About twice a day, an email from a mystery man/unflagging anti-ethanol crusader named Ray Wallace appears in my inbox, chock full of excerpts from the latest ethanol slams and, on lucky days, choice quotes from politicos and the like sounding less-than-smart about the whole business. I'm not sure how I got on his listserv, and I can't quite say how you can (but if you'd really like to, let me know and we can probably work something out).
Anyhow (I'm getting to my point), I mention Ray so as to credit him for alerting me to this quote, contained in today's edition:
I'm a big believer in ethanol ... We're going to run into a constraint pretty soon, though. It turns out corn is needed for more than just ethanol. You got to feed your cows and feed your hogs.
-- From President George W. Bush's January 30, 2007 speech in East Peoria, Illinois.
The funny thing is, I'd always thought we feed corn to cows and pigs because it's dirt cheap and needing to be gotten rid of.
It's not the first time someone has attempted to correct me on this. A few months ago, I was strolling past the meat counter at our regional mid-sized grocery chain and thought, hey, I should ask for grass-fed beef, 'cause they'll only carry it if they perceive demand.
The conversation went something like this:
Me: Hi, do you have any grass-fed beef?
Butcher: Hmm, grass-fed? I don't think you can feed grass to cows.
Me: Well, they're ruminant animals, so I think that's what they're supposed to eat.
Butcher: [sympathetic-but-authoritative head shake] I don't think so. They need vitamins and minerals and stuff.
Me: Uh ...
Butcher: Now this [points down at large, marbled slab in meat case], this is corn-fed beef.
Me: Yeah, well, um, thanks anyway.
So I don't know what those so-called grass-fed-beef farmers have been charging me an arm and a leg for, but with the president's backing, I'm going to call that bluff.
In the meantime, I'm relieved to know that the FDA allows farmers to feed chicken manure to cattle -- though I'll have to ask my butcher about the vitamin and mineral content.
Do diesel-based farmers dream of electric tractors?
Comments
View as Flat
Biodiversivist Posted 5:44 am
01 Feb 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
Ron Steenblik Posted 6:04 am
01 Feb 2007
Permalink
TariffDude Posted 6:54 am
01 Feb 2007
Permalink
Ctsolarnow Posted 6:58 am
01 Feb 2007
Permalink
Tom Philpott Posted 7:17 am
01 Feb 2007
Victual Reality
Permalink
willa Posted 7:55 am
01 Feb 2007
Of course, in that case it was funny, because of course we were just kids, whereas in this case it's sufficiently horrifying that I can't really find it funny (well, especially given the chicken-manure business).
Permalink
Karen Orr Posted 9:43 am
01 Feb 2007
pretty soon, though. It turns out corn is needed for more than just
ethanol. You got to feed your cows and feed your hogs."
-- From President George W. Bush's January 30, 2007 speech in
East Peoria, Illinois, as posted at this White House site:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070130-...
- - -
Cows are ruminants, they are meant to eat grass....
Feeding corn and soy to cows results in a host of problems resulting in
the need to add daily doses of antibiotics to the feed to treat some of the
illnesses that occur. Things like liver abscesses are a common occurrence
among feedlot cattle....
Aside from inappropriate grain and soy, feedlot cows are also fed any
or all of the following (all allowed by the FDA) feather meal, pig and fish
protein, chicken manure and pesticide-laden citrus peels. To protect against
the spread of mad cow disease, since 1997 the Animal Feed Rule prohibits
adding most mammalian materials to ruminant feed. However, chicken litter
and restaurant scraps (which both can contain bovine proteins) are still
allowed and many calves are still fed bovine blood meal.
While they are being fed this concoction, designed to get them as heavy
as possible as quickly as possible, they are standing thigh deep in their
own waste creating an even bigger health problem After slaughter, these
cows are then hosed off using high pressure sprays, which, rather than clean
the manure off the meat, imbeds it deeper into the muscle.
And that is just cows. Pigs and chickens are treated even worse....
-- From "You are what you eat, eats," by Tanya Carwyn, at this
Jan. 18, 2007 site of The Cherry Creek News and Central Denver
Dispatch, Denver, Colorado:
http://www.thecherrycreeknews.com/content/view/970/2/...
- - -
Broiler litter contains bedding material, manure, wasted feed and
feathers....
Adding broiler litter to beef cattle rations at a level of 20% or
higher ... generally meets the animal's needs for crude protein,
calcium, and phosphorus....
Cows may be wintered on a mixture of 89% litter.... Litter alone would
meet the protein and energy needs of wintering cows if they ate enough
of it....
If cows are to be fed litter during lactation, start cows on litter
rations before calving to ensure that intake is sufficient to meet
nutritional requirements. Some animals may refuse to eat an adequate
amount of broiler litter rations....
-- From "Guidelines for Feeding Broiler Litter to Beef Cattle" at
this North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service site:
http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/programs/extension/publicat/wqwm/...
