The Omnivore’s Dilemma Part 4 of 10: CAFOs
November 20, 2009 by dr. lam
Where does all that cheap surplus corn go? Well, as mentioned, it goes to feed our livestock. 60% of the cheap corn is used to feed the 100 million heads of cattle that we have in America. In fact, in the past farmers would grow their own feed corn to be fed to their steer. Today, farmers can’t compete against CAFOs, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, that corral steer among other animals into tightly packed feeding arrangements to grow fat on cheap corn. Subsidized feedlot corn sold to CAFOs is so cheap that the corn is actually sold to the CAFOs at less than it costs them to make it. Accordingly, farmers are out of business raising cattle. They can’t afford it.
In the old days, farmers would feed the cattle the waste grain and the cattle would fertilize the land with their waste, creating a closed ecologic loop. Today, CAFOS herd the steer stacked almost on top of each other creating indescribable quantities of their own toxic waste that has no exit strategy. The waste piles up, damaging the environment, the soil, the water supply, and the animals. Simply put, the waste just keeps piling up and wreaking havoc everywhere. Not to mention the terrible conditions that these animals are mired in during their lifetime.
These CAFOs and the cheap corn that has fed the CAFOs have permitted meat to be cheaper than ever. What in the past was a rare delicacy can now be afforded by all and even eaten 3 times a day at a pittance. Chickens still cost less than cattle because they require much less feed per pound of flesh. The USDA rewards cattle for their marbling, a direct result of the ingested corn. Of course, the saturated fat and the high omega 6 content in corn-fed beef may take the heavily marketed concept of “corn fed” as being a good thing to be revealed for its truly negative impact. The hunter-gatherers that live today have very little heart disease despite subsisting on a high beef diet because their beef is almost all grass fed. As you may know, all Argentinian cattle are raised on pure grass. We just have too much cheap corn that we have to get rid of. Might as well fatten the cows so that we can get even fatter.
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5 Responses to “The Omnivore’s Dilemma Part 4 of 10: CAFOs”
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Thanks, Dr. Lam!! Very informative! Thankfully, I don’t eat too much hamburger meat anyway. =)
lol I thought your last line was funny…lol Love your sense of humor, Dr. Lam!…lol
Have a great weekend, blog buddies!!!
thanks heather!
lol Dr. Lam, you need to have blogs on the weekends too.
are you going through withdrawal? don’t worry, another blog is coming in 10 hours.
LOL Just ten more hours! lol