peristaltor (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
peristaltor) wrote2012-12-15 08:11 pm
peristaltor) wrote2012-12-15 08:11 pm
Entry tags:
Defending the Cow Part II: The Problem With Corn
Remember this guy?
I used him recently to give a face to my rant about how cows are not to blame for global warming, no matter what the vegan jihadists claim. I'll accept some criticism from activists bent on reducing or eliminating meat from our human diet; yes, there is a lot of disease being spread in meat and milk, much of it harmful. Head over to the Centers for Disease Control and a list of Escherichia coli outbreaks over the last 5 years alone should give you a reason to pause before biting that burger.
Ah, but here's a question: Lots of us eat the meat brought from the wild during and after hunting season. Deer, elk, moose; it's all pretty darned tasty, and those wild critters are similar to cows. Why do our domestic cows seem to produce more disease-bearing meat than those beasts grazing in the wild? If the answer does not surprise you, you are in a small minority indeed.
I'm sure most of you out there, like me, accepted the standard explanation blaming E. Coli outbreaks on poor meat handling. After all, we're told, E. coli, as nasty as it is when we ingest it, is a natural part of a cow's digestive system. The problem is not that E. coli and other digestive organisms are present, it's that they are allowed to escape from the confines of the digestive system and taint the meat during either slaughter or subsequent handling. As long as inspectors can oversee slaughter operations and insure that cooks wash their hands with plenty of soap and water, pretending to play surgeon every time they deign to touch a meal, everything will be hunky and dory.
That simply does not explain why the venison jerky and sausages I've ingested over the decades haven't rendered me long ago to worm food. After all, here we have an unlicensed and un-overseen slaughterer dressing a carcass not in a sterile cutting room with lots of bleach, but in the middle of the fricking forest. No doubt the poor animal relieved his or her bowels upon death, as most animals (and people) do. Did the hunter bring lots of water to wash the entire carcass before the dressing, or even bring a portable autoclave to sterilize the handy hunting knife? No? So why aren't all eating wild game dead by now, at least as dead as those munching fast food burgers?
I'll turn again to Joel Salatin to explain the basics of disease, starting with the difference between cow and human digestion.
Got that? Fermentation is sweet, breaking the complex starches of the grasses down into sugars. And it is into this sweet, higher-pH environment that the "normal" E. coli strains exist in grass-grazing cows and wild game. Remember Darwin? Those intestinal bugs that enjoy the environment continue to flourish, driving out those ill-suited. Ah, but we humans have an acidic digestive tract: "If a human were to ingest these natural E. coli strains, our acidic digestive juices would kill them immediately." It's a win-win.
Which brings us to the present day and the more common procedures involved in raising beef. Instead of letting the cows graze on grass to restart and restore the soil's fertility (as I mentioned in the last post), we now keep the cows in vast pens and bring them their dinner . . . their dinner mostly comprised of grains. And there lies the problem:
Acidosis. That's the real culprit behind outbreaks of E. coli and all the nasty disease-carrying organisms that plague us in our modern era, not sanitation. We have created a food growing and processing system that creates disease, necessitating a focus on extreme sanitation.
Is there any way (short of reverting to a pre-"modern" meat raising system) to prevent this acidosis-caused danger? Well, yes. Salatin briefly mentions a Cornell University study confirmed by a Wiki entry noting that cows finished with at least two weeks of grass greatly reduce the count of the E. coli types most likely to harm humans. It does mean, though, that "ranchers" must bring food other than that cheap, cheap corn to their cattle. Their reaction was typical:
So there you have it. We in industrialized meat land must make a choice to eat what is handed to us, raised by processes that create disease, and hope the proscribed method of disease prevention—extreme separation of the contents of an animal's digestive tract from the animal's meat—was followed to the letter. Ah, but herein we find another problem.
The more attention the butcher pays to his task, the more likely that butcher is to not contaminate the meat with acidic-tract contents. Sadly, most industrial meat processing plants focus on reducing costs, meaning the butchers must achieve a greater through-put of product. Greater speed of processing leads to fatigue; mistakes are made. We should take solace, then, that the USDA has inspectors in plants when they are in operation. Or should we? Salatin notes that many of the larger plants keep cameras everywhere, supposedly for security, but also for tracking the inspectors. When the inspectors move to one area of the plant, supervisors radio to other areas, giving the word to speed up production . . . and cut safety corners. (Sorry, forgot to record the page number for this nugget.)
Perhaps we could avoid this problem by avoiding larger plants? After all, if an inspector is required to process meat, the smaller the plant the more likely it would be for the inspector to catch a problem before it taints a shipment? Well, here we have another problem:
So, who is ultimately to blame for this sad state of meat? You are. Didn't you know?