- - -
The Delmarva Peninsula, comprising Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia on
the Chesapeake Bay, an area also known as the Eastern Shore, produces a
million tons of poultry manure a year, according to The Washington Post,
Oct. 3, 1997. This manure is called "litter" because it is the main thing
the birds bed in from the time they are born-a mixture of fecal droppings,
antibiotic residues, heavy metals, cysts, larvae, decaying carcasses,
sawdust, ground up chicken heads, USDA condemned slaughter products, and the
mammalian nervous system tissue responsible for Mad Cow Disease. Poultry
litter is used as crop fertilizer and is fed to cattle....
-- From "Md Gov. Glendening Goes Almost Vegetarian" at this summer
2001 site of United Poultry Concerns:
http://www.upc-online.org/summer2001/glendening_semi_veg....
- - -
"The litter feeding issue has been in the hands of the FDA since 2002,
but as of yet, they haven't called a halt to its use as cattle feed.
It's currently legal to feed litter to beef cattle...."
-- Robert Seay, Benton County staff chair for the University of
Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, as quoted at "In the
News - August 2006: Arkansas cattle producers looking at
emergency feed options," at this Aug. 25, 2006 site of the
University of Arkansas, Division of Agriculture, Cooperative
Extension Service:
http://www.uaex.edu/news/august2006/0825litr.htm
- - -
With many thanks to December McSherry, cattle rancher, farmer, Florida
Sierra Club Agriculture Committee chair, and National Sierra Club
Agriculture Committee member.
# # #
Permalink
Julia Olmstead Posted 11:35 am
01 Feb 2007
Raising cows on pasture is a beautiful thing [full disclosure: my grad work is in forage breeding and I once received a $300 award from the Alfalfa Improvement Association, no kidding]. You've got a deep-rooted, soil-stabilizing, perennial grass-legume mix, you've got the cows doing the fertilization, and you've got milk and meat that's lean and omega-3 rich.
Instead, we decided to slice this system apart into row crops and feedlots. As Wendell Berry said, "we took an old solution and neatly divided it into two problems."
Now, with cellulosic ethanol all the rage, we're talking about this great opportunity to diversify and perennialize the landscape, as if we had no idea until now how this could be done.
The poor cows -- I guess chicken poop will have to do.
Karen: thanks for posting Ray's full email.
Permalink
JZH Posted 1:12 am
02 Feb 2007
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 2:32 am
02 Feb 2007
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
synarchy Posted 6:48 am
07 Feb 2007
How many of you have ever been to a cattle ranch or fed cattle or talked to people who raise cattle? Eaten farm raised cattle? I'm not bragging, but I have. I've also asked lots of questions of people who raise cattle, not giant cattle corporations, just family farmers with 120 acres and 30+ head.
Yes, cows are ruminants and they eat grass. rolls eyes
When you select a calf to fatten for slaughter, you put them in a feed lot (with at least one other calf so they compete and eat more) to restrict calorie burn. They eat and do little exercise and get fat and tender. Fat and tender = tasty.
Corn is fed to calves (males and females) to fatten them before slaughter. Why? Beef tastes bad without the fat marbleing which produces tasty juiciness when cooked. Grass-fed beef lacks this high fat content and is consequently rather tough and unappealing.
Permalink
sjg Posted 8:03 am
07 Feb 2007
by synarchy. We purchase and eat a quarter
of a grass-fed steer each year. It's tender
and tastes great! I'd agree that extra fat is
one way to make meat tender, but it is not the
only way. Our Diamond F local beef is selected
for tenderness, and the steers are never fattened
on grain. This makes them much better for the
environment, health, and local agriculture. I
am pretty sure you can order the meat online,
just search for it.
Cheers,
Susanna
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 8:38 am
07 Feb 2007
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/2/9/1 ...
And restored prairie sequesters CO2. And provides biomass for energy production. And direct cooling through transpiration.
Commercial bison hunting instead of grazing cattle then contaminating the meat in feedlots.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
pauldwaite Posted 7:09 pm
07 Feb 2007
Am I missing something, or are vegetables just simpler?
Permalink
Saltation Posted 1:20 am
09 Feb 2007
Corn makes cattle fat, fast. Size, not quality. It's useful for force-farmers for the same reason hormones and antibiotics are useful -- they get a much bigger animal much more quickly.
Corn is not fed to cattle because it's surplus. Corn is grown in the current quantities because it meets a demand.
Interestingly, corn has about the same effect on humans as eating the same weight of sugar. Sugar has the same effect on human palates as high-nutrition foods. Tellingly, corn syrup (tastes like sugar) is now endemic in most "modern" commercial food preparations.
From a fuel perspective, even if ALL the corn production of ALL the Americas was devoted to fuel, it would not make much of a dent on even the USA's fuel needs. Ethanol from corn is not a viable oil replacement.
