Watch "Food Inc" on PBS tonight at 9 PM

Seriously. Watch it.

For me, it was a life-altering experience. I had know idea.

Folks, you really need to take the blue pill (or is it the red pill? LOL!) on this one.

The old notion of ignoring what you eat & where it comes from needs to end.

Come on folks- support family farms & local grocery stores- you KNOW it's the right thing to do!

but it appears to be the same thing, fwiw.

Frightening indeed

companion dogs and people with disabilities.

Good TV night,for a change.

And the of course there are The Sox and The Bruins.

Feast or famine !!!!!!!

:woohoo:

:)

1 - It doesn't even begin to address the environmental problems that the agricultural processes it suggests we switch to would cause. Just do the math on the energy that would be required to switch the poultry industry to the Polyface Farms model and you'd wonder if it was propaganda put together by Exxon.

2 - Anybody who thinks cattle don't naturally eat corn doesn't know much about cattle. You put a bucket of cracked corn in the middle of a 50 acre field of lush grazing and you'll see a fight break out over which animal is going to get to the corn first.

I freaking majored in biological and agricultural engineering with three courses on nothing but controlling and mitigating that pollution. In addition to other responsibilities I consult with numerous dairies on waste management.

Scale the Polyface Farms method of raising poultry to a level that would meet the demand for poultry products and tell me about the pollution costs. Just the energy alone required to handle birds in that manner would create such a large carbon footprint it would spark Food Inc. II.

Animals shit whether you raise them in a CAFO or locally. If you are arguing for the elimination of meat production all together you have a point but it's most certainly not the point of Food Inc.

Because, it appears that you do not know.

For us as a nation to produce as much poultry as we need to using the Polyface Farms method, it would required thousands and thousands of tractors moving facilities over hundreds of thousands of more acres.

We've been propagandized into eating far more meat than is necessary. Second, you are not taking into consideration the petrochemical cost of growing (including pesticides and herbicides) and harvesting corn, of transporting it to the grain elevators, of transporting it to the the chicken feed manufacturer, of the manufacturing of the chicken feed, of transporting the feed to the chickens, of the manufacturing of the antibiotics to keep them healthy, of transporting the chickens to slaughter, of running the slaughter houses, the ingredients of the packaging, and the transporting to the store.

He suggests eating locally grown meat but not abandoning it and goes out of his way with the opening hamburger (yes, beef, I know) scene. I agree that scaling back is a good idea but that's now what Food Inc is talking about and is out of the context of my original reply.

The reason those fascilities you cite exist is because of the efficiency involved in them. They don't do it for shits and grins. Poultry producers are efficient to a fault and I cannot stand them. However, they are most certainly efficient and the reason they completely demolished the small operations is that efficiency.

Looking no further than the labor and land requirements already shows how preposterous it is to think we could produce as much poultry as we do now.

The reason why these facilities exist is to make butt loads of money. Fucking up the environment, human health, small producers, and animals is, I suppose, a side benefit.

to keep replying to the part of our conversation that didn't involve you displaying an alarming level of ignorance about beef production.

Cool.

No biggie.

Have a good night.

Been nice talking with you.

Does that mean cat shit is good for the dog?

Don

Because that's obviously what a person educated in beef nutrition would reply with. A dog eating cat shit.

Could you enlighten me as to what else your neighbor's dog eating cat shit has taught you about beef production?

edit:your neighbor's dog. Which I'm sure only eats a natural diet of prey that he hunted down when he's not eating cat shit.

because you know squat about cattle nutrition. There is a reason why industrial cows are raised on grasses then transitioned to corn then killed shortly thereafter... because a calf cannot thrive on corn and a cow cannot healthfully subsist on corn.

First, the transition is called backgrounding and I grew up next to one and worked on it for two years in high school.

Secondly, you don't feed cows the kind of corn rations spoken of in Food Inc. Cows are typically taken directly to the packer as they are at a point in their lives where they aren't going to convert feed into meat efficiently enough to turn a profit. They're what dogs that aren't eating cat shit typically get in their dog food. It's steers, market heifers, and bulls that are put in feed lots.

