The Organic Consumers Association and the Clean Label project recently tested 28 top-selling collagen supplement brands sold through Amazon. The results from testing show that 64% of supplements tested positive for measurable levels of arsenic, 37% tested positive for measurable levels of lead, 34% tested positive for trace levels of mercury, and 17% tested positive for measurable levels of cadmium.

Related: Top 5 Foods that Detox Heavy Metals and Toxins – With Protocol

Consumers should be concerned if they are regularly taking collagen supplements, as heavy metals even in low levels can cause organ damage, and some heavy metals are known carcinogens.

Despite labeling claims such as “Pure,” “All-Natural” and “Cleanest Nutrition Possible,” and deceiving images of grazing cows, open pastures and cage-free chickens on packaging and websites, most collagen peptide supplements are derived from industrial factory farms—and many collagen products contain heavy metals.

Consumer Beware: These Popular Collagen Supplements Contain Heavy Metals

Many people begin taking collagen supplements as they get older because lower collagen levels can cause wrinkles stiff joints and other health problems associated with old age. Collagen is made ground up animal byproduct that is turned into gelatin and then broken down into smaller peptides to be more easily absorbed by the body. Animals raised on industrial factory farms frequently come into contact with heavy metals, oftentimes through their food and drinking water.

In the original article published by Organic Consumers, you can read a full list of products tested.

Related: How to Detoxify from Vaccinations & Heavy Metals

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) have announced that they will co-sponsor the Farm System Reform Act (FSRA) introduced by Cory Booker (D-NJ). Khanna also introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives. The FSRA is designed to move the United States agricultural system away from factory farming by immediately stopping the construction of new factory farms, the expansion of existing farms, and phasing out the largest farms by 2040. Booker initially proposed the legislation in December of 2019, and the current pandemic-induced food system woes and COVID-19 have inspired Senator Warren and Representative Khanna to show their support for the legislation.

For years, regulators looked the other way while giant multinational corporations crushed competition in the agriculture sector and seized control over key markets…The COVID-19 crisis will make it easier for Big Ag to get even bigger, gobble up smaller farms, and lead to fewer choices for consumers….”

Senator Elizabeth Warren

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The Farm System Reform Act also includes a $100 Billion voluntary buyout program for contract farmers who want to move away from factory farming, strengthens family farmer and rancher protections, prohibits the USDA from labeling imported meat as Product of the U.S.A., and reinstitutes mandatory country of origin labeling for beef, pork, and dairy.

Our food system was not broken by the pandemic and it was not broken by independent family farmers…It was broken by large, multinational corporations like Tyson, Smithfield, and JBS that, because of their buying power and size, have undue influence over the marketplace and over public policy.”

Senator Cory Booker

Sources:

• Elizabeth Warren Backs Cory Booker’s Bill to Shut Down Factory Farms – Veg News
• Sen. Cory Booker Just Dropped a Bill That Includes First-Ever National Factory Farm Moratorium – Food and Water Watch

President Trump’s recent executive order to keep meat and poultry processing plants open during the COVID-19 pandemic might not be enough to keep farmers from culling their herds. Chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture Collin Peterson, D-Minnesota, told a CNN reporter, Manu Raju, that farmers will have to kill 60,00 to 70,000 pigs a day due to the lack of processing plants.

I think you are going to see some grocery stores have shortages of pork next week…(if shutdowns continue) you can end up running out of pork completely.”

Collin Peterson, House Agriculture Chairman

While consumers will be dealing with pork shortages, farmers will have to find a way to dispose of the hogs. There are serious environmental and health implications for each of the disposal methods available to farmers, which include burning, burying, and composting.

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Burning the pig carcasses creates air pollution. After a 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak in the U.K. necessitated the slaughter of 6.5 million animals, researchers calculated that every burned pig carcass generated around three pounds of particulate matter. Burial is the cheapest option, but the carcasses release liquid that leaches into the water supply. Nitrates are particularly toxic to infants at high levels. Composting is the most eco-friendly method of the three, but it requires resources that farmers may not be able to easily locate. Management of the composting will require a subject expert and enough carbon-rich material like sawdust or leaves.

If the food supply chain breaks down, the dichotomy will be painful. Farmers will continue to produce food, but without a way to process it, consumers will be unable to purchase it.

Sources

• As slaughterhouses close, farmers may have to cull thousands of hogs a day. Those carcasses need to go somewhere—and there are no good options – The Counter
• Trump is keeping meatpacking plants open — but employees are scared to show up for work – Vox

As COVID-19 deaths in the United States finally pass the 1 million mark, another population will see a decline of twice that many. Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc announced that poultry plants in Delaware and Maryland will “depopulate” (humanely kill) 2 million chickens due to a lack of workers at processing plants. Typically depopulation is used when there is an infectious disease outbreak. Allen Harim, the poultry processor planning on depopulating its birds, informed growers of the decision in a letter circulated on Facebook.

