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As Beef Cattle Become Behemoths, Who Are Animal Scientists Serving?
This is a long article that includes audio about what is happening to our food supply, mainly beef.
As Beef Cattle Become Behemoths, Who Are Animal Scientists Serving?
By Melody Petersen
Cameras rolled one day last fall as Ty E. Lawrence led journalists into a room-sized meat locker on the campus of West Texas A&M University, where bloody sides of beef, still covered with a slick layer of ivory-colored fat, hung from steel hooks. Dressed in a white lab coat, a hard hat on his head, Lawrence pointed to the carcass of a Holstein that had been fed a new drug called Zilmax. He noted its larger size compared with the nearby body of a steer never given the drug.
"This is thicker, and it's plumper," said Lawrence, an associate professor of animal science, pointing at the beast's rib-eye. "This animal right here," he said, waving his hand at the pharmaceutically enhanced meat, "doesn't look like a Holstein anymore."
Convincing ranchers that Zilmax will transform their cattle into bovine Schwarzeneggers has been part of Lawrence's work ever since the drug was introduced by Intervet, a subsidiary of Merck, the global pharmaceutical company. The tour he led of the carcasses in his lab was just one of many events where he has helped Intervet sell Zilmax. He's given speeches to ranchers and written an article for a beef-industry magazine to promote the drug. He's repeatedly let Intervet include his comments in news releases, including one in which he said the drug could "revolutionize the beef production system."
Lawrence is hardly alone. Scores of animal scientists employed by public universities have helped pharmaceutical companies persuade farmers and ranchers to use antibiotics, hormones, and drugs like Zilmax to make their cattle grow bigger ever faster. With the use of these products, the average weight of a fattened steer sold to a packing plant is now roughly 1,300 pounds—up from 1,000 pounds in 1975.
Much more here: http://chronicle.com/article/As-Beef-Cattle-Become/131480/
By Melody Petersen
Cameras rolled one day last fall as Ty E. Lawrence led journalists into a room-sized meat locker on the campus of West Texas A&M University, where bloody sides of beef, still covered with a slick layer of ivory-colored fat, hung from steel hooks. Dressed in a white lab coat, a hard hat on his head, Lawrence pointed to the carcass of a Holstein that had been fed a new drug called Zilmax. He noted its larger size compared with the nearby body of a steer never given the drug.
"This is thicker, and it's plumper," said Lawrence, an associate professor of animal science, pointing at the beast's rib-eye. "This animal right here," he said, waving his hand at the pharmaceutically enhanced meat, "doesn't look like a Holstein anymore."
Convincing ranchers that Zilmax will transform their cattle into bovine Schwarzeneggers has been part of Lawrence's work ever since the drug was introduced by Intervet, a subsidiary of Merck, the global pharmaceutical company. The tour he led of the carcasses in his lab was just one of many events where he has helped Intervet sell Zilmax. He's given speeches to ranchers and written an article for a beef-industry magazine to promote the drug. He's repeatedly let Intervet include his comments in news releases, including one in which he said the drug could "revolutionize the beef production system."
Lawrence is hardly alone. Scores of animal scientists employed by public universities have helped pharmaceutical companies persuade farmers and ranchers to use antibiotics, hormones, and drugs like Zilmax to make their cattle grow bigger ever faster. With the use of these products, the average weight of a fattened steer sold to a packing plant is now roughly 1,300 pounds—up from 1,000 pounds in 1975.
Much more here: http://chronicle.com/article/As-Beef-Cattle-Become/131480/
5 replies
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http://www.amazon.com/Folks-This-Aint-Normal-Healthier/dp/0892968192
It really is amazing what cows can do to help replenish and heal the land when allowed to graze in open pastures on their natural diet (grass, grass, and nothing but the grass). There are countless processes at work, and the above book delineates them (and much more) beautifully. Their nutrient-rich manure alone (which is nutrient-deficient, almost entirely sterile, and a liability/pollutant at concentrated feed lots) can get scratched and clawed through by chickens, which spreads it out - allowing for quicker decomposition/absorption into the soil, leading to healthy, lively, robust, self-regenerating (no chemical fertilizers!) biomass. It also, as opposed to the aforementioned feedlot operations, "closes the loop" by recycling the "waste" back into the system!
Cramming all these productive creatures in the confined spaces of nightmarish feedlots, not to mention this insane drug (and methodology, in general) is cruel, unnatural, and incredibly counter-intuitive. The mentality of "bigger, fatter, faster, cheaper" is a disease in and of itself. And its "science" is bad science. That cozy, profit-minded, hand-in-glove relationship between these "scientists" and Big Phrama is as disgusting as the pink slurry they pawn off on the public.