Every time you buy meat based on lower price, you are rewarding those who cut corners. Every time you walk by the organic beef section in favor of the burger tube, the more careful processors lose a buck, one that goes to the big plant with the cameras and radios. Salatin spends I think too much of his time blaming the government (a self-described libertarian, he is, so no surprise there), but it's his book. He can blame who he wants. And he does.
I'll also throw in that I blame the government as well, but not in the same vein as Salatin. He is a farmer; he has suffered greatly from inspectors and regulators simply because he must involve himself directly with them. He fails to see the real problem: a government that creates proscriptive regulations rather than avoid the situation that creates the need for the proscriptive regulation appears to me to be in the thrall of the industry that it is supposed to govern. We're talking about a corporatist government here, one that abdicates its responsibility for running the asylum to the inmates. The permission to grow meat outside a process proven to create inherently safe meat for consumption comes from the government. That the government bows to the industry with easy-to-avoid regulation instead shows that it is part of the process that needs to accept the blame.
In the meantime, I'll try to break this cycle of abuse by seeking out grass-fed beef, at least as much as I can afford.
X-Posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
talk_politics.
I used him recently to give a face to my rant about how cows are not to blame for global warming, no matter what the vegan jihadists claim. I'll accept some criticism from activists bent on reducing or eliminating meat from our human diet; yes, there is a lot of disease being spread in meat and milk, much of it harmful. Head over to the Centers for Disease Control and a list of Escherichia coli outbreaks over the last 5 years alone should give you a reason to pause before biting that burger.
Ah, but here's a question: Lots of us eat the meat brought from the wild during and after hunting season. Deer, elk, moose; it's all pretty darned tasty, and those wild critters are similar to cows. Why do our domestic cows seem to produce more disease-bearing meat than those beasts grazing in the wild? If the answer does not surprise you, you are in a small minority indeed.
I'm sure most of you out there, like me, accepted the standard explanation blaming E. Coli outbreaks on poor meat handling. After all, we're told, E. coli, as nasty as it is when we ingest it, is a natural part of a cow's digestive system. The problem is not that E. coli and other digestive organisms are present, it's that they are allowed to escape from the confines of the digestive system and taint the meat during either slaughter or subsequent handling. As long as inspectors can oversee slaughter operations and insure that cooks wash their hands with plenty of soap and water, pretending to play surgeon every time they deign to touch a meal, everything will be hunky and dory.
That simply does not explain why the venison jerky and sausages I've ingested over the decades haven't rendered me long ago to worm food. After all, here we have an unlicensed and un-overseen slaughterer dressing a carcass not in a sterile cutting room with lots of bleach, but in the middle of the fricking forest. No doubt the poor animal relieved his or her bowels upon death, as most animals (and people) do. Did the hunter bring lots of water to wash the entire carcass before the dressing, or even bring a portable autoclave to sterilize the handy hunting knife? No? So why aren't all eating wild game dead by now, at least as dead as those munching fast food burgers?
I'll turn again to Joel Salatin to explain the basics of disease, starting with the difference between cow and human digestion.
The E. coli strains that have been in the rumen of the herbivore since time immemorial and do play an important role in digestion enjoy a natural alkaline environment. When raw forages enter the herbivore's alkaline rumen, they are broken down by many types of bacteria that thrive in that environment. The process is akin to fermentation. . . .
I always wondered how a cow could cough up forage already in its first stomach and enjoy the taste. Whenever I cough up something from my one stomach, it doesn't taste like something I'd like to chew on contendedly. Yuck. But a cow is not like that. She enjoys that sweet taste of the nonacidic forage.
(Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advise for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World, Center Street, 2011, p. 299.)
Got that? Fermentation is sweet, breaking the complex starches of the grasses down into sugars. And it is into this sweet, higher-pH environment that the "normal" E. coli strains exist in grass-grazing cows and wild game. Remember Darwin? Those intestinal bugs that enjoy the environment continue to flourish, driving out those ill-suited. Ah, but we humans have an acidic digestive tract: "If a human were to ingest these natural E. coli strains, our acidic digestive juices would kill them immediately." It's a win-win.
This is why, even in extremely unsanitary conditions, Native Americans and pioneers, and modern-day hunters, never suffer from E. coli contamination. When you kill an herbivore in the wild, it's virtually impossible to sanitize the carcass. . . .
(Salatin, ibid.)
Which brings us to the present day and the more common procedures involved in raising beef. Instead of letting the cows graze on grass to restart and restore the soil's fertility (as I mentioned in the last post), we now keep the cows in vast pens and bring them their dinner . . . their dinner mostly comprised of grains. And there lies the problem:
But when a cow eats lots of fermented feedstuffs like silage, and especially eats grains, it causes the pH of the rumen to become more acidic. This creates a condition in the rumen called acidosis. To digest this new type of feedstuff, the bacteria in the rumen change to more acid-loving varieties. Over time, new generations emerge that thrive in a more acid environment. . . .
