There's a good chance you've never personally seen a factory farm or CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operations) - and there's a reason for this.

CAFOs are traditionally hidden from public view. Certain states (like Iowa, where big agriculture rules the roost economically and politically) are even considering making undercover videos taken on such farms - which often show shocking scenes of animal cruelty and filth - illegal.

Quite simply, they don't want you to see what's really going on, because if you did, you would probably turn away in disgust at the mere thought of eating the foods produced there.

Yet, the vast majority of the food produced in the United States comes from these industrial-sized CAFOs.

In the documentary film above, A River of Waste: The Hazardous Truth About Factory Farms, you can see first-hand the toll that the modern industrial system of meat and poultry production has on human health and the environment, and realize why a prompt call to action is urgently needed.

By now, many environmentally conscious consumers are wary of bisphenol A, a chemical in food containers, plastic bottles and other household items.

A California state agency is wary, too, and will soon decide whether to call the compound a reproductive toxicant and place restrictions on it. In 2009, when it last took up the matter, a panel of experts said there wasn't enough evidence.

Since then, a flurry of research in the Bay Area and across the nation has made deeper inroads into understanding the role that BPA may play in cardiovascular disease, neurodevelopment, infertility and other health conditions.

Scientists still don't entirely understand BPA, which is believed to be an endocrine disruptor that mimics the hormone estrogen. But dozens of studies published in the last three or so years have brightened the spotlight on a chemical that scientists estimate exists in the bodies of 90 percent of the U.S. population.

British supermarket chain Asda has recalled all of its budget corned beef range after veterinary drug phenylbutazone was found in some samples.

The product was withdrawn last month after traces of horse DNA were discovered, and further analysis revealed the presence of "bute" at the level of four parts per billion (4ppb).

It is the first time bute has been found in a meat sample, according to the Food Standards Agency, and no other Asda products are thought to be affected. The FSA assured customers that the chances of anyone falling ill after eating such meat were minimal.

"Horse meat containing phenylbutazone presents a very low risk to human health," said Chief Medical Officer Professor Dame Sazone.

"Phenylbutazone, known as bute, is a commonly used medicine in horses. It is also prescribed to some patients who are suffering from a severe form of arthritis."

Millions of ready meals have been pulled from supermarket shelves across Europe after tests revealed that meat labelled as beef actually contained large quantities of horsemeat.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds of frozen food recalled amid an E. coli scare may have been served in schools, according to the company that manufactured the items.

Buffalo, N.Y.-based Rich Products Corp. has over the past two weeks recalled 10 million pounds of frozen food items after 27 E. coli illnesses in 15 states were linked to their foods. Of that, the company estimates that about 3 million pounds may still be in the marketplace and approximately 300,000 pounds may have ended up in school lunchrooms, a company spokesman said.

Dwight Gram of Rich Products said the main items shipped to schools were labeled as pizza dippers and pepperoni pizzatas.

E. coli infection can cause mild diarrhea or more severe complications, including kidney damage. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 81 percent of the people who fell ill were under the age of 21. Nine people were hospitalized and two have developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a type of kidney failure that can have lasting effects.

An eighth person has died from the H7N9 bird flu strain out of 24 people infected, according to the latest official figures from the Chinese regime.

Most of the cases are in eastern China's Yangtze River delta region, with eight in Jiangsu, two in Anhui, three in Zhejiang, and eleven in Shanghai, where five of the deaths occurred.

Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang sent a message to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, urging officials to "do well with assisting patients," and in disease control and prevention, the Ministry of Health posted on its website Sunday.

In Hong Kong, several suspected cases of bird flu were being tested for the virus, the South China Morning Post reported Monday.

University of South Florida-led research sheds light on malaria-related parasite's transition from acute to chronic stage.

A new discovery about the malaria-related parasite Toxoplasma gondii -- which can threaten babies, AIDS patients, the elderly and others with weakened immune function -- may help solve the mystery of how this single-celled parasite establishes life-long infections in people.

The study, led by a University of South Florida research team, places the blame squarely on a family of proteins, known as AP2 factors, which evolved from the regulators of flowering in plants.

In findings published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers demonstrate AP2 factors are instrumental in flipping a developmental "switch" that transitions the parasite from a rapidly dividing form destructive to healthy tissue to a chronic stage invisible to the immune system. They identified one factor, AP2IX-9, that appears to restrict development of Toxoplasma cysts that settle quietly in various tissues, most commonly the host's brain.

A better understanding of how the switch mechanism works may eventually lead to ways to block chronic Toxoplasma infections, said study principal investigator Michael White, PhD, professor of global health and molecular medicine at USF Health and a member of the Center of Drug Discovery and Innovation, a Florida Center of Excellence at USF.