Related: Economic Recession Will Likely Kill More Children Than Total Coronavirus Death Toll

When we started noticing the downward trend in attendance, we reduced the number of eggs set and chicks placed. Unfortunately, reduced placements will not make an impact for another six weeks, and with the continued attendance decline, and building bird inventory daily, we are forced to make a very difficult decision.

Starting Friday, April 10, we will begin depopulating flocks in the field. If your flock is chosen, we will reach out to you and provide further details. Growers, whose flocks we depopulate, will be fairly compensated by Allen Harim.

Michele V. Minton, Director of Live Operations

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Allen Harim was previously in the news in February when one of their plants was shut down for failing to comply with regulatory sanitary conditions requirements. The plant was closed for four days before it reopened.

The depopulation of healthy birds due to a lack of processing capabilities further supports the full-page ad placed in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by Tyson Foods.

Millions of animals – chickens, pigs, and cattle – will be depopulated because of the closure of our processing facilities. The food supply chain is breaking…”

John Tyson, CEO of Tyson Foods

The USDA is purchasing 3 billion dollars in produce, dairy, and meat from farmers in attempts to reduce food waste and stabilize the markets. Even with these measures, meat prices will likely rise from 1% to 3% as a result of the pandemic shutdown.

Sources:

• 2 million chickens will be killed in Delaware and Maryland because of lack of employees at processing plants – CNN
• Allen Harim chicken plant reopens, yet ‘sanitary conditions’ that closed it remain unknown – Poultry Producer
• Tyson Foods chairman warns ‘food supply chain is breaking’ as coronavirus forces plant closures – CNBC

At this point, many epidemiologists do not believe that SARS-CoV-2 made the jump from animal to human in the infamous Wuhan wet-market. Since a lot of people caught it from the market back in January much of the media decided that the Chinese proclivities for wild animals were to blame for the pandemic. This helped perpetuate a racist narrative. Many are even calling for a ban on wet markets.

There is a growing body of evidence that points to a different origin story for Covid-19. We now know that none of the animals tested at the Wuhan seafood market tested positive and about a third of the initial set of reported cases in people in Wuhan from early December 2019 had no connection to the seafood market, including the first reported case. And we also now know, thanks to the leak of an official Chinese report to the South China Morning Post that the actual first known case of Covid-19 in Hubei was detected in mid-November, weeks before the cluster of cases connected to the Wuhan seafood market were reported.

…

The scientists conclude that SARS-CoV-2 evolved from natural selection and not genetic engineering in a lab, and they say that this natural selection occurred through two possible scenarios. One is that it evolved into its highly pathogenic form within humans. In this case, a less pathogenic form of the virus would have jumped from an animal to a human host and then would have evolved into its current form through an “extended period” of “undetected human-to-human transmission”. Under this scenario, there is no reason to believe that the Wuhan seafood market had anything to do with the evolution of the disease, even if it is quite possible that an infected person at the market could have transmitted it to others.

New research suggests industrial livestock, not wet markets, might be origin of Covid-19

Farm animals can be an excellent incubator for virtual diseases that are evolving to make a jump to humans.

The overwhelming majority of farmed animals are kept in dark, unsanitary, overcrowded factory farms, which stresses their immune systems. Worse, they’re bred primarily for rapid growth and maximum output, not robustness, and their genetic similarity makes them especially likely to transmit disease to one another. Animal after animal, they are churned through the system, often on the same dirty floors, the same stagnant trucks, and the same slaughter lines. This system puts everyone’s health at risk.

Reducing pandemic risk begins with ending factory farming

But even if the first human was infected at the Wuhan market it’s still easy to point a finger at factory farming.

It’s true, in other words, that an expanding human population pushing into previously undisturbed ecosystems has contributed to the increasing number of zoonoses – human infections of animal origin – in recent decades. That has been documented for Ebola and HIV, for example. But behind that shift has been another, in the way food is produced. Modern models of agribusiness are contributing to the emergence of zoonoses.

Is factory farming to blame for coronavirus?

If you’re not doing it already, it’s time to start growing your own food!

