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What you are missing is that Bison lived off whatever plants naturally grew in the land, and that their numbers declined and increased with the available food s
by dguaraglia 5y ago
What you are missing is that Bison lived off whatever plants naturally grew in the land, and that their numbers declined and increased with the available food supply. The loss of natural habitat and biodiversity alone should be a cause for concern.
- spenczar5 5y agoMy impression was (again! uninformed!) that pasture-raised cattle basically are living off whatever plants naturally grow on the land. Is that not the case? Of course it is wrong for factory farmed cattle raised in a shed, and for grain fed to cattle right before slaughter to change their meat, but I thought the bulk of their diet was basically unmanaged wild grasses?
- dguaraglia 5y agoThat was, indeed, how cattle used to be raised back in the day, with maybe some grain added to their diet to make up for seasonality of plants (after all, cow eating is a year-round business). Nowadays, most cattle lives confined in a pen, being fed grass and grains depending on the stage of growth. There’s still some very small farmers using the traditional methodology, but the vast majority of the meat you can buy in a supermarket - even fancy ones like Wholefoods - are the product of mass production. The USDA’s website has a pretty good rundown of the process: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/sector-at-a-glance/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/...
- swader999 5y agoNot where I am, it's mostly just pasture raised cows, there time in a feedlot is very short.