Organic and Free-Range Products: Better for Your Health?

Organic and free-range meat products are loaded with saturated fat, cholesterol, and excess protein, which have been shown to cause heart disease, cancer, obesity, and a range of other serious ailments. Since organic and free-range animals are often killed in the same filthy slaughterhouses used for factory-farmed animals, their flesh is just as likely to be contaminated with bacteria that can make us sick. The only way to protect yourself from the health problems caused by meat is to leave it off your plate for good. Learn more about how meat affects your health.

One reason that consumers buy organic milk is that they think it’s healthier, but in reality, it is just as unnatural for humans to drink the milk of a cow as it is for a dog to drink the milk of a rat. Organic cow’s milk is loaded with as much saturated fat and cholesterol as regular milk, and it is often contaminated with pus and blood from cows who had udder infections and weren’t given medicine because, if they were, the farmers wouldn’t be able to label their milk organic. According to physician and author Dr. Michael Greger, “The dairy herd is sick—these are sick and diseased cows, producing pus-filled milk that even industry standards call ‘unhealthful.’”²⁹ Plus, organic milk is certainly not hormone-free—all milk contains hormones because cows produce hormones naturally. All dairy products—including those labeled organic—increase your risk for a host of illnesses, including heart disease, colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, asthma, acne, and diabetes.

Organic and free-range eggs are loaded with artery-clogging saturated fat and cholesterol. Our bodies make all the cholesterol we need, and eating additional cholesterol in the form of animal products such as eggs can lead to heart disease, obesity, and strokes. Plus, eggs are the primary source of salmonella infection, which sickens more than a million people every year in the U.S.^30,31

Organic and free-range farms produce massive amounts of untreated animal excrement that fouls surrounding waterways, and these farms contribute to global hunger because the animals are being fed grain that could go to hungry humans. Read more about how the farmed-animal industry pollutes the environment, sickens rural communities, and contributes to world hunger.

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²⁹ Michael Greger, e-mail message to PETA, 20 Feb. 2005.
³⁰ Pamela Ruegg, “Salmonella, Listeria, E. Coli, and Mycobacterium Paratuberculosis in Milk: Is There Cause for Concern?” University of Wisconsin-Madison.
³¹ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Salmonella,” 16 Jul. 1999.