What are the secret ingredients in that hamburger?
Large predatory fish, for example, may contain harmful amounts of mercury—a neurotoxin that accumulates as one goes up a food chain. And about 80 percent of human exposure to dioxin comes from eating animal-based foods. Eating meat means indirectly eating whatever the animal ate. That can include pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and any other chemicals that accumulated in the creature’s flesh. Mad Cow disease (also known as BSE or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) is an example of how diseases can spread in our centralized food production and distribution system. This disease, for which to-date there is no treatment nor cure, occurs when prions, a mysterious protein particle, attacks healthy, normal cells in the brain. The result is Mad Cow disease, which becomes worse with time and eventually leads to death. Scientists believe that cows catch this disease by eating infected protein and bone meal made with ground-up, leftover parts from other cows and sheep. Because of this, in 1997,