Thirdly, cows don't subsist on corn, it's typically just fed as supplement to their grazing pasture. You can do just fine feeding cows on pasture because they don't need to gain weight, they just need to produce enough milk for their calves to gain weight until they are weaned and sold.

Finally, cows are female cattle that have had calves. The way you are using the term makes you look like a dumb ass around anybody who knows shit about cattle.

Steers, market heifer, and bulls cannot healthfully subsist on corn. They did not evolve to digest corn; without antibiotics, they become ill eating corn.

Steers, market heifer, and bulls are being fed "food" on which they cannot survive.

They are fed corn for 90-120 days in a finishing ration.

It's okay. You've shown quite well that your knowledge of beef....errr...sorry...cow production comes from movies, wiki pages, and cause websites. Your work here is done.

And during those 90-120 days, their feed needs to be laced with antibiotics. Otherwise, they wouldn't last that long.

Once a steer...I'm sorry....cow gets to about 1200-1300 pounds it is at a point where further feeding would result in lower yield grades and lower feed efficiency. Beef carcasses yield about 66% of their live weight and the packers don't really like messing with anything over 900lbs.

Typically, calves....sorry...baby cows are sold between 400 and 600 lbs to a backgrounding operation which feeds them on a mix of pasture and high energy feed consisting largely of corn until they reach 800-900 lbs. (BTW, that's a bit of a sweet spot for profit but only if a person has access to bookoos of land to do it) That last 300-400 lbs is what is put on in a feedlot setting where the corn ration allows for better marbling and more efficient gain.

I'm sorry there's no wiki page that teaches you such basic aspects of beef production but you really should know this stuff if you are going to start preaching to cattlemen about how their industry works.

They get lower yield grades and lower feed efficiency because the COWS cannot healthfully subsist on their diet. Even with antibiotics they become increasingly susceptible to a host of diseases the longer they are on a corn diet. If a packer could generate a similar efficiency of weight gain plus a healthy-ish cow (and they are working on it) by feeding a COW for 30-60 more days, they would do it.

Once cattle reach their proper finish (fat) level getting them fatter decreases the ratio of lean muscle to fat. That tends to happen about that 1200-1300lb weight. Why did you even think about telling me about yield grades when you have no clue what they are?

The lower feed efficiency is because cattle stop growing at a certain point just like you and I do. About the time steers...sorry...boy cows with no nuts get to that 1200-1300 lb range, their growth rate slows dramatically whether they are on pasture or feedlot.

And just to pile on the packers are the ones that dictated the 900lb carcass weight long before they owned the feedlots. It's due to the size of the steaks that you get from the carcass and the ease of handling the carcasses.

Seriously, you display how little you know every time you press enter.

raise a bigger cow with more efficiency, they will do it. And they will tell the packers to bite it and propagandize the populace to eat it.

Cattle...sorry...cows got too large framed in the early 90s after a long time period (from the 60s on) of chasing growth at the expense of everything else including feed efficiency, calving ease, and what customers wanted. Since about 1995 there's been a trend to downsize cattle to produce 700-800lb carcasses which are ideal for what consumers want today.

If you think cow-calf guys tell the packers to 'bite it' you didn't even watch Food Inc. The consolidation of the packers has allowed them to dictate pretty darn well what people are expected to produce and the only people biting it are the cow calf guys who pay the price in lower prices for their weaned calves...sorry...baby cows.

You'd know this if you knew a damn thing about what you are talking about.

BTW, how fucking detailed are my talking points any way? I mean you post some completely random theory that isn't based in anything resembling reality, I look it up in the index, and BAM there's the reply. Whoever made these talking points was pretty darn detailed. :sarcasm:

I see that your "facts" are shifty things. And yes, just like the food industry has convinced consumers that tasteless tomatoes are deeeeeeelicious, they will convince consumers that whatever cow product that they can efficiently produce is deeeeeeelicious, too. Just like they've convinced consumers that a corn fed cow is tastier than a grass fed one.