And the pseudo-vegetarians' argument that cattle take up too much land relative to plants rests absolutely on a false assumption: that humans can gain the same nutrition from the soil and the plants that herbivores can. Only in very rich soils can vegetarianism come within a bull's roar (sorry) nutritionally of the effectiveness of inserting a third party pre-digestion step: herbivores. Cattle are typically run on "waste" land -- too poor quality soil for farming plants to be viable.
Permalink
willa Posted 1:37 am
09 Feb 2007
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 2:06 am
09 Feb 2007
But natural prairie would rescue that land and soil. And bison would produce more meat than cows ever did.
The wind energy produced, backed up by biogas used in fuel cells, could be a stable source of power that would not need any other storage or backup. A hybrid energy source to replace fossil and nuclear power generation. And also sequester cO2.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
palinode Posted 7:15 am
12 Feb 2007
Permalink
eightoclockranch Posted 3:10 am
28 Feb 2007
They haven't tried the meat or possibly did not cook it properly. Because grass fed meat is leaner and thus much healthier for you it also cooks up to 40% faster that its grain fed counterparts! ( You also lose the huge amounts of grease that is then left in your pan after you are done cooking it!!) We raise grass fed and finished beef and lamb on our ranch and will NOT eat anything else.
Kassandra Barton
http://www.eightoclockranch.com
Permalink
muirnin Posted 8:46 am
07 Mar 2007
For beef it's 100%.
Guess we just have plenty of land - it's cheaper to just let them feed themselves than to truck in anything to give to them.
We do 'grain fed' beef too, but that's more expensive and uncommon.
Permalink
Fabulous2007 Posted 8:40 pm
04 Jul 2007
Permalink
LindaVee Posted 4:38 am
23 Sep 2007
Permalink
LindaVee Posted 4:40 am
23 Sep 2007
Permalink
John Fish Kurmann Posted 12:55 pm
23 Sep 2007
There will never be an additional 3 billion people if we don't manage to increase food production enough to feed them--people are made from food, after all. I suspect--and hope--we won't be able to increase food production enough for even another 1 billion people, but we'll see what happens.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
Permalink
John Fish Kurmann Posted 1:05 pm
23 Sep 2007
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
Permalink
ckturja Posted 3:14 am
16 Mar 2008
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 4:13 am
16 Mar 2008
Local islands of really free markets that operate and compete on the basis of taste and health. In a sea of monpolized corporate "free" markets.
Could a network of cooperative farm markets that spread this quaiklty based free trade into a wider scale, maintain it's inmtegrity? Doubtfull, look what is happening with organic dairying. Soon after a corporation markets the product, farmers are squeezed out and go broke.
Thanks for your comment, hope you keep weighing in on these issues. Do you have any experience with wind, solar, and biogas energy production to boost farm income?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
gogreen10 Posted 10:38 am
07 Apr 2008
All I know is I'm paying $4.30 for a gallon of milk and I used to get it for a $1.99. And it's because of corn ethanol. Same goes for eggs, butter, etc.
Corn ethanol is a temporary solution that's costing us. We should put our money into a permanent solution.
Biodiesel is the answer. Convert diesel cars to be able to use biodiesel. Buy the equipment necessary to do the conversion and go to your local McDonald's and take their buckets of grease off their hands. They have to pay to get rid of it anyway so if you'll take it for free, they are glad to hand it over. There you go. There are costs in the beginning, but it pays off, and you're saving the environment. I currently drive a prius that some French guy that came to the states practically gave to me because he realized he had no use for it in New York City (ya think?). I never would have been able to afford one otherwise. But as soon as I get the money I plan on getting an old pick-up diesel truck and converting it.
As for the cows...Out west they have droughts and whatnot, it's difficult to keep cattle just on grass, because they do need to save it for their harsh winters. So their diets need to be supplemented with corn, and soymeal and whatnot. Also because it is a business and prime meat is best before these animals are two, it makes sense to fatten them up. It costs money to keep these animals much past that. These farmers need to make money somehow. Not to say I support what they do. I personally don't consume beef. In other countries they do rely on grass and it works (New Zealand). But they also don't have the weird appetites that Americans have. Americans like their fat and corn gets them that nice marbled beef. If we would stop these need for fat and eat healthier, then we wouldn't feet our cows corn.
All in all, corn ethanol is a bad idea. You are misinformed if you think it's the answer.
Permalink
gogreen10 Posted 11:25 am
07 Apr 2008
Permalink
Diff Posted 3:59 am
12 Apr 2008
Permalink
motherswhistler Posted 10:37 am
01 May 2008
Permalink
teb Posted 4:56 am
30 Jul 2008
Also note that pollution associated with driving doesn't go away just because we go gasoline-fee. Sources also include water run off from roads and parking, heat island effects, the energy input into batteries or other fuels (with the except of bio waste diesel, which still puts off carbon). Roads and parking also cost a lot of money, much of which is passed on to taxpayers and consumers regardless of whether or how much they drive. not to mention walking is good for you and encourages you to interact with other humans instead of just your radio.
cnu.org
Permalink