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High price of corn forcing farmers to feed candy to livestock
- thedangler 14y agoHmmm, why don't they feed them grass? Isn't that what they are supposed to be eating? I'm no farmer, honest question.
- zinssmeister 14y agothat wouldn't make them fat enough.
- TGJ 14y agoAnimals do not grow as fast on grass. Also, they do not taste the way Americans like their animals to taste. Land availability also plays a factor as it takes more acre per animal using grass vs corn/sugar.
- ipince 14y agoI'm no farmer either, but I assume grass doesn't have the effect they're looking for (weight gain), and they'd probably need much more of it.
- TGJ 14y agoAlso, check Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan for an in depth look at America, corn and other food.
- ggasp 14y agoWhat about "Because drought affects all living plants not only corn"?
- knieveltech 14y agoYou've got ranchers in places like Wyoming where the forage is barely sufficient to keep livestock alive. Cattle raised under these conditions have to be fattened up before they can be sent to a slaughterhouse. Typically these cows will be shipped to another ranch that specializes in this before then being shipped to market. It sounds like the guy quoted in the article is running one of these secondary "fattening" ranches. Since grain (or in this case candy) has a much higher energy content than grass, cattle can be raised to market weight much faster than if they were fed a grass diet. Edit: I accidentally a word.
- juniorplenty 14y ago"Ranch" isn't really what we're talking about here; cattle are sent from ranches to feed lots for fattening (which is what this guy is running, hence the ability to gin up new chemi-food on site.) Feed lots are very highly concentrated populations of cattle that are fed a regulated diet of grain (corn) mixed with concentrated antibiotics and, in this case, rotten chocolate. Another commenter already referenced Pollan's work, which exposes the tradeoffs of this industrialized approach. Among these are increased e.coli outbreaks (as e.coli concentrate in the rumen of the cow when it tries to digest grain,) and the increased likelihood of antibiotic-resistent bacteria developing because of the tremendous amount of antibiotics used to keep animals living in these conditions from getting sick: http://www.oklahomafarmreport.com/wire/news/2010/07/media/00359_cattle-feedlot-002.jpg http://www.oklahomafarmreport.com/wire/news/2010/07/media/00... (That ankle-deep black stuff is poo, which also runs and collects in giant sewer pools that generate toxic runoff.)
- knieveltech 14y agoJust so. Feed lot was the term I was looking for but couldn't remember. Thanks for providing clarification.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoMain reason is 'speed to fatness' the second reason is that he doesn't have corn because of a drought, which also affects not having grass (or more typically hay/alfalfa)
- harrylove 14y agoYes, cows are supposed to eat grass. That is a part of their natural diet. There are farms in America that focus on sustainable agriculture and ethical animal husbandry. This article is talking about a factory farm, which focuses on profit.
- tocomment 14y agoI've always wondered if you could combine a sod farm and cattle ranch? You've got to cut the grass anyway. I'm sure there would be problems such as trampling the grass, over-grazing, but maybe they're solvable??
- eeeeaaii 14y agoYes that is what they are supposed to be eating. Their digestive systems have evolved over millions of years to eat grass, and if they eat grass they will be healthier animals, and their meat will taste like real beef and not like tasteless cardboard. I pretty much stick exclusively to grass-fed beef. There are all these complex chemical compounds in grass that flavor the meat and give it rich and distinctive notes -- as the other commenter said, read Omnivore's Dilemma. The cattle are supposed to be able to walk around, too. The reason it's not done is cost. Grass fed beef is easily twice as expensive as corn-fed beef. The cheapest way to raise cattle is to raise them in a CAFO, and feed them the cheapest possible feed, which has been corn for quite a long time. The farmer who is feeding his cattle candy is really just feeding them yesterday's corn, as most American candy is made from high fructose corn syrup. Walk into a supermarket sometime and count the number of products that use HFCS -- it's staggering. The price of corn going up is actually really big news -- if it's a sustained trend it's going to have a far-reaching impact on American agriculture.
- slurgfest 14y agoI don't find that beef ever tastes like tasteless cardboard, unless it is cooked completely incorrectly. Without arguing about whether grass-fed beef is tastier in general, I wonder if anyone has ever done a blind test to discover if the grass (you know, the complex compounds flavoring the meat) can actually be tasted in the beef by an ordinary person. As you observe, not everyone can afford grass-fed beef.
- eeeeaaii 14y agoI probably sound like a food snob, but when I'm thinking of beef that tastes like cardboard, I'm thinking of a Big Mac, for example. If you take all the condiments and just eat the beef only, it's pretty tasteless, IMO. A lot of people say there is a taste difference, not just me. It's subtle though, your ordinary person may not notice or care. But I'm passionate about it because I'm big into food and I think the taste of grass fed is much better.
