:hi:
I came across this story called "Power Steer". It was written by Michael Pollan and published in the N.Y. Times on 3/31/02.
Michael Pollan tells his story of following the short life of a steer, #534, he purchased from birth to slaughter.
After reading this story, I have decided to give up on ever eating beef again, not that I was/am much of a red meat eater anyway.
After reading this story, I felt incredibly both sad and sickened at the same time.
<<Garden City, Kan., missed out on the suburban building boom of the postwar years. 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 50's, and by now developments catering to cows are far more common here than developments catering to people.
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 37,000. Cattle pens stretch to the horizon, each one home to 150 animals standing dully or lying around in a grayish mud that it eventually dawns on you isn't mud at all. 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 $598. I was paying Poky Feeders $1.60 a day for his room, board and meds and hoped to sell him at a profit after he was fattened.
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. 534, as he is known, has an appointment with the stunner in 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.>>
Link to entire story:
http://www.mindfully.org/Food/Power-Steer-Pollan31mar02.htmGiven the facts presented in this story, I cannot believe that our government can simply say that there is no reason to worry about Mad Cow Disease. If it wasn't a for real worry, the following countries wouldn't have banned it! There are 29 of them in all. If people in other countries won't eat out great American beef, why should we!
Countries that have been all imports of beef from the USA:
Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Barbados, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada (ban limited to processed meats), Chile, China, including Hong Kong, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Grenada, Guyana, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam
Its poisonous! If it wasn't why would so many countries with so many needy/poor people not want it? This whole Mad Cow Disease thing has me seriously worried and concerned. I have noted that some of the contaminated meat was being sold at a store where mostly poor people shop. Their meat has always been disgusting and I have never eaten it but maybe once in 10 years.
Is this not another horrifying problem directed towards destroying the poor in our country I cannot help but wonder. Call me paranoid if you like.
:dem:
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