In completing some examination today on the distinction between ethanol manufactured from corn and ethanol made from sugarcane, I happened upon the following sentence: “Cows are flatulent for the reason that they are fed corn, which they do not usually eat.”
That sent me on another search, to find out if this was in reality true.
As Dr. Doolittle puts it, “I love red-blooded juicy chunks of meat. Legs of lamb. Sides of beef and chops and steaks and veal. And pork of course, my favorite meal.” But that’s before I found out how this food is “grown.”
I hadn’t given a good deal thought to just how livestock is grown for the dinner table, I acknowledge, and I continuously thought what PETA was consumed with was the mode in which they were slaughtered…not the method in which they were raised.
Sure, I got some idea a few years ago, when it was discovered that some farmers fed their cattle on the remains of “downer cows” – i.e. changing the cows into unwitting cannibals. Well, it turns out they nourish them on a lot more than that.
There was an piece in the Feb/March 2008 copy of Mother Earth News that explains precisely what happens to cattle.
It is entirely about “factory farming.”
Up to about the 1960s, cattle were raised on family farms or ranches around the country. Calves were born in the spring and spent their first months suckling milk and feeding on grass. As soon as they were weaned, they were put out onto pastures. The calves matured , reaching market weight at two to three years of age. After they were killed, the carcasses were kept cool for a couple weeks to develop taste plus tenderness. (This is referred to as dry aging.) The meat was then transported in big cuts to meat markets, where shoppers would drop by and tell the neighborhood butcher what cuts they wanted.
According to this article, “This meat was free of antibiotics, added hormones, feed additives, flavor enhancers, age-delaying gases and salt-water solutions. Mad cow disease and the deadliest strain of E. coli — 0157:H7 — did not exist. People dined on rare steaks and steak tartare (raw ground beef) with little fear.”
No longer.
These days, cattle are brought to slaughter weight in only one or two years, by employing growth hormones in addition to feed additives. This reduces the nutritional value of the beef and increases the danger of bacterial contamination.
This manufactured manipulation of beef starts prior to conception. Many cows are treated with man-made hormones to regulate the timing of conception, so that all the calves are birthed within days of one another. And of course, instead of natural conception, there’s artificial fertilization.
After the calves are born, they do get to spend their first seven to nine months munching on grass. But when they reach 500 to 700 pounds, it’s all done. They are sold to new owners and transported to distant feed lots.
The journey may take up to a week. When they arrive, the tense, thirsty and hungry calves are lead down chutes and met with such things as dehorning, sterilization, branding and tagging. Then they are dewormed and vaccinated against a range of diseases. Antibiotics are usually combined with the feed, whether the now-stressed animals display signs of illness or not.
Then, the calves are implanted with small balls comprised of growth-promoting steroid hormones. In a few months, fresh implants of higher potency are utilized. This adds 110 pounds of lean meat or more to a calf.
Nine out of 10 U.S. calves are medicated with hormonal growth boosters. The FDA has permitted five hormone implant growth boosters for livestock. Three of these are biologically occurring hormones that are identical to those present in humans. In accordance with this article in Mother Earth, lots of customers and support groups are demanding a ban on these growth-promoting implants for the reason that research indicates that even minute quantities of these can support tumor growth. (And that is why US beef is banned from the European Union – they do not want it, and who can criticize them?)
Another approach to augment the growth rate of calves is to nourish them an ultra high-grain diet. Calves fattened on grain arrive at maturity months earlier than grass-fattened calves. It is all completed for revenue — the less time cows expend in feedlots, the added money is made when they’re sold. Corn is the grain of choice since it’s particularly high in energy – in spite of the truth that cows don’t eat grains in nature.
After that because cows don’t eat grain in nature, they get sick. Deadly ill. So naturally, they must be given a steady measure of antibiotics in their food supply. And the rest of those antibiotics are of course going to remain with that cow as soon as it’s turned into hamburger or steak.
These days, it seems that each year, hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef goods are recalled. Do you remember the recall in October 2007? Topps Meat Company recalled 21.7 million pounds of hamburger for the reason that potential E. coli contamination.
After understanding how cows are grown, I’m not shocked.
If you are into living green, and are not a vegetarian, be conscientious where you get your meat from!
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