[Iowa-dx] Animal Food-Factories vs Pasture Raising

[Libris Fidelis]

I was absentmindedly listening to National Public Radio's program
on WSUI - AM this morning, called "Splendid Table", when I was
abruptly surprised by an uncommonly educational discourse on
ranching.  Normally, I do not like to listen to Splendid Table,
because it always either makes me hungry right after I've eaten
my lunch, or it bores me all to hell with chitter-chatter talk about
FOOOOD and cooking!

Now, I know there are a lot of vegitarians who do not wish to read
about beef being raised for food, and I sympathise, but there is a
large measure about the very cruel way that both containment and
factory farming of livestock are carried out right here in Iowa.  So,
on the NPR radio program Splendid Table today, the hostess
interviewed an organic rancher about growing his beef livestock.

He said that there are fewer food livestock animals today in our USA
than there was thirty years ago in this country.  <<probably since
our "over-regulated" beef producers have begun operations in
un-regulated Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, etc. etc.>>

U.S. government programs have made it artificially cheap to grow
grain and alfalfa, and ship it to feed lots all around the country, than
it is to let animals naturally herd on the range locally, and grow on
their own the way they have for thousands of years.  These policies
and subsidies by our government have encouraged feed lots to
industrialize their processes into a form of commercialized animal
management that does not even call them "animals" or "livestock"
any more -- they simply call them "protien" now.

In the new industrialized process, they do not even wait for the
cows to ween their calves on their own, now they separate the
calves from their mothers as soon as the calves are able to eat
grain, even before the calves' digestive systems are ready for it.

To keep this "product" alive in their highly-dense and unhealthy
factory feedlot environment, they "pump" a whole lot of antibiotics
into every one of these young animals.  Then the animals are
slaughtered as soon as they are big enough, usually in less than a
year to a year-and-a-half of age.

The interviewed organic rancher said he lets his cows ween their
calves on their own, which occurs around age nine months, and
then he separates the calves and turns them loose out to pasture
to herd among themselves for about one year.  This builds muscle
and develops the animal to a fit maturity, so the rancher does not
even use any anti-biotics at all, because his cattle are never sick.

After a year in the pasture, when the animals are almost two years
old, the rancher then puts them on grain and keeps them exercised
by moving them around from pasture-to-pasture as they are
grazing, and this fills them out to be nice and healthy animals.

The feedlot produces a great amount of cheap beef that is less
than a year-and-a-half old (or younger) and is not very nutritious.

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