Wow JeffW, I haven't kept up with the way things are farmed nowadays .... thanks for the eye-opener ....... I grew up on a small farm, and we used the manure from the milk and beef cattle, sheep, chickens, and pigs to fertilize the garden ..... we farmed with a walk-along tiller and a small tracked grader to level it out after harvest ..... I hadn't had any idea how things worked with composting, it just worked!

Big AG (Monsanto, ConAgra and others) is taking over all facets of food production, including fish farming. In Tilapia, Salmon and Trout and others, they use things like 'Ocean Pout Anti-Freeze', 'Human Cytomegalovirus', 'E-Coli baths for fry and 'Simian Virus 40' (Green Monkey Virus) to "enhance" our fish and make it more 'resistant to disease' and more 'tolerant to colder climes'. What are the long-term effects of these injections, baths, hormones, steroids, etc? Who knows, because the FDA refuses to do any research to protect the public, instead, they allow the Big AG companies to do the research, 'report' their own findings, and the FDA uses that data to decide whether or not it is fit for human consumption. Not only do we have to contend with the genetically engineered fish, but the fish food is contaminated as well. Cattle that have been 'disposed of' because of Brucellosis, Mad Cow Disease, pigs with Trichinosis, chickens with Avian Flu, are, with FDA approval, ground up into 'bone meal, blood meal, animal by-products' to be fed to the fish because the feed companies (owned by Big Agra) have determined by their research, that there is no effect on the humans who eat the fish. Many laws have been passed to prevent the small farmer from making a profit by growing 'clean' veggies, cattle sheep, pigs, and fish, all sponsored by ...... you guessed it! ....... Big Agra lobbyists

All of this is nothing but Corporate Greed that will never stop unless the FDA goes back to doing the job it was intended to do (protecting the American Public), and lobbyists are prevented from having any contact with the politicians (i.e. junkets, vacations, fishing/hunting trips, campaign donations, etc.) - in other words, "it ain't happening in my lifetime nor yours."

End of Rant