5 ms·

Just when I contemplated the days of cows eating cow brains and getting prion diseases was behind us, I learned they are allowed to be fed "chicken litter" whic

Just when I contemplated the days of cows eating cow brains and getting prion diseases was behind us, I learned they are allowed to be fed "chicken litter" which is fancy term for shit and dead bodies. How about we limit our food animals to vegetarian feed? It may be less cholestrol-genic too.

ethbr1 3y ago
You know what a key source of protein is in chicken feed? Crab/fish meal. Which is to say leftovers after processing, dried and ground. https://www.feedipedia.org/node/664 https://www.feedipedia.org/node/664 At the end of the day, non-pasture food animal raising boils down to getting enough nutrients and time into them to hit your target slaughter weight, subject to feed conversion ratio for the species. Cheaper nutrients = higher margins or lower product prices So there's a lot of repurposing of sanitized animal byproducts. At the end of the day, as Cyberpunk 2020 quipped, "Parts is parts. Dead is dead. Dead guys is parts." Anyone who's not comfortable with that should either go vegetarian or raise / buy into local meat.
- triceratops 3y ago
  Chickens eat worms. Feeding them crab or fish meal is fine. Cows are herbivores. Feeding them meat is abhorrent.
  - berndi 3y ago
    Do the cows know they are herbivores? Why would the fact that they don’t predate on other animals in the wild make it “abhorrent” to feed them animal products in captivity?
    - triceratops 3y ago
      > Do the cows know they are herbivores? How can we really know what cows know? What we know is they follow a herbivorous diet when possible. Their teeth and digestive system are optimized for consuming plants. > Why would the fact that they don’t predate on other animals in the wild make it “abhorrent” to feed them animal products in captivity? The reason you said.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    > Feeding them meat is abhorrent. "Meat" is a relative term though. If I dry carcasses with some muscle and tissue still on them, grind it up into a powder, and add that powder to grain, is that meat? "For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," etc.
    - triceratops 3y ago
      If you look at it that way, anything can be anything. We feed soybeans to pigs, ergo I can serve you edamame beans and call them ribs. What you described - desiccated waste meat and grain - is a dog biscuit.
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        > dog biscuit Now with 50% less horse!
    - coffeebeqn 3y ago
      Processing foods is what makes many things like olives palatable to humans
  - prewett 3y ago
    I helped my dad castrate some of cattle one time, and we just tossed the ... parts ... off into the grass. Later I saw one of them come over and eat one. So I'm not so surethey would not eat meat on their own, but since they are too slow to catch any, and they couldn't tear it off the carcass, anyway. I expect that chopped up meat is in short supply in the grasslands.
    - triceratops 3y ago
      > Later I saw one of them come over and eat one One weirdo from the herd showed a preference for it one time. Whereas if you threw it among your dogs they'd likely fight over it. That's the difference.
  - swatcoder 3y ago
    On the facts, cows are grazers with incredibly robust digestive systems. They're too lumbering to hunt, but they're biologically prepared to extract nutrients from pretty much anything that ends up in their mouth while they're eating: grasses, insects, carcasses, rodents, etc. Ultimately, feeding them animal byproducts wouldn't be viable or cost-efficient (ugh) if that were not meaningfully the case. As others are noting, it's the wacky industrial modernity doing its grossly myopic hyper-optimization thing that's the problem (and not just in animal husbandry or agriculture...).
addicted 3y ago
And plastics! My favorite fact is that animals are allowed a certain percentage of plastics in their feed, and it’s not a tiny percentage. It’s a significant number.

ethbr1 3y ago

You know what a key source of protein is in chicken feed? Crab/fish meal. Which is to say leftovers after processing, dried and ground. https://www.feedipedia.org/node/664 https://www.feedipedia.org/node/664 At the end of the day, non-pasture food animal raising boils down to getting enough nutrients and time into them to hit your target slaughter weight, subject to feed conversion ratio for the species. Cheaper nutrients = higher margins or lower product prices So there's a lot of repurposing of sanitized animal byproducts. At the end of the day, as Cyberpunk 2020 quipped, "Parts is parts. Dead is dead. Dead guys is parts." Anyone who's not comfortable with that should either go vegetarian or raise / buy into local meat.

triceratops 3y ago
Chickens eat worms. Feeding them crab or fish meal is fine. Cows are herbivores. Feeding them meat is abhorrent.
- berndi 3y ago
  Do the cows know they are herbivores? Why would the fact that they don’t predate on other animals in the wild make it “abhorrent” to feed them animal products in captivity?
  - triceratops 3y ago
    > Do the cows know they are herbivores? How can we really know what cows know? What we know is they follow a herbivorous diet when possible. Their teeth and digestive system are optimized for consuming plants. > Why would the fact that they don’t predate on other animals in the wild make it “abhorrent” to feed them animal products in captivity? The reason you said.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  > Feeding them meat is abhorrent. "Meat" is a relative term though. If I dry carcasses with some muscle and tissue still on them, grind it up into a powder, and add that powder to grain, is that meat? "For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," etc.
  - triceratops 3y ago
    If you look at it that way, anything can be anything. We feed soybeans to pigs, ergo I can serve you edamame beans and call them ribs. What you described - desiccated waste meat and grain - is a dog biscuit.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      > dog biscuit Now with 50% less horse!
  - coffeebeqn 3y ago
    Processing foods is what makes many things like olives palatable to humans
- prewett 3y ago
  I helped my dad castrate some of cattle one time, and we just tossed the ... parts ... off into the grass. Later I saw one of them come over and eat one. So I'm not so surethey would not eat meat on their own, but since they are too slow to catch any, and they couldn't tear it off the carcass, anyway. I expect that chopped up meat is in short supply in the grasslands.
  - triceratops 3y ago
    > Later I saw one of them come over and eat one One weirdo from the herd showed a preference for it one time. Whereas if you threw it among your dogs they'd likely fight over it. That's the difference.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  On the facts, cows are grazers with incredibly robust digestive systems. They're too lumbering to hunt, but they're biologically prepared to extract nutrients from pretty much anything that ends up in their mouth while they're eating: grasses, insects, carcasses, rodents, etc. Ultimately, feeding them animal byproducts wouldn't be viable or cost-efficient (ugh) if that were not meaningfully the case. As others are noting, it's the wacky industrial modernity doing its grossly myopic hyper-optimization thing that's the problem (and not just in animal husbandry or agriculture...).

addicted 3y ago

And plastics! My favorite fact is that animals are allowed a certain percentage of plastics in their feed, and it’s not a tiny percentage. It’s a significant number.