Fri, 28 Jan 2005

Massive cow manure mound burns for third month

Oh, the joys of feedlots! But at least the writer from the Associated press who penned this tale has a clue:

Decades ago, most farmers and ranchers kept their own cows and pigs until they were shipped to market and slaughtered into filet mignon, hamburger, pork chops and bacon.

And with all those animals spread far apart at thousands of farms, it was easier to dispose of the manure.

But huge feedlots -- where animals are shipped to fatten on a high-grain diet for their last several months -- have become commonplace.

And how huge is huge?

Dickinson has an average of 12,000 animals on hand, each eating about 25 pounds of feed daily, resulting in as much as nine pounds of manure a day per animal -- some 54 tons every 24 hours.

To give you some perspective, here at Hammerstead we have 8 head of cattle - and they eat no processed feeds, only grass and hay. They drop their little cow pies all over my pastures, fertilizing them in the process and saving me money - that's fertilizer I don't have to buy and apply.

What's in the feed this guy stuffs his cows with? Well, mostly corn - and up to 8 pounds of anitbiotics per ton. Why the anibiotic? Are the cows sick? Nope ... well, not yet anyway. But without the antibiotic they would be. You see, cattle are designed to eat mostly roughage: grass. And when you stuff them full of high-carb grains, their rumen (a sort of pre-stomach) acts like a fermentation tank: with all that sugar, their gastrointestinal flora and fauna go wild, eventually causing an infection or poisoning the animal with alcohol. The antibiotics in the feed kill off the yeasties that are trying their darndest to help the cow cope with an overdose of carbohydrates.

And why stuff them with corn like that? Well, it makes them fatter: which is why the average fat content of meat has nearly doubled in the last fifty years. Of course, so has the rate from heart attacks in humans, but we're sure there's no connection .... right? And the fats produced in cattle by a grass based diet are different in both taste and appearance from those in a corn-fed cow. Grass makes a fat with a more yellow color, a richer texture and a somewhat "stronger" taste: the yellowing comes from omega-3 fatty acids (the same stuff that's in fish oil : and it's actually good for you), the texture comes from the exercise the cow gets while grazing instead of standing at a trough, and the stronger taste is OK, because there's so much less fat that the whole cut tastes milder.

We've actually had to add a tablespoon of olive oil to our Hammerstead hamburger to get it to fry up properly! When was the last time you had to do that with supermarket ground beef? I'm convinced that most folks who've sworn off beef in the last few years have done so because they find the taste repugnant: and that's because all they've ever had has been feedlot beef, loaded with fats.

Can you tell I'm a bit passionate about this?

Urban dwellers who enjoy dining on filet mignon at five-star restaurants would probably just as soon not know about David Dickinson's dilemma.

(link) [CNN]

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