Often, I discuss the many benefits of making a conscious choice to eat wholesome organic foods, ideally grown in your region, that support your health and our environment. If you ever needed reasons to justify making that decision to optimize your diet with healthier foods, the Grace Factory Farm Project is a great place to start.

The site lifts the veil on the many health-harming practices factory farmers have used daily over the past two decades that have radically reshaped their businesses into confined animal feeding operations, emphasizing high volumes and profits with little regard for your health or safety.

You should buy and eat, as much as possible, organic produce and free-range, organic foods. If you can only purchase one organic product it probably should be free-range organic eggs. Fortunately, most grocery stores now have these available. If they don't, contact the store manager and encourage them to carry them.

There's so much pent-up demand for organic foods, big-box retailers like Wal-Mart are scrambling to meet the demand and other grocery chains are running out of them.

Your best bet: Finding inexpensive, locally grown foods with the help of these great resources.

On Vital Votes, Dr. Matthew Loop of Lilburn, Georgia writes:

"The commercialization of meat production illustrates most clearly how taking control of our food supply (domesticating, breeding, and artificial feeding) has affected its nutritional content and our physical health!

"For example, chickens are possibly the most abused animal on the face of the planet. These conventional birds are crammed in filthy sheds by the tens of thousands, immersed in their own excrement among the corpses of other birds who died of heart attacks or stress ..."

Vital Votes reader Steve from Toms River, New Jersey adds:

"I never knew how absolutely disgusting factory farming really is until reading Dr. Mercola's book, The Great Bird Flu Hoax.  What an eye opener to the reality of corporate greed that does not give a darn about the quality of food produced.  It's ALL about profits and never about consumer health.

"If you want instant proof, watch the Wegman's Cruelty video, also noted in the book.  This is a must see, free 27 minute video. Sadly, it's not just chickens and eggs. Add to the equation -- non-organic: beef, pork, seafood, vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, etc.  The list goes on."

Other responses to this article can be viewed at Vital Votes, and you can add your own thoughts or vote on comments by first registering at Vital Votes.