"There's a tremendous push where if the kid's behavior is thought to be quote-unquote abnormal - if they're not sitting quietly at their desk - that's pathological, instead of just childhood." - Dr. Jerome Groopman, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School

According to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control, a staggering 6.4 million American children between the ages of 4 and 17 have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), whose key symptoms are inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity - characteristics that most would consider typically childish behavior. High school boys, an age group particularly prone to childish antics and drifting attention spans, are particularly prone to being labeled as ADHD, with one out of every five high school boys diagnosed with the disorder.

Presently, we're at an all-time high of eleven percent of all school-aged children in America who have been classified as mentally ill. Why? Because they "suffer" from several of the following symptoms: they are distracted, fidget, lose things, daydream, talk nonstop, touch everything in sight, have trouble sitting still during dinner, are constantly in motion, are impatient, interrupt conversations, show their emotions without restraint, act without regard for consequences, and have difficulty waiting their turn.

The list reads like a description of me as a child. In fact, it sounds like just about every child I've ever known, none of whom are mentally ill. Unfortunately, society today is far less tolerant of childish behavior - hence, the growing popularity of the ADHD label, which has become the "go-to diagnosis" for children that don't fit the psycho-therapeutic public school mold of quiet, docile and conformist.

Mind you, there is no clinical test for ADHD. Rather, this so-called mental illness falls into the "I'll know it if I see it" category, where doctors are left to make highly subjective determinations based on their own observation, as well as interviews and questionnaires with a child's teachers and parents. Particular emphasis is reportedly given to what school officials have to say about the child's behavior.

Marion County parents who lost custody of their eight young children last year also lost their fight Wednesday to prevent the state from immunizing the children.

The Oregon Court of Appeals ruled that the parents -- identified only as S.M. and R.M. in the opinion -- didn't have the right to stop child welfare workers from having the children, ages 1 to 8, vaccinated against an array of infectious diseases.

The parents said vaccinations are against their religious beliefs, which is an exemption to school vaccination requirements under Oregon law.

But the children's attorney and the Oregon Department of Human Services had sought and received a court order in April 2012 requiring that the children get their shots. They argued that because the state had custody of the children, it also had the power to make medical decisions for them. The appeals court affirmed a Marion County circuit judge's ruling.

The opinion likely will add fuel to the fiery debate about a small but significant number of families in Oregon who delay or shun immunizations altogether because of what they believe can be irreversible adverse health effects.

In this first in our series of shows on the topic of science and its benefits, or otherwise, to human beings, we subjected modern medicine to an in-depth and experience-based analysis of the root causes of human illness.

In combination with modern technology, modern medicine has undoubtedly brought various benefits for human health and longevity. At the same time however, a startlingly high percentage of people today, particularly those living in Western 'first world' counties, suffer from an increasing number of 'modern diseases' that have proven to be incurable with modern allopathic techniques.

From various forms of cancer to heart disease and diabetes, modern medical treatments can only alleviate the symptoms of these diseases by way of a plethora of pills (like statins) that sufferers often must consume for the rest of their lives. In addition, many of these pills carry significantly deleterious side-effects.

On the 'bright' side, as the sole purveyors of these pills to the doctors that prescribe them, multi-national pharmaceutical companies have grown outrageously wealthy, bringing into question whether or not there may be a conflict of interest and if these companies are truly committed to improving human health in a real way.

Studiously ignored by the medical establishment is the increasing evidence that diet is a major contributor to health and that what we eat may be a significant contributing factor to the rise of these modern diseases that have, in some cases, reached almost pandemic proportions.

Running Time: 02:11:00

Download: MP3

This weekend, most of us Americans will lose an hour of sleep when we push the clocks ahead to swing into Daylight Saving Time.

That may not seem like much - the Academy Awards were three and a half times that long - but research suggests our bodies wouldn't agree. A recent study by two Michigan hospitals found that they treated almost twice as many heart attack victims on the first day of Daylight Saving than on a typical Sunday. And if past behavior holds true, there will be a bump in traffic accidents on Monday because, as researchers have suggested, more people take "microsleeps" that day, due to the disruption of their body clocks.

Clearly sleep, or lack thereof, is a key component of psychic and physiological balance, although it wasn't all that long ago that most scientists felt it wasn't worth a lot of attention because frankly, it didn't seem like all that much was going on. Now we know better - there's a lot happening inside our brains and, apparently, our bodies, too when we're snoozing.

Unfortunately, that hasn't made us act much smarter when it comes to our sleeping habits. We've been hearing for years that our bodies need a good eight hours a night, but, according to a Centers for Disease Control report released last year, almost a third of working adults in America get only six.

So as David Randall, author of Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep, noted in a Wall Street Journal column, we're seeing a boom in sleep aids, energy drinks, expensive mattresses designed to help us find our right "sleep number", sleep-tracking devices and "fatigue management consultants." That's right, fatigue management consultants. A lot of Fortune 500 companies are now using them to track how sleep habits are affecting employee performance and safety records.