900 is the top end and above that is too big. 700-800 is ideal. If you don't know what you are talking about could you at least TRY to listen to those who do?

You don't have to convince somebody that a finished steer is better than a grass fed steer, that was something determined by consumers. It would be MUCH cheaper to just send cattle straight from the field to the packer.

YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT A COW IS, YOU WATCHED A MOVIE AND THINK YOU ARE AN EXPERT, and now you are trying to claim I'M the one making stuff up.

1 - What a cow is.

2 - How cows are fed.

3 - What yield grade is.

4 - The mature weight of cattle.

5 - How long steers are backgrounded.

6 - How long steers are finished.

7 - Who determines the price paid for various types of cattle.

8 - The general trends of the beef industry in relation to animal size.

9 - Ideal carcass size

10 - Maximum acceptable carcass sizes

11 - The difference between 9 and 10

Yet, you have no hesitation to speak like you know a damn thing about the subject you are speaking on.

Have you noticed that I didn't even dispute the one fact you have posted, that cows cannot live long term on corn? However, your grasp of that one fact is so weak that you have done nothing but show your lack of knowledge on the subject at hand with it.

Why the fuck did you post this because you show pretty well in that post that you don't...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8190824&mesg_id=8193067

:rofl:

Cows will eat corn, cows like to eat corn. They may not "naturally" raise corn themselves to eat, but yes, cows would eat corn if they could.

Cows do like green stalks and corn
They like them in a box
they like them with a fox

sorry, getting rhymed away here.

A cow that continues to eat corn will get sick and die. Every single farmer or rancher, including industrial, knows this.

As far as your first point goes, I suggest you give us your estimate of a factory farm's energy consumption compared to a sustainable farm's energy consumption.

is as much of a no brainer as factory farms vs enough inefficient small farms to feed as many people as we feed right now.

People like to compare the waste from one CAFO to their chickens in the back yard. It's a b.s. comparison. The land requirement alone to feed everyone running sustainable farms makes the idea of eliminating CAFOs preposterous. The problem is population, CAFOs are a symptom of that problem.

That does NOT mean that a person can't make a difference with their own operation. It just means that in macro terms, 'sustainable' isn't nearly as sustainable as one would presume.

Regarding corn, you are using the same half truth technique that they did in Food Inc. What you say is true yet irrelevant. Corn is fed in the final 90-120 days, called finishing, it's not fed long term. Food Inc pretends that corn is force fed to cattle because of subsidies when I know of no foodstuff that cattle prefer more other than molasses.

A cow may like sweet things (like an addict likes their drugs) but cows are, indeed, fed corn because it is cheap. Food Inc does not make the claim that cows are FORCE fed corn. It makes the claim that they are fed a substance that makes them sick. So sick, that antibiotics must be added to the corn feed as a preventative.

Cows are run in pastures and supplemented corn along with other minerals and grains.

It would be absolutely insane to run a cow in a feedlot on a high corn ration.

You've displayed quite well that you have zilch in experience with the subject you wish so desperately to look down your nose at me over.

It's okay.

You didn't even know what a cow is.

Don't worry, I didn't know that until I was about four years old. My son didn't...well...actually my two year old does know.

and evolution.


And yes, I will continue, until the cows come home, to use the word cow.

Nothing you have said holds water.

Since you're such an expert on feeding cattle, please explain to me why we background to about 800-900lbs instead of feeding corn at that time.

I highly suggest that if you are actually intersted in the subject on more than a "I'm going to pretend to know what the fuck I'm talking about and act arrogant so as to hide my ignorance on the subject" way, that you buy some text books that actually discuss the anatomy and management of cattle in a non-propoganda manner. I've got a few right behind me as I type this. Want suggestions or do you prefer to stick to books with an agenda?

I can't wait to see your democratic political input in the coming months or years. Though, I suspect your presence will be scarce until the next time the topic of COWS come up.

Seriously, that's the only comment you've made that slightly offends me rather than pity you.

