Farmers doing it tough

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22486693-2,00.html

It seems the drought is really making life tough for farmers at the moment. In the above article "Egg, milk, pork and meat producers have complained that higher grain prices were hitting them particularly hard as they were forced to pay more for livestock feed." Sounds pretty bad at first, but lets take a look at one point they don't mention.

Everyone has heard about the antibiotics that are fed to cattle, and some of the concerns about the impact this has on their efficacy in humans. But it's all for the good of the cows, right? If only. It is only because cattle are kept in such unsanitary conditions on feedlots, and that they are fed grains, that they get as sick and diseased as they do. Rather than helping keep the cattle well, in many instances the antibiotics are simply keeping the cattle alive long enough to reach slaughter weight.

But why is grain such a problem for cattle? Surely they can eat it no worries, after all, grains are good for you, right? Well yes, provided you're a human or other animal with a digestive system designed to handle it. But cattle are not. They are ruminant animals, with a vastly different digestive system altogether, intended for grass and not a whole lot more. What happens to them then, if they eat grain? Well, one of the worst problems is a condition called "feedlot bloat", which can actually suffocate them if not treated properly - but they wouldn't get it at all if not for being fed an unnatural grain-based diet. And that's only one of many health problems directly caused by this diet.

In countries like the US (and this applied to Australia also until mad cow scare), cattle are also fed meat remnants, restaurant leftovers (including assorted animal parts), fecal matter, dead chickens, chicken feathers, and spilled feed (which can include beef and bone meal). In other words, farmers are taking a 100% herbivorous animal that should only be eating grass, and forcing it to eat grains supplemented by other animals - including cattle. Does this really sound like the sort of thing we should be doing, or allowing to happen anywhere? Mad cow disease is essentially a disease that we, the people who farm them, have wilfully inflicted upon cattle for no good reason at all, to the suffering of all - mad cow disease has killed people too, and it is unfortunate that it took the deaths of people before any action was ever taken to address a problem that would never have arisen had cattle been treated humanely and fed properly in the first place.

And that's really only a very small aspect of the problems and cruelty inherent in feedlot operations. Environmentally, it is as bad if not worse, when you consider such facts as the need for 60,000-100,000 litres of water to produce 1 kilo of beef, or the 17 kilo of grain to produce that same kilo. In a world with so many people going hungry, and so many places devastated by severe water shortage and drought - including many parts of Australia - does this again seem like a very wise use of scarce natural resources? More on this later.

Read "The Ethics of What We Eat", by Peter Singer and Jim Mason, for a more detailed review of feedlot operations among other aspects of food production. It's not about being vegan, just about how our food is produced, and makes an interesting read no matter your perspective or dietary preference.