"I'm On Drugs"

I have been really disturbed by reading about the way we, as the consumer, get most of our beef today. I will try and summarize a lot of the main issues, but I HIGHLY recommend reading Michael Pollan's article "A Steer's Life". Beef production in the U.S. today is really monopolized by the idea of the confined animal feeding operation or CAFO. The EPA defines a CAFO as an agricultural operation where animals are kept and raised in confined situations. CAFO's congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals and production operations on a small land area. Feed is brought to the animals rather than the animals grazing or otherwise seeking feed in pastures, fields, or on rangeland.
A steer that is born at around 80 pounds will find itself weighing up to 1,250 pounds within 14 months due to the way cattle are raised today. One of the main differences between how cows are raised today and how they were raised in the past is the type of feed they are given. Cows naturally digest grass because they belong to the class of animals called ruminants which can do this. However, today we don't feed cows grass, we feed them corn. Corn is a richer food and it is also highly subsidized by the government making it a cheap feed source. Due to the use of fertilizer, however, it takes 1.2 gallons of oil to produce a bushel of corn. What this means is that instead of using a solar driven system (cows eating grass) we are now using a fossil fuel driven system (cows eating corn). Even though the cows grow faster by being fed corn Michael Pollan states that, "the only way you can keep a cow alive getting this much corn would be with antibiotics". Thus, our cows are feed antibiotics because their natural digestive system was not meant to process the amount of corn we feed them. Over half of the antibiotics made in this country go to feed livestock. Despite the antibiotics feedlot cows still face feedlot polio, abscessed livers, and rumenitis, which are all things that cows in nature simply do not get. Feedlots also subject the cows to hormones.
I think one of the main things to keep in mind with all of this is that human health is affected by what we eat. By putting antibiotics into the environment like this we are creating resistant bacteria. Feeding cows corn also creates a more acidic digestive system. Humans have acidic digestive systems. This means that bacteria that used to pass from cows to humans in the past would not have been used to an acidic environment and they would die in our digestive tract. Now bacteria is used to an acidic environment so that bacteria can survive in us too. Traces of hormones have also shown up in the meat we eat, but this is still legal. In addition corn fed meat has more saturated fat than grass fed meat. This is not good for our health and must only be adding to the obesity problem the U.S. is currently facing.
These are serious issues that I find seriously disturbing and completely unnatural. PLEASE CHECK OUT THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION (I used it as source material for this entry and it also contains valuable additional info).

-The interview with Michael Pollan on NPR’s Fresh Air regarding his New York Times Magazine Article “This Steer’s Life”:
http://www.math.uic.edu/~takata/some_articles/FreshAir_Michael_Pollon_on_beef_industry,_hormones,_antibiotics.html:

-"This Steer's Life" and "The Omnivore's Dilema" by Michael Pollan

-The EPA website that defines a CAFO: http://www.epa.gov/Region7/water/cafo/index.htm

-Check out "The Meatrix", an animation created to show the problems with the way industrial farming occurs today:
www.themeatrix.com