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Straight Talk

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Anonymous

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RobertMac- You need to send this little lady a couple of steaks :wink:

Writers on the Range
March 8, 2004

Straight talk about Mad Cow from a mad rancher
Linda Hasselstrom

Linda Hasselstrom
Let’s get this straight. The cows aren’t mad. But you should be. "Mad cow disease" (BSE) develops in animals — or humans — when they eat parts of infected animals. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy can occur when cattle are forced to become cannibals.

Cows in their natural habitat may butt heads, but they don’t eat each other. Their bodies and behavior evolved in cooperation with nature’s grasslands — before humans. Cattle grazing on native vegetation don’t get BSE.

Grass-eating animals evolved in conjunction with natural systems. "Industrial agriculture" — an oxymoron! — replaced an order only the critters and the grass understood. The resulting "advance in food technology" is our loss.

Cattle are a sophisticated product of natural selection in our ancient grassland habitat. By preference, they are as wild as elk, and smart enough to eat vegetation precisely suited to conditions and their needs. Cattle raised in accordance with their natural heritage turn grass into vitamin-rich flesh and milk that have less fat and less cholesterol than chicken.

Grassfed beef contains more Vitamin E (an antioxidant that boosts immunity, and may lower risk of coronary heart disease) and more beta-carotene (good for eyes) than grainfed beef. Grassfed meat is rich in the "good fats" shown to stave off cancer, depression, obesity, diabetes, arthritis, allergies, asthma, dementia, and high blood pressure. Recent studies show grassfed meat also has more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which may help prevent breast cancer.

Most of the beneficial effects of grassfed meat disappear when animals are fattened with grain. Why? Because cows -- and bison, pigs, sheep, and chickens — didn’t evolve in cornfields. Even milk, butter and cheese from grassfed cows are more nutritious, and better for you.

Yet most people eat grainfed meat from feedlots where efficient production has resulted in unnatural practices. Cattle imprisoned in corporate feedlots, hock-deep in their own wastes, are no better adapted to those conditions than humans. Overcrowded, they’re treated with antibiotics to stave off disease, kept high on hormones that make them binge so they gain weight quickly.

Hungry and bored, they eat what’s put in front of them. Locked in pens, deer, elk and other "wild" animals do the same. Do you overeat at an "all you can eat" buffet?

Our demand for fast, cheap food has supported multinational corporations that own cattle, farms to grow grain, feedlots, packing plants and super-sized grocery stores. Our need for milk, eggs and poultry brought about "factory farms." We, the consumers, inspired confinement facilities for dairy cows, poultry and pigs, and the invention of machinery to butcher the animals we eat. A machine may not remove every bit of spinal cord, and BSE may lurk in that waste.

Recycled cows are not the only unpleasant items served to your future steak in corporate feedlots. Other trash nourishment includes stale bubblegum in aluminum foil wrappers, leftover pizza, hamburger buns and potato chips. Newsprint and cardboard. "Sanitized" municipal garbage. Chicken feathers and manure. No self-respecting free cow would choose to eat such junk, and a cow’s grass-based metabolism does not use it efficiently.

Sure, a ban on feeding chicken litter to cows is in the works, but government regulation can take awhile. Meanwhile, ranchers aren’t an industry: Monopolistic practices force many of us to sell healthy cattle to big companies to be sickened and sold as "grainfed." So it’s no use just cussing corporations or ranchers while having another bubblegum burger.

If we want change, we have to alter our eating habits. How do you avoid eating a Chicken Manure Burger?

Inform yourself; none of this information is new. You might start with Jo Robinson’s web site, www.eatwild.com">www.eatwild.com,(www.eatwild.com) which lists suppliers of pasture-based food. Her book, Pasture Perfect, provides information about other grass-raised food.

Take a country drive. Wherever you live, somebody is trying to make a living raising livestock naturally. Look locally for cooperatives, health food stores, farmers’ markets and pasture-based businesses. Check into small feedlots, often family-owned, where cattle eat local corn, soybeans and alfalfa — a community-building enterprise. These folks eat their own meat, and it ain’t municipal waste.

Visit ranchers and farmers; stop at local feeding operations. Smile and say you want to eat healthy local food and you’d like to buy it from folks who saw it born. Ask questions. Instead of getting mad, let’s quit dining at the corporate trough. If we eat intelligently, we challenge monopolistic control of our food supply and we support local people who keep local economies alive.


Linda Hasselstrom is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). She ranches in Hermosa, South Dakota, and writes in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
 
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