Originally Posted by
sprintcarblue
Here is the problem. People honestly must assume livestock is taken care of like a family dog getting special processed food and faucet water daily. Cattle feed most of the year through the natural vegetation and drink from man made stockponds, rivers and streams. They have thousands and thousands of acres of non inhabited grassland. These resources are not being used by people, nor are people even trying to harvest these resources. (besides a local town or two) They sometimes get grain in the winter but is the farmers corn or silage straight out of the field, anyways, it is nothing special. I don't see how much of anything is being wasted. (have you even been to eastern wyoming?!) You also have to realize that before cattle there were thousands of buffalo, antelope and various other creatures that lived off of the land in the same way (beef) cattle do now. We are creating any of the problems, not the animals.
Yee-ha! Git along little dogies!
You have provided an accurate description of meat production--50 years ago. The picture nowadays is quite different.
Pork and poultry, in particular, are usually raised in
CAFOs, or concntrated animal feeding operations. Beef spend at least the last 3 months of their lives being "finished" on grain in CAFOs also, and that time is steadily increasing.
CAFOs house thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of animals in a single location. Obviously the waste produced by these animals is comparable to a human city of equivalent size. Unfortunately, unlike human cities, CAFOs have very lax regualtions governing the treatment and discharge of sewage. Tons of animal crap (to put it nicely) are lagooned and eventually either discharged into streams and rivers, or allowed to dry and blow away as dust. How does that sound? Not much like the idyllic family farms that the big agri-petroleum companies would like us to envision.
It's amazing how the American public swallows corporate lies like this one about the purity of meat production. A short trip into the country would convince you otherwise. Of course, the CAFOs have strict "security" policies that prohibit visits and especially photos. They certainly don't want us to be aware of the conditions in which our food is produced!
Tour the Food Supply