Picture for a second where that beef on tonight’s dinner table came from. Are you picturing cattle in some grassy green pasture, grazing with the herd in the picturesque countryside or the vast plains of the Southwest? Sadly, these aren’t typical conditions for raising beef today.
Most of the meat purchased in grocery stores, including chicken, pork products, beef and fish, are now raised in an intensive animal agricultural system referred to as factory farming. In this type of practice, animal welfare is put second to conditions that allow for high-intensity production and maximum profit. Many times, the animals live in overcrowded, confined spaces and are given an unnatural series of hormones and antibiotics in order to keep them alive under extremely difficult circumstances.
Over 35 million cows are raised in the United States every year for beef. Additional millions are being used for their milk, and many are killed earlier on for veal.
When cattle are ready to be brought to slaughter, they are first transported into feedlots to be fattened. Here, in “Confined Animal Feeding Operations” or CAFOs, cattle are kept for a number of months in small spaces to prevent movement and ensure quicker fattening; they are routinely given growth-hormones and antibiotics; and fed on diets of grain, soy and other supplements unnatural to a bovine diet in order to make them grow more quickly.
Not everyone may believe animals raised purely for food need to be treated well. But anyone would be concerned if they were told that the unnatural processes that allow for the food to be farmed in this manner makes the meat unhealthy for consumption as well. Eating meat from an animal that has been given growth hormones, or that has raised in an overcrowded lot where the air is thick with bacteria and disease passing quickly among the animals, isn’t going to be healthy for you either. And when animals have been raised in conditions so terrible it is necessary to supplement their diet with antibiotics just to keep them alive, traces of these antibiotics may be passed to humans who consume them, making your body resistant to antibodies.
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), better known as Mad Cow disease, for example, was spread when cows were given feed containing traces of the disease BSE from other cows that were infected. This means that cattle, which are herbivores, were fed bits of other cattle. And it made them sick, which in turn, made us sick. (Thankfully, this practice of feeding cow bits or pieces of ground horse or pigs to other cows was banned in the US in 1997 in order to prevent further outbreaks of Mad Cow and other diseases).
In addition, the immense amount of waste produced by the factory farming system is contaminated with the pesticides from the corn and grain the animals are fed. This polluted waste then finds its way into our groundwater and streams, contaminating our fresh water sources. In order to be certified organic beef, cattle are not given hormones, antibodies and must be given organic feed.
Although the organic practice is an improvement, a diet in grains, corn and soy are still outside of a natural bovine diet, whether or not they are covered in pesticides or contain other animal by-products. To be certified organic, growing conditions are also vaguely directed toward reducing animal stress, but aren’t enforced or regulated strictly.
Free range beef is essentially meaningless. In order for something to be called free-range, it must be allowed to roam freely outside of cages. This is not applicable to cows, which are all raised outside, and live free-range in pastures before they are shipped to feedlots.
Grass fed beef is a better practice. In this type of cattle husbandry, the cows are kept on a natural diet. When they are certified as “pasture finished,” they have been raised on a purely grass, or green fibrous plant diet (including hay or alfalfa). This is a more natural diet, and this type of beef is lower in saturated fat and higher in healthy Omega-3 fatty acids. This doesn’t, however, ensure that your cows have been allowed to forage naturally in pastures. They may have been fed on this diet in a feedlot, and unless the beef is also USDA certified organic, the label doesn’t address the use of antibiotics or hormones. These decisions are left up to the growers, who in many cases do ethically raise their cattle in humane and natural pasture conditions.
Since 2001, thousands of ranchers have begun switching their cattle to an all-grass diet due to the burgeoning market for humanely and organically raised food, according to a Time Magazine article about the grass-fed movement. The practice is healthier for the land, the cattle, the environment, and ultimately, you. Studies have also shown that grass-fed meat is less likely to contain the bacteria E-Coli. This may be because the more natural diet reduces the chance of cows having E-Coli in their digestive tract, or because the animals themselves are cleaner at slaughtering time when they have had access to more open space and don’t stand in manure as cattle in overcrowded feedlots do.
If you are concerned about animal welfare, the slaughtering process is also one that has come under a lot of scrutiny. Because of the rate at which cattle in traditional slaughterhouses pass through the process, if they aren’t stunned properly at the outset, they may remain awake while their throats are cut, they are hung by their back legs and parts like the skin and tails are removed.
The nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute has introduced a new seal for beef with strict standards for how the animals are raised, treated and slaughtered. The American Humane Association and Humane Farm Animal Care also certify and label humanely-treated beef.
It all comes down to being responsible and knowing where your food came from. It’s about being a conscious consumer, whether you choose to eat meat or not. If you know where your food is been, you can make the healthiest choice for you and your family. Choose action, not apathy. If you are concerned about animal welfare, ensure that you only contribute to the raising of animals that treats them as living beings rather than as a commodity in a mechanistic growing process.
Source: BecauseAction.com