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In a recent report released by World Animal Protection (WAP) entitled U.S. Pork and the Superbug Crises, 80 percent of the samples tested from Walmart Stores in the Mid-Atlantic region contained bacteria resistant to at least one antibiotic. On the samples that tested positive for antibiotic-resistant (AR) bacteria, 37 percent exhibited resistance to at least three classes of antibiotics. More than a quarter of AR bacteria found on Walmart pork was resistant to Highest Priority Critically Important Antimicrobials (HPCIA), the treatments the World Health Organization (WHO) has determined to be the most essential for human medicine. WAP concludes their report…

This retail pork testing revealed the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria on pork products. The findings complement strong existing research on how excessive antibiotics use on farms is creating the conditions for superbugs to thrive, and the opportunities for transmission to the food chain.”

Sad Walmart

Researchers began with a total of 160 pork samples, 80 of them purchased from a number of different Mid-Atlantic Walmart locations and 80 from a competing national retailer. After dividing samples into 32 batches and testing them at a Texas Tech University Laboratory, they found Enterococcus in 27 batches, E. coli in 14 batches, Salmonella in six batches, and Listeria in four batches. 41 of those 51 bacteria were resistant to at least one class of a medically important antibiotic. 21 were multi-drug resistant (resistant to three or more classes), and three bacteria were resistant to six classes of antibiotics.

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Samples of Walmart pork were more likely to test positive for two or more bacteria in a batch than the other national retailer. All of the batches that had three or more bacteria were obtained from Walmart. All of the seven strains of bacteria displaying resistance to the WHO’s highest priority antimicrobials were found on Walmart pork samples. We reached out to Walmart in regards to this report. According to Blair Cromwell, a senior manager for Global Responsibility Communications at Walmart’s Corporate Affairs,

We don’t agree with their findings. To my knowledge, we really don’t have a record of them reaching out to us.

The company also released an official statement in regards to their Swine Assurance Program.

“Walmart and Sam’s Club are committed to providing our customers with access to safe, affordable, and sustainable food as well as promoting the humane treatment of animals.  We only accept fresh pork from animals raised under the standards of the National Pork Board’s (NPB’s) Pork Quality Assurance (PQA) Plus Program.

Click to show full satement

We value our relationships with US pork producers who are dedicated to providing the highest in quality and safety through practices that promote animal well-being. Our priority is to advance humane treatment of farm animals in accordance with 5 Freedoms of Animal Welfare.

The goal of our Swine Assurance Program is to build more transparency and confidence in the fresh pork supply chain, and in the pork industry overall, through our tracking and audit program. We can report that by the end of 2018, based on supplier reports, 100% of our fresh pork suppliers have implemented video monitoring in a manner that is estimated to cover the volume supplied to Walmart U.S.

Additionally, as the world’s largest grocer, we are committed to playing a leading role in upholding food safety laws and regulations applicable to our global businesses, and to providing access to safe, high-quality foods. To reduce food-safety-related risk in our supply chain, we require all private-brand suppliers and select categories of national-brand suppliers to achieve certification to one of the Global Food Safety Initiative’s internationally recognized food safety standards, which often exceed applicable regulatory requirements.

Through regular independent, third-party food safety audits of our stores and clubs that prepare fresh food, we assess adherence to Walmart food safety standards, processes, conditions and expected behaviors. These risk-based audits help us receive independent assurances that our stores are operating in a safe and legal manner. In FY2019, we conducted more than 140,000 independent food safety audits at our stores and clubs globally.

Sad Hogs

Pigs destined for the American supermarket are not treated well. Sows spend their frequent pregnancies confined to small gestation crates, piglets often have their tails docked, ears notched, and teeth removed without anesthesia, and unsanitary living conditions leave factory-farmed pigs susceptible to a wide range of infections. These are among the reasons that factory-farmed pigs in the U.S. are given almost as many antibiotics as people (27.1 percent for pigs, 27.6 for people). The 75 million factory-farmed pigs consume the same amount of antibiotics as 375 million people.

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Sad Truths

This is not a new problem. Sulfonamides, the first effective antimicrobials, were introduced in 1937, and resistance to that treatment was reported before the end of that same decade. This problem has been happening since the beginning of antimicrobials. Yet here we are, repeating the same process over again.

Depending on your sources, 70 to more than 80 percent of antibiotics sold in the U.S. are destined for food animals. The flagrant use of these drugs has been a huge factor in the development of AR bacteria and the resulting health crises the world faces. If something doesn’t change, these microbes will kill an additional 10 million people a year by 2050. We are perilously close to being out of time.

Sources:

• U.S. pork and the superbug crisis: how higher welfare farming is better for pigs and people – World Animal Protection
• Walmart pork contained bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics, report says – Food Dive
• Factory Farmed Pigs – National Humane Education Society
• Report: US pigs consume nearly as many antibiotics as people do – CIDRAP
• Origins and Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance – NCBI