Feed lots are abominable and should be banned. I am also concerned regarding the raising of pork and non-free range chickens – the U.S. food supply is very distorted and disturbed.

Before I start pontificating on the virtues of San Francisco I have to digress about American food. I am quite quickly converting to partial vegetarianism and organic meat, this is partially due to the ideas in the book ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’. The author described feed-lots, where cows are feed corn (yes, cows are supposed to eat grass), stand in over-crowded pens ankle deep in shit and mud, fattened up on steroids and antibiotics which are used to stop them reacting to the corn, and then slaughtered for the mass-market. I have no problem with eating ethically raised animal products, free-range eggs, organically raised cows etc.

mp3 queen made in heaven

However I didn’t get the depravity of the U.S. farming system described in Omnivore’s Dilemma until the shuttle ride between L.A. and San Francisco. Along the highway a sudden stench like a pig farm hit us and the entire horizon to the right went brown. It was a feed-lot right alongside the highway, and there were the cows standing nearly shoulder to shoulder in their own excrement. I of course exclaimed ‘holy shit’ and the Americans on the bus all proceeded to ignore it, look the other way and make their excuses. I tried to take a photo but by the time I got my camera out we had passed. Never in my wildest dreams nightmares.

The reason cows are raised on corn in U.S. is because corn is heavily subsidised by the government. Thus cows are now raised cheaply in open air factories rather than in fields. I imagine it will be only a matter of time before they are raised indoors in conditions not unlike pig crates due to the discomfort that most people feel when seeing this animal concentration camps. If only abbatoirs had glass walls as well. Because of the subsidisation of corn, every product has corn in it. I bought an egg sandwich – you know: egg, milk, salt, pepper and butter - and it had corn in it! According to a conversation I had in Yosemite corn allergies and intolerance are becoming prevalent. It is in EVERYTHING. Humans didn’t evolve eating this much corn. And they wonder why they are fat.

Comments

  1. Kelly

    Good to hear you are joining our team Francis. It’s a hard life out there for them animals. You should read My Year of Meat by Ruth L. Ozeki.

    59:91 16:00, Jun 14 2007

  2. Marieke

    In the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan says more than one quarter of the 45,000 items in an American supermarket contain corn – that’s food and non-food items.

    They assessed a ‘balanced’ fastfood diet – soda (100% corn). milk shake (78% corn). salad dressing (65%). chicken nuggets (56%). cheeseburger (52%). Freedom fries (23%)

    And before you tuck into another Hooter’s hamburger, here’s what else they feed those poor animals besides corn – beef tallow recycled from the slaughterhouse, feather meal and chicken litter, chicken meat, fish and pig meal. Plus heaps of antibiotics to stop them from becoming sick from eating such crap food.

    And because there’s often shit in the meat becuase they process them so quickly in the slaughterhouses, they have to irradiate it to sterilize it and stop it giving you E. coli when you eat it.

    Then there’s the waste from these “Confined Animal Feeding Operations”. Lagoons of effluent which can’t be used as fertiliser as the nitrogen and phosphorus levels are so high that spraying them on crops would kill them. Feedlot waste also has heavy metals, hormone residues and persistent chemicals that end up in waterways downstream, where fish exhibit abnormal sex characteristics. Cow manure has been turned into toxic waste.

    I guess the light at the end of the tunnel is that soon they’ll divert all the corn into bio fuel production (using nearly one drum of petroleum to produce one drum of bio fuel – go figure…). Which I guess means the poor cows will just be left with feathers and chicken litter to eat….

    Rant over.

    59:92 18:42, Jun 15 2007

  3. Margret

    I also would recommend My Year of Meat. Barry Sears who writes the Zone (my eating philosophy when I’m healthy) agrees with you about the subsidies on corn and wheat which contribute to/cause the fattening of America. He says that the subsidies should be on fruit and vegetables instead.

    59:94 22:35, Jun 15 2007

Post a comment