Posted by Cathy Bouchard in events on April 21, 2007 at 12:53 pm

This past weekend was the Total Health Show and this year, I only had one day (Friday) to pack as much in as I could. I met up with my friend Jae and we set out to stroll the booths and take in a talk or two. One of the talks we saw was Why Buy Organic: Evils Of Factory Farming presented by Pam Killeen.

Pam Killeen refers to herself as a "Health Watchdog", questioning news stories and practices that contain health claims. She is an expert on health and co-author of the book The Great Bird Flu Hoax with Dr. Joseph Mercola. Of all the talks happening on the first night of the event, this one seemed the most promising. We got there a few minutes late and due to some technical difficulties, the talk hadn't started yet. Right off the bat, Pam seemed a bit put off but I figured it was just due to the blurry projection of her slides. Despite the slide problems, the talk began. She began with a quote from The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

"Food is flavoured by what we know about it."

She then jumped right into chicken farming as the worst-case scenario of conventional farming. She showed an array of slides with different quotes from different sources, talking about the conditions of chicken farms. Some blurry photos of chickens in cages showed many of us in the audience images what we'd seen too many times before. As an ex-vegan, she is now very pro-animal protein, really driving home the idea of farm-fresh eggs versus supermarket eggs. According to Killeen, free run are really "balcony chickens", since they aren't actually on grass but are inside in "balconies", making the claim of 'free run' a fallacy.

She then went on to talk about studies that have been done on factory cows that had e-coli that were then let outside to feed on grass. The study showed that once the cows were allowed to feed on grass, the levels of e-coli vanished. All of the info was interesting but presented in such an angry fashion. Maybe it was because it was 7:00pm on a Friday night, but I sort of tuned it out. It's not that I'm not into the subject matter; in fact I am very much into it. I know this kind of talk is difficult to make fun but she spoke with so much conviction that I found it somewhat hard to get past.

As I was about to turn to my friend and suggest we head upstairs for some free samples, the talk turned to bees. Among all the effects that insecticides and factory farms have on the environment, many researches believe that the decline of the honeybee is the most serious. According to Einstein,

"If bees were to disappear, man would only have a few years to live."

I had heard of the bee thing before but I guess I had never really thought about it. It makes sense that the decline of the bee population should worry us. They pollinate the plants; they are integral to the cycle. One of the greatest bee pollination havens are corn and soy plants, which also happen to be the two most GMO-ed crops in the world. Insecticides kill insects and perhaps plants are being produced to the point where they aren't really plants at all, therefore not needing to be pollinated. I wanted to jump out of my seat and yell, "save the bees!"

Saving the bees is just like saving all animals (including ourselves) from the effects of conventional farming practices - and this means to buy from organic farms. Getting to know the farmer that grows your food is very important. Becoming aware is the first step and talks like this are great, but they always seem to be offered at events where the majority of people are already somewhat aware. It's the people that don't know enough that should be at talks like this, and Pam Killeen's anger is just the thing that they need.