But these new, virulent acid-tolerant strains of E. coli are a different story. Already acclimated to acidic conditions, instead of our acidic digestive system killing these bacteria, the mutated strains kill us.
(Salatin, ibid.)
Acidosis. That's the real culprit behind outbreaks of E. coli and all the nasty disease-carrying organisms that plague us in our modern era, not sanitation. We have created a food growing and processing system that creates disease, necessitating a focus on extreme sanitation.
Is there any way (short of reverting to a pre-"modern" meat raising system) to prevent this acidosis-caused danger? Well, yes. Salatin briefly mentions a Cornell University study confirmed by a Wiki entry noting that cows finished with at least two weeks of grass greatly reduce the count of the E. coli types most likely to harm humans. It does mean, though, that "ranchers" must bring food other than that cheap, cheap corn to their cattle. Their reaction was typical:
Several years ago when Cornell University's research showed that feeding forage for two weeks prior to slaughter would practically eliminate the risk of E. coli problems, wouldn't you think the industry would have created new protocols for forage-finished feeding?
No, instead the industry vilified Cornell.
(Salatin, ibid, pp. 299-300.)
So there you have it. We in industrialized meat land must make a choice to eat what is handed to us, raised by processes that create disease, and hope the proscribed method of disease prevention—extreme separation of the contents of an animal's digestive tract from the animal's meat—was followed to the letter. Ah, but herein we find another problem.
The more attention the butcher pays to his task, the more likely that butcher is to not contaminate the meat with acidic-tract contents. Sadly, most industrial meat processing plants focus on reducing costs, meaning the butchers must achieve a greater through-put of product. Greater speed of processing leads to fatigue; mistakes are made. We should take solace, then, that the USDA has inspectors in plants when they are in operation. Or should we? Salatin notes that many of the larger plants keep cameras everywhere, supposedly for security, but also for tracking the inspectors. When the inspectors move to one area of the plant, supervisors radio to other areas, giving the word to speed up production . . . and cut safety corners. (Sorry, forgot to record the page number for this nugget.)
Perhaps we could avoid this problem by avoiding larger plants? After all, if an inspector is required to process meat, the smaller the plant the more likely it would be for the inspector to catch a problem before it taints a shipment? Well, here we have another problem:
One of the dirty little secrets in the processing industry is that even if a facility complies with everything the food police require to be licensed as a safe food business, an inspector is not guaranteed. Without an inspector, you can't run the plant. And since bigger plants have more prestige than small ones, the food police have a prejudicial attitude toward community-based abattoirs. If a small plant decides to add a second shift, it must submit a request and the government food police get to be judge and jury, deciding if the need merits and inspector. If not, it's tough cookies for the little abattoir. Sorry, end of discussion. Subsidies and corporate welfare are for the big guys, not the little guys.
(Salatin, ibid, p. 259, emboldenation mine.)
So, who is ultimately to blame for this sad state of meat? You are. Didn't you know?
Every time you buy meat based on lower price, you are rewarding those who cut corners. Every time you walk by the organic beef section in favor of the burger tube, the more careful processors lose a buck, one that goes to the big plant with the cameras and radios. Salatin spends I think too much of his time blaming the government (a self-described libertarian, he is, so no surprise there), but it's his book. He can blame who he wants. And he does.
Of all the governmental agencies, the USDA has been the most aggressive at creating and perpetuating this cheap food policy. Don't people understand that a cheap food policy will create a cheap farmer policy? And a cheap farmer policy will create a cheap landscape policy? And a cheap landscape policy will create a cheap soil policy? No civilization can be any healthier environmentally or economically than its soil. No health care system and no bank bailout program can compensate for a bankrupt soil policy, which is exactly what a cheap food policy creates.
(Salatin, ibid, p. 250.)
I'll also throw in that I blame the government as well, but not in the same vein as Salatin. He is a farmer; he has suffered greatly from inspectors and regulators simply because he must involve himself directly with them. He fails to see the real problem: a government that creates proscriptive regulations rather than avoid the situation that creates the need for the proscriptive regulation appears to me to be in the thrall of the industry that it is supposed to govern. We're talking about a corporatist government here, one that abdicates its responsibility for running the asylum to the inmates. The permission to grow meat outside a process proven to create inherently safe meat for consumption comes from the government. That the government bows to the industry with easy-to-avoid regulation instead shows that it is part of the process that needs to accept the blame.
In the meantime, I'll try to break this cycle of abuse by seeking out grass-fed beef, at least as much as I can afford.
X-Posted to
talk_politics.