From Care2 comes the top ten eco-friendly reasons to buy organic meat and dairy, so that you and your family can lead healthy lives and support local farms along the way.
10 green reasons to choose Organic Meat & Dairy:
1. Free of Antibiotics, Added Hormones, GMO Feed and Other Drugs: Organically raised animals are free from all these so that they give healthier more nutritious meat than those raised in factories.
2. Mad Cow Safeguard: Purchasing organic meat is the best safeguard against this dreaded disease as they have been fed 100 percent on organic feed without ground up animal parts.
3. More Ethical Treatment of Animals: Factory farms treat animals like commodities while organic farm looks after them with complete care.
4. Free-Range: Or ‘ranch raised’ animals reared this way receives kinder treatment with a more inclusive diet.
5. Manure: Too much manure harms poses health risk. Therefore, industrial farms are guilty on this count. On the other hand, small farms use little manure to fertilize soil and pose no real risk.
6. Animals Are Integral To Small Farms: Help small farms tend to all the animals efficiently but buying extra animals it sells which again serves as a boon for those farms.
7. Fewer Chemicals Used: Organic farms use less chemicals. Therefore, if you want to avoid residues of chemicals like DDT, PCBs, dioxin, which always concentrates on animal fat, then you have to eat organic meat.
8. Diversity: By buying organic meat, you can support the food supply of small sustainable farms which tend to raise wider species of livestock compared to Industrial farms.
9. Factory Farms Are Resource Hogs: Organic farms manage their energy use through careful ecological plans so that minimal energy is used. On the other hand, factory farms run on cheap, nonrenewable fossil fuel. Buy from local farms and reduce energy use by reducing the distance the food travels to your table.
10. Your Dollars Support Your Farms: Help your community by supporting small local farms by buying meat from an organic farm stand at a farmer’s market.
