This wonderful little video by Wall Street Journal Multimedia originally came out in July, but the newspaper embedded it today in an article on feed prices. It contains two highly interesting bits of information.
1) With corn prices hovering at historically high levels, industrial-scale meat producers are turning to junk food as a feed supplement to cling to razor-thin profit margins. A feedlot operator calmly tells the Journal that he's cutting corn rations with potato chips and a "byproduct from Hershey's and M.M. Mars" featuring cocoa shells and M&Ms(!).
2) Producers of grass-fed beef are doing even worse than their industrial peers. They're not exposed to high corn prices; but because their profit margins are so slim, any rise in their cost of doing business wipes out profits. According to the Journal reporter, the cost of gas to harvest hay (winter feed) and move finished cows to slaughter has erased profits.
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Comments
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Erik Hoffner Posted 10:20 pm
08 Aug 2008
It's amazing to think about feeding highly processed food to critters just to make meat. Such a waste, but I suppose the chips and m/ms could be, what, old or unfit for human consumption? Guess that'd make it waste recycling, but feeding animals junk just sounds like a bad idea.
Erik
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caniscandida Posted 12:57 am
09 Aug 2008
One wonders if veterinarians/veterinary nutritionists were at any point consulted on how a diet of M&M husks might affect the health and well-being of cattle -- not that anyone particularly cares about the health and well-being of cattle, apparently, except for the handful of us marginalized flakes, seeing that the cattle are just machines, designed to grow big and be slaughtered in a matter of months.
And if the veterinarians have indeed signed off on this, one wonders if their professional code of ethics means anything at all.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:56 am
09 Aug 2008
We need to focus on the root causes of problems. http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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Wolverine Posted 7:57 am
09 Aug 2008
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caniscandida Posted 8:47 am
09 Aug 2008
The editors of the NY Times already have written a powerful editorial, denouncing both the owners/employers for their long, cold-hearted abuse, and the US government for the disgraceful way in which they made sorry examples of these miserable people.
Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld stepped forward, to write a good op/ed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/opinion/06herzfeld.html ....
Good, but not great. No doubt, many Jews are wringing their hands over the human-rights issues -- and that is a very good thing. But let us remember that the several biblical traditions, the various forms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are disgracefully anthropocentric: only human beings count.
Well, no, that is not true. Not only is it not true, it is one of the wickedest falsehoods ever promulgated. In fact, we are animals, animals are us, and our treatment of animals is an important part of our ethics, whether or not we are smart/brave enough to recognize it.
Rabbi Shmuel surely has enough to deal with right now, with all those mistreated, confused and imprisoned Guatemalan Mayan immigrants. Sure: one step at a time. But let us hope that other Jews will step up now and protest the hideous abuse of animals in the kosher slaughter system.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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