- slurgfest 14y ago
- joshcrews 14y agoAmerica ought to think about that question deeply. Corn fed ground beef in the supermarket is $3-4 per pound while grass raised ground beef is $7-$9 per pound. We (Americans) are making ourselves very sick with degenerative diseases (cancer, heart, alzeimer's, dementia, arthritis) at rates orders of magnitude larger than our ancestors. I believe the race to make cheap food (corn feed beef in this example) is causing health suffering on the backend (degenerative disease)
- beothorn 14y agoThe rate of those types of disease being higher are maybe also a consequence of a longer lifespan.
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoand a less active lifestyle. and more consumption of processed foods in general. Even if McDonalds started using 100% grass-fed beef, I don't think that would make much difference in the overall health value of a Quarter Pounder & Fries.
- typicalrunt 14y agoFeeding your cattle a mixture of second-hand chocolate, ethanol by-products and minerals doesn't sound very tasty, from this beef consumer's point of view. There is the saying of "you are what you eat" and I wonder if any of those flavours will come out in the final product. But more importantly, IANAFarmer, but I don't understand why cattle need to be fat in order to be profitable. Don't the farmers want their cattle to have high protein/muscle content versus high fat content?
- ggasp 14y agoCattle is buy/sell in auction-like markets with price set per kilo.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoBeef cows are sold 'by the pound' so farmers look at the cost of adding pounds to the price per pound and solve for the greatest $. As for the feed vs the taste, I literally put chicken shit on the ground my tomatoes are growing in and it makes them both larger and tastier. Biological transformation is a magical thing in many ways.
- jetti 14y ago"As for the feed vs the taste, I literally put chicken shit on the ground my tomatoes are growing in and it makes them both larger and tastier. Biological transformation is a magical thing in many ways." But you don't put chicken shit IN your tomatoes! I wonder how it makes the cows feel after eating it, e.g do they know the difference or is it like when my dog eats something off the sidewalk when I'm not looking and then mopes around for the rest of the day 'cause she doesn't feel well.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mikeash 14y agoHe's putting the fertilizer in the tomatoes exactly as much as these guys are putting candy in cows. In both cases, the material is presented to the organism which then takes it in on its own.
- ryandvm 14y agoWow - Idiocracy was such a prophetic movie. Just waiting for the news that we're hydrating crops with Brawndo.
- slurgfest 14y agoYou would rather that food unsuitable for human consumption were thrown out to rot rather than feeding livestock?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- FSEA 14y agoI would rather corn not be purchased to be made into corn syrup, then crammed into candy on such a scale that there is enough waste to feed livestock. Can we work on that?
- zzzeek 14y agoreal food is compostable, allowing it to contribute right back to the food production system. I'm not sure if this applies to stale Fruit Loops though. I certainly don't want them anywhere near my food supply.
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoIANAFarmer but I grew up on a farm (not a commercial one... just for family needs) and we routinely fed our pigs what ever we could get from the "Day Old Bakery" when it was too old/damaged even for them. While a good portion of it was usually just old bread, it was not uncommon for half a truck load to be entirely made up of smashed fruit pies and donuts. Our pork always tasted good. I would not be too concerned with eating meat from a cow that was raised on a regulated diet of chocolate and supplements.
- gliese1337 14y agoSomeone seems to do a story on this kind of thing every year. Last time I heard about it, it was local farmers feeding their cows past-due fruit loops and other sugary cereal. So it's hardly an uncommon sort of thing in general. If it's digestible and not poisonous, a cow has probably been made to eat it.
- Qworg 14y agoCows will eat most anything. It doesn't mean they should.
- slurgfest 14y agoWhat is your concern about the cow eating old chocolate?
- Qworg 14y agoNothing specifically about chocolate. Any non-grass diet is demonstrably worse for the cows in overall health and final meat quality.
- bunderbunder 14y agoI imagine developing heart disease or diabetes later in life isn't particularly high on the list of concerns for beef cattle, considering they're sent to slaughter at a fraction of their natural life span.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- RexM 14y agoI read the article, hoping the farmer was feeding the cattle Candy Corn :(
- rmason 14y agoIn Michigan this is not that unusual. I worked in the fertilizer industry as an agronomist. I have routinely seen animals fed cereal (Kellogg's and Post are headquartered here), day old bread and even cupcakes. As long as the overall ration is balanced it doesn't make a difference in the final product. http://www.ansc.purdue.edu/compute/balance.htm http://www.ansc.purdue.edu/compute/balance.htm FWIW I bought my dad (who was a feed salesman) a TI programmable calculator in the seventies that used magnetic strips to run programs and wrote him a feed balancing ration program. Far as we know he was the only one in the world at the time who had a hand held ration balancer!
- zzzeek 14y agothe comments here are unsurprising, I guess it's just an outrageous notion to suggest that eating meat may expose us to at least some aspects of what the animal was fed all its life (which may just as well mean an insufficient level of necessary nutrients, as much as it may mean exposure to negative substances). Here's a PDF from the Union of Concerned Scientists, just regarding the potential dietary advantages of grass fed beef: http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/food_and_environment/greener-pastures.pdf http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/food_and_environment/... The concept of "we're affected by what the cow eats" isn't novel. Eating meat that was raised on candy or fruit loops is revolting.