Learning This Knowledge Is Enough To Make You Go Vegetarian

In concluding some research today on the dissimilarities between ethanol manufactured from corn and ethanol created from sugarcane, I happened upon the following sentence: ?Cows are flatulent because they are fed corn, which they do not normally eat.?

That set me off on a new search, to find out if this was actually 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 devoted a great deal thought to how livestock is grown for the dinner table, I confess, and I continuously thought what PETA was concerned with was the manner in which they were executed?not the manner in which they were raised.

Sure, I got some idea a few years ago, when it was revealed that a number of farmers fed their cattle on the remains of ?downer cows? ? i.e. turning the cows into unsuspecting cannibals. Well, it turns out they nourish them on a lot more than that.

There was an article in the Feb/March 2008 edition of Mother Earth News that clarifies exactly what happens to cattle.

It is entirely about ?factory farming.?

Up until approximately the 1960s, livestock were cultivated on family farms or ranches all-around the country. Calves were birthed in the spring and putting in their first months suckling milk and grazing on grass. As soon as they were weaned, they were turned out onto grazing land. The calves matured , achieving market weight at two to three years of age. After they were slaughtered, the carcasses were kept chilly for a couple weeks to develop flavor and tenderness. (This is referred to as dry aging.) The meat was then shipped in big cuts to meat markets, where shoppers would come by and tell the neighborhood butcher which cuts they sought.

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.?

Not any longer.

Nowadays, cattle are brought to slaughter weight in merely one or two years, by adding growth hormones and feed additives. This decreases the nutritional value of the beef and raises the danger of bacterial contamination.

This artificial manipulation of beef initiates prior to conception. Many cows are treated with man-made hormones to regulate the timing of conception, so that each of the calves are birthed within days of each other. And of course, instead of natural conception, there?s artificial insemination.

When the calves are born, they do get to use their first seven to nine months feeding on grass. However when they attain 500 to 700 pounds, it?s all done. They are sold to new owners and transported to far-away feed lots.

The ride can take up to one week. Once they arrive, the tense, thirsty and hungry calves are lead down chutes and met with such things as dehorning, sterilization, branding and tagging. Afterward they are dewormed and vaccinated against a variety of diseases. Antibiotics are usually mixed with the feed, whether the currently-stressed animals show signs of illness or not.

Next, the calves are implanted with small balls comprised of growth-promoting steroid hormones. After a few months, new implants of higher potency are put to use. This adds 110 pounds of lean meat or more to a calf.

Nine out of ten U.S. calves are doctored with hormonal growth boosters. The FDA has permitted five hormone implant growth boosters for cattle. Three of these are organically occurring hormones that are identical to those present in people. According to this article in Mother Earth, lots of customers and support groups are calling for a ban on these growth-promoting implants for the reason that research shows that even minute amounts of these can promote tumor growth. (And that?s why US beef is barred from the European Union ? they don?t want it, and who can criticize them?)

Another approach to increase the growth rate of calves is to feed them an ultra high-grain diet. Calves fattened on grain reach maturity months earlier than grass-fattened calves. It?s all done for profit — the less time cows spend in feedlots, the added money is created when they?re sold. Corn is the grain of choice since it?s particularly high in energy ? despite the fact that cows don?t consume grains in nature.

And because cows don?t eat grain naturally, they get sick. Deathly ill. So logically, they ought to be given a fixed dosage of antibiotics in their food supply. And the rest of those antibiotics are of course going to stay with that cow at what time it’s turned into hamburger or steak.

Presently, it seems that every 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 reading how cows are cultivated, I am not surprised.

If you?re into living ecologically, and are not a vegetarian, be cautious where you acquire your meat from!

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