"I
am a fourth-generation dairy farmer and cattle rancher. I grew
up on a dairy farm in Montana, & I ran a feedlot operation there
for 20 years. I know firsthand how cattle are raised and how meat
is produced in this country.
Today
I am president of EarthSave International, an organization that
promotes plant-based eating.
Sure,
I used to enjoy my steaks as much as the next guy. But if you
knew what I know about what goes into them and what they can do
to you, you¹d probably be a vegetarian like me. And believe it
or not, as a pure vegetarian now who consumes no animal products
at all, I can tell you that these days I enjoy eating more than
ever.
If
you¹re a meat-eater in America, you have a right to know that
you have something in common with most of the cows you¹ve eaten.
They¹ve eaten meat, too.
When
a cow is slaughtered, about half of it by weight is not eaten
by humans: the intestines and their contents, the head, hooves,
and horns, as well as bones and blood. These are dumped into giant
grinders at rendering plants, as are the entire bodies of cows
and other farm animals known to be diseased. Rendering is a $2.4
billion-a-year industry, processing forty billion pounds of dead
animals a year. There is simply no such thing in America as an
animal too ravaged by disease, too cancerous, or too putrid to
be welcomed by the embracing arms of the renderer. Another staple
of the renderer¹s diet, in addition to farm animals, is euthanized
pets‹the six or seven million dogs and cats that are killed in
animal shelters every year. The city of Los Angeles alone, for
example, sends some two hundred tons of euthanized cats and dogs
to a rendering plant every month. Added to the blend are the euthanized
catch of animal control agencies, and roadkill. (Roadkill is not
collected daily, and in the summer, the better roadkill collection
crews can generally smell it before they can see it.) When the
gruesome mix is ground and steam-cooked, the lighter, fatty material
floating to the top gets refined for use in such products as cosmetics,
lubricants, soaps, candles, and waxes. The heavier protein material
is dried and pulverized into a brown powder‹about a quarter of
which consists of fecal material. The powder is used as an additive
to almost all pet food as well as to livestock feed. Farmers call
it ³protein concentrates.² In 1995, five million tons of processed
slaughterhouse leftovers were sold for animal feed in the United
States. I used to feed tons of the stuff to my own livestock.
It never concerned me that I was feeding cattle to cattle.
In
August 1997, in response to growing concern about the spread of
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (or Mad Cow disease), the FDA
issued a new regulation that bans the feeding of ruminant protein
(protein from cud-chewing animals) to ruminants; therefore, to
the extent that the regulation is actually enforced, cattle are
no longer quite the cannibals that we had made them into. They
are no longer eating solid parts of other cattle, or sheep, or
goats. They still munch, however, on ground-up dead horses, dogs,
cats, pigs, chickens, and turkeys, as well as blood and fecal
matter of their own species and that of chickens. About 75 percent
of the ninety million beef cattle in America are routinely given
feed that has been ³enriched² with rendered animal parts. The
use of animal excrement in feed is common as well, as livestock
operators have found it to be an efficient way of disposing of
a portion of the 1.6 million tons of livestock wastes generated
annually by their industry. In Arkansas, for example, the average
farm feeds over fifty tons of chicken litter to cattle every year.
One Arkansas cattle farmer was quoted in U.S. News & World Report
as having recently purchased 745 tons of litter collected from
the floors of local chicken-raising operations. After mixing it
with small amounts of soybean bran, he then feeds it to his eight
hundred head of cattle, making them, in his words, ³fat as butterballs.²
He explained, ³If I didn¹t have chicken litter, I¹d have to sell
half my heard. Other feeds are too expensive.² If you are a meat-eater,
understand that this is the food of your food.
We
don¹t know all there is to know about the extent to which the
consumption of diseased or unhealthy animals causes diseases in
humans, but we do know that some diseases‹rabies, for example‹are
transmitted from the host animal to humans. We know that the common
food poisonings brought on by such organisms as the prevalent
E. Coli bacteria, which results from fecal contamination of food,
causes the death of nine thousand Americans a year and that about
80 percent of food poisonings come from tainted meat. And now
we can also be virtually certain, from the tragedy that has already
afflicted Britain, that Mad Cow disease can ³jump species² and
give rise to a new variant of the always fatal, brain-wasting
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans."