I've done nothing but correct you over and over and over about your regurgitated talking points based on a lifetime of EXPERIENCE dealing with cattle.

How you, who doesn't have the slightest clue what they are talking about, could possibly attempt to claim I've added nothing to this requires a level of hubris that would impress Bush.

CAFO talking points? What the fuck? Are you saying they send talking points out to explain what a cow is? We both know that's just your final straw to grasp at. It single handedly dismisses anything I say while giving you some false fantasy of knowing a damn thing about what you claim to speak of.

As Food Inc says, this is about what we are allowed to know. And you've done nothing to expand anyone's knowledge beyond industrial food's propaganda.

Again, I only continue to post because you continue to post falsehoods. Facts are not propoganda.

How you, who has done nothing but attempt to regurgitate two sentences from a movie in different ways, could possibly claim I'M the one spreading propoganda is beyond me. Fuck, every time you even try to claim I'm saying something that isn't true you do nothing more than dig your hole of ignorance deeper.

But hey, we both know that's just a crutch you are using to try and save what little face you have left any way.

stop eating poultry altogether.

I know, perish the thought.

However, it's not what Food Inc. is arguing for.

But it's an answer to your quandry.

Setting the DVR now

it really is blowing my mind, and I thought I knew a lot of this stuff.

was just recently diagnosed with diabetes and has sunken into depression over it. So bad that his marriage of 10 years has ended....

I fucking HATE this...

and don't eat fast food. The only sugar we use is natural brown sugar and we use less than half a teaspoon with our coffee. Any other sugar we use is in natural fruit juice (mostly home made) and the rare home made pastry.

I guarantee you that if you try that and abandon half your salt intake, you'll lose ten pounds in a month. Next give up red meat. I haven't eaten red meat since the 1970s.

they are killing us

...it's interesting and a bit sad. This is the first time I've seen it. It's been out awhile though right?

see this change somehow I don't know what to do. I don't want to ever eat from a grocery store or fast food place again.

BUT WHAT CAN WE DO??? PLEASE TELL ME!

Do you now how or are you willing to learn how to cook fast and inexpensive meals? Is their a coop or a farmer's market nearby?

You don't have to make the changes all at once. You can start with one meal a week or even one product a day.

very tiny, with only two small stalls and I do go to them. I know how to cook and do so often. I have been trying desperately to eat better. It's the sort of information contained in this documentary that tells me that, no matter how well I try to eat, the food itself comes straight out of hell.

I already knew most of what is covered in this film and have in the past tried to ignore it. But this just brings it home. I'm so put aside that I want my own farm so that I can produce all of my own food. But, alas, that just isn't possible. At least not right now.

Thanks for your comment.

It's great fun and it's healthy. You don't even need lots of space

That's living!

you can buy local farmers markets and organic foods. But healthy food is expensive.

that are not organic are good food. They are not expensive in season.

And I thought I knew all this.
Michael Pollan is brilliant.

I actually saw it when it was on the big screen but I'd like to view it again. Thanks.

...and how he had to settle with Monsanto was disturbing. Monsanto practically owns the soy bean...fantastic.

food chain, and be more mindful of where the food comes from.


BTW, Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" is required reading.

which, strangely enough, was using a murder in a meat packing plant as a way to get some of the same facts out that I had just heard watching "Food Inc."

Or just coincidence.

"Illegal" immigration, obesity, diabetes, horrible treatment of animals, workers and consumers, transportation costs, pollution...ugh. I was disgusted and saddened after watching "The Future of Food," but this was unreal. Americans need to take action the way they did after "The Jungle" was published, but I'm not holding my breath.

It was enlightening and scary. And it reminded me that some people are just pure evil. I read "Fast Food Nation" a few years ago.

that we sold everything and moved to The Woods in 2006.




Health and Environmental concerns aside, we would do this for the taste only.

Makes me puke when I see how human beings have abused the powers of technology in service of the almighty buck. Animals that can't stand up. Seeds that don't grow. People who are enslaved to corporations. Watching this and the Paul McCartney/PETA documentary are about all I can take.