This misconception seems to originate from dog owners unconsciously feeling guilty about the type of food they feed, or those following their own ideas for.Power Steer . What it got instead were sprawling subdivisions of cattle. These feedlots—the nation’s first—began rising on the high plains of western Kansas in the 5. You’ll be speeding down one of Finney County’s ramrod roads when the empty, dun- colored prairie suddenly turns black and geometric, an urban grid of steel- fenced rectangles as far as the eye can see—which in Kansas is really far.
I say “suddenly,” but in fact a swiftly intensifying odor (an aroma whose Proustian echoes are more bus- station- men’s- room than cow- in- the- country) heralds the approach of a feedlot for more than a mile. Then it’s upon you: Poky Feeders, population 3. Whole Grain Corn, Chicken By-Product Meal, Flaxseed, Soybean Mill Run, Brewers Rice, Soybean Meal, Pork Fat, Powdered Cellulose, Chicken Liver Flavor, Fish Oil. Cattle pens stretch to the horizon, each one home to 1. The pens line a network of unpaved roads that loop around vast waste lagoons on their way to the feedlot’s beating heart: a chugging, silvery feed mill that soars like an industrial cathedral over this teeming metropolis of meat. I traveled to Poky early in January with the slightly improbable notion of visiting one particular resident: a young black steer that I’d met in the fall on a ranch in Vale, S. D. The steer, in fact, belonged to me. I’d purchased him as an 8- month- old calf from the Blair brothers, Ed and Rich, for $5. I was paying Poky Feeders $1. My interest in the steer was not strictly financial, however, or even gustatory, though I plan to retrieve some steaks from the Kansas packing plant where No. June. No, my primary interest in this animal was educational. I wanted to find out how a modern, industrial steak is produced in America these days, from insemination to slaughter. Eating meat, something I have always enjoyed doing, has become problematic in recent years. Though beef consumption spiked upward during the flush 9. Inevitably they’ll bring up mad- cow disease (and the accompanying revelation that industrial agriculture has transformed these ruminants into carnivores—indeed, into cannibals). They might mention their concerns about E. Then there are the many environmental problems, like groundwater pollution, associated with “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.” (The word “farm” no longer applies.) And of course there are questions of animal welfare. How are we treating the animals we eat while they’re alive, and then how humanely are we “dispatching” them, to borrow an industry euphemism? Meat- eating has always been a messy business, shadowed by the shame of killing and, since Upton Sinclair’s writing of “The Jungle,” by questions about what we’re really eating when we eat meat. Forgetting, or willed ignorance, is the preferred strategy of many beef eaters, a strategy abetted by the industry. If I was going to continue to eat red meat, then I owed it to myself, as well as to the animals, to take more responsibility for the invisible but crucial transaction between ourselves and the animals we eat. I’d try to own it, in other words. So this is the biography of my cow. The Blair brothers ranch occupies 1. Sturgis, S. D., directly in the shadow of Bear Butte. In November, when I visited, the turf forms a luxuriant pelt of grass oscillating yellow and gold in the constant wind and sprinkled with perambulating black dots: Angus cows and calves grazing. Ed and Rich Blair run what’s called a “cow- calf” operation, the first stage of beef production, and the stage least changed by the modern industrialization of meat. While the pork and chicken industries have consolidated the entire life cycles of those animals under a single roof, beef cattle are still born on thousands of independently owned ranches. Although four giant meatpacking companies (Tyson’s subsidiary IBP, Monfort, Excel and National) now slaughter and market more than 8. The Blairs have been in the cattle business for four generations. Although there are new wrinkles to the process—artificial insemination to improve genetics, for example—producing beef calves goes pretty much as it always has, just faster. Calving season begins in late winter, a succession of subzero nights spent yanking breeched babies out of their bellowing mothers. In April comes the first spring roundup to work the newborn calves (branding, vaccination, castration); then more roundups in early summer to inseminate the cows ($1. If all goes well, your herd of 8. My steer spent his first six months in these lush pastures alongside his mother, No. His father was a registered Angus named GAR Precision 1,6. Born last March 1. No. 5. 34 was turned out on pasture with his mother as soon as the 8. After a few weeks, the calf began supplementing his mother’s milk by nibbling on a salad bar of mostly native grasses: western wheatgrass, little bluestem, green needlegrass. Apart from the trauma of the April day when he was branded and castrated, you could easily imagine No. Which isn’t a bad definition of animal happiness. Eating grass, however, is something that, after October, my steer would never do again. Although the modern cattle industry all but ignores it, the reciprocal relationship between cows and grass is one of nature’s underappreciated wonders. For the grasses, the cow maintains their habitat by preventing trees and shrubs from gaining a foothold; the animal also spreads grass seed, planting it with its hoofs and fertilizing it. In exchange for these services, the grasses offer the ruminants a plentiful, exclusive meal. For cows, sheep and other grazers have the unique ability to convert grass—which single- stomached creatures like us can’t digest—into high- quality protein. They can do this because they possess a rumen, a 4. This is an excellent system for all concerned: for the grasses, for the animals and for us. What’s more, growing meat on grass can make superb ecological sense: so long as the rancher practices rotational grazing, it is a sustainable, solar- powered system for producing food on land too arid or hilly to grow anything else. So if this system is so ideal, why is it that my cow hasn’t tasted a blade of grass since October? Speed, in a word. Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows raised on a richer diet, and the modern meat industry has devoted itself to shortening a beef calf’s allotted time on earth. Now we get there at 1. Fast food indeed. What gets a beef calf from 8. These “efficiencies,” all of which come at a price, have transformed raising cattle into a high- volume, low- margin business. Not everybody is convinced that this is progress. This industrial logic is rational and even irresistible—after all, it has succeeded in transforming beef from a luxury item into everyday fare for millions of people. And yet the further you follow it, the more likely you are to wonder if that rational logic might not also be completely insane. In early October, a few weeks before I met him, No. Weaning is perhaps the most traumatic time on a ranch for animals and ranchers alike; cows separated from their calves will mope and bellow for days, and the calves themselves, stressed by the change in circumstance and diet, are prone to get sick. On many ranches, weaned calves go directly from the pasture to the sale barn, where they’re sold at auction, by the pound, to feedlots. The Blairs prefer to own their steers straight through to slaughter and to keep them on the ranch for a couple of months of “backgrounding” before sending them on the 5. Poky Feeders. Think of backgrounding as prep school for feedlot life: the animals are confined in a pen, “bunk broken”—taught to eat from a trough—and gradually accustomed to eating a new, unnatural diet of grain. November. I’d told the Blairs I wanted to follow one of their steers through the life cycle; Ed, 4. I might as well buy a steer, as a way to really understand the daunting economics of modern ranching. Ed and Rich told me what to look for: a broad, straight back and thick hindquarters. Basically, you want a strong frame on which to hang a lot of meat. I was also looking for a memorable face in this Black Angus sea, one that would stand out in the feedlot crowd. Almost as soon as I started surveying the 9. No. 5. 34 moseyed up to the railing and made eye contact. He had a wide, stout frame and was brockle- faced—he had three distinctive white blazes. If not for those markings, Ed said, No. But the white blazes indicate the presence of Hereford blood, rendering him ineligible for life as an Angus stud. Tough break. Rich said he would calculate the total amount I owed the next time No. He would then bill me for all expenses (feed, shots, et cetera) and, beginning in January, start passing on the weekly “hotel charges” from Poky Feeders. In June we’d find out from the packing plant how well my investment had panned out: I would receive a payment for No. U. S. D. A. 1. 1 slide, “I can sell you an option too.” Option insurance has become increasingly popular among cattlemen in the wake of mad- cow and foot- and- mouth disease. Rich handles the marketing end of the business out of an office in Sturgis, where he also trades commodities. In fact you’d never guess from Rich’s unlined, indoorsy face and golfish attire that he was a rancher. Ed, by contrast, spends his days on the ranch and better looks the part, with his well- creased visage, crinkly cowboy eyes and ever- present plug of tobacco. His cap carries the same prairie- flat slogan I’d spotted on the ranch’s roadside sign: “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner.”My second morning on the ranch, I helped Troy Hadrick, Ed’s son- in- law and a ranch hand, feed the steers in the backgrounding pen. A thickly muscled post of a man, Hadrick is 2. Oakley sunglasses. He studied animal science at South Dakota State and is up on the latest university thinking on cattle nutrition, reproduction and medicine. Hadrick seems to relish everything to do with ranching, from calving to wielding the artificial- insemination syringe. Hadrick and I squeezed into the heated cab of a huge swivel- hipped tractor hooked up to a feed mixer: basically, a dump truck with a giant screw through the middle to blend ingredients. Eat Wild - Basics. Printer- Friendly. Version by Jo Robinson. Back to Pasture. Since the late 1. These new- age ranchers do not treat their livestock with hormones or. As a result, the animals grow at a natural. For these reasons and more, grass- fed animals live low- stress lives and. More Nutritious. A major benefit of raising animals. For example, compared. It also has more vitamin. E, beta- carotene, vitamin C, and a number of health- promoting fats, including. CLA. Raising animals. Providing this nutritious and natural diet requires healthy. Because high- quality pasture is the key to high- quality. Raising animals on pasture is. Virtually all the meat, eggs, and. CAFOs or “Confined Animal Feeding. Operations.” These highly mechanized operations provide a year- round. Although the food is cheap and convenient. Animals raised in factory farms. The main. ingredients are genetically modified grain and soy that are kept at artificially. To further cut costs, the feed may also. Until 1. 99. 7, U. S. This unnatural practice is believed to be the underlying cause. BSE or “mad cow disease.”Animal Stress. A high- grain diet can cause physical. Ruminants are designed to eat fibrous grasses, plants. When they are switched from. Cattle. with subacute acidosis kick at their bellies, go off their feed, and eat dirt. Some. of these antibiotics are the same ones used in human medicine. When medications. When people. become infected with these new, disease- resistant bacteria, there are fewer. Caged Pigs, Chickens, Ducks and Geese. Typically, they suffer an even worse fate than the grazing animals. Laying hens are crowded. An added insult is that they cannot escape the stench. Meat and eggs from these animals are lower in a number. Environmental Degradation. When animals are raised. The manure must be collected and transported away from the area. To cut costs, it is dumped as close to the feedlot. As a result, the surrounding soil is overloaded with nutrients. When animals are raised outdoors. Read. more about the environmental differences between factory farming and grass- based. The Healthiest Choice. When you choose to eat meat. It’s a win- win- win- win situation. To find a local supplier of healthy, grass- fed.
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