is 9. You'll note, if you are able to read, that I haven't disputed the point about physiology. I have merely raised a question as to whether so many girls in Arkansas are as obese as you claim (I regret "refuse to believe" and would like to replace it with "don't believe")."
Believe it. The mean age of puberty in the U.S. has been falling of late, precisely because girls have been getting fatter at an earlier age. Hence the earlier start of puberty.
"My understanding on the hormones thing is that it is a factor because it is in the water supply (due to the fact that these places have massive factories churning out pigs, which as a by product churn out massive quantities of waste, which enters the water supply. Not from eating meat, per se. (If it were the meat, the effects wouldn't be localised around the factories, but across the whole country)."
How exactly do the hormones "thing" (and which ones precisely) enter the water supply?
Well, obviously I don;t know. And at the moment I don;t have the time to do any research. B ut this weekend I will hit google and see what I can teach myself about growth hormones and their ability (or lack of ability) to imapct the human population. Feel free to pass on any links/sources that you have to aid my self-education.
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