Cloned Animals Will Be in U.S. Food Chain

[sechs]

This gives me warm fuzzies about the food industry in the United States....

http://www.organicconsumers.org/patent/beef021605.cfm

 

[Pradeep]

Hold back cheaper prices for delicious marbled steak, yet approve Vioxx and other COX-2s that were known killers. Only in America.

 

[RWIndiana]

Ha, wouldn't happen in communist Indiana! DNR would sieze property and stick him in jail for 40 years. Glad we got some Republicans here now to fire all those communists. Mitch Daniels fired the head of the DNR. Yeah!!

 

[Buck]

Reminds me of the beef thread we had some time back. I looked for the article and they changed the URL from htm pages to asp. If anyone is interested in how beef is raised in the U.S.:

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  Part I
  Part II
  Part III
  Part IV

 

[sechs]

Hold back cheaper prices for delicious marbled steak

Is that all you care about? Price?

There's genocide in Africa, and you're talking about the price of fatty beef!

 

[RWIndiana]

Of course, we're all here talking about computers, which doesn't do the Africans a whole lot of good either.

 

[RWIndiana]

Reminds me of the beef thread we had some time back. I looked for the article and they changed the URL from htm pages to asp. If anyone is interested in how beef is raised in the U.S.:

• 
  Part I
  Part II
  Part III
  Part IV

Fascinating, Buck. I thought it interesting that beef grows slower on grass. I'm guessing it is also more nutritious when grown on grass. I know that when chickens run loose on the farm (as opposed to only being fed in chicken houses), the yokes of their eggs are a deep orange rather than the typical yellow of store-bought eggs.

 

[mubs]

Very informative reading, thanks Buck.

 

[sechs]

Of course, we're all here talking about computers, which doesn't do the Africans a whole lot of good either.

True. But computers aren't a necessity; food is.

 

[Pradeep]

Hold back cheaper prices for delicious marbled steak

Is that all you care about? Price?

There's genocide in Africa, and you're talking about the price of fatty beef!

I fail to see the connection between price of marbled steak and genocide in Africa. You're the one bitching about paying an extra $35 for an EPS power supply, why not send that to Africa.

 

[Tannin]

You are much too intelligent to have read the articles Buck linked to and not seen the connection, Pradeep, so you obviously haven't read them. Do so! It's an eye-opener. The connection is direct and obvious.

 

[Pradeep]

I read them when Buck orginally posted them. I quickly perused them again just now. I can see a possible connection to the military in the Middle East. I could see a possible link to starvation in Africa (we could send the lower-than-production cost corn over there). But nothing to genocide. Evil people will do evil things to others, regardless of feedlot cattle.

I would love to eat nothing but organic, grass fed beef. And grass fed milk. But in the US, those things are very rare, and very expensive. I went on a field trip with my youngest to a milk farm a while back, the cows live in a big covered pen on a floor of sawdust and car tires. I don't think they ever step foot in a paddock, all the greenery is crops used for their feed.

What I really miss about Oz is the price of lamb, cost here is easily triple what it is down under.

 

[Pradeep]

4 organic porterhouse steaks for US$90.82

http://www.grasslandbeef.com/Detail.bok?no=44

 

[Buck]

What I really miss about Oz is the price of lamb, cost here is easily triple what it is down under.

And probably not as good. Around here it seems hard to find good lamb unless you go to a Persian store -- and there aren't very many of them.

 

[sechs]

Hold back cheaper prices for delicious marbled steak

Is that all you care about? Price?

There's genocide in Africa, and you're talking about the price of fatty beef!

I fail to see the connection between price of marbled steak and genocide in Africa. You're the one bitching about paying an extra $35 for an EPS power supply, why not send that to Africa.

And how do you know that I haven't?

I never thought that I'd see such shallow thinking here. Something potentially very bad is happening to food, and you're complaining about the price.

I think it's time for you to shut your pocket book and think a little bit about the rest of the world. It doesn't revolve around fatty beef!

 

[Pradeep]

So what is the link between marbled beef and genocide? Is there something wrong with marbling. Would it be OK if I was worried about the price of lean beef?

"There's genocide in Africa, and you're talking about the price of EPS power supplies!"

 

[RWIndiana]

Sech, honestly I think you are being inconsistent. Shelling out money for beef is not any different than shelling it out for computer components. Money is money. You mentioned that food is a necessity and computers are not . . . Well, that justifies Pradeep's argument even further.

I also agree with Pradeep's assertion that evil men will do evil things--period. To say that *we* are causing the evil men to be evil (in any way) is an idea concocted to muddy the waters and make us feel guilty about something that we did not cause.

 

[mubs]

Factory Farming Meets the Third World

<snip>

According to Happier Meals: Rethinking the Global Meat Industry, the greatest rise in industrial animal operations is occurring near the urban centers of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where high population densities and weak public health, occupational, and environmental standards are exacerbating the impacts of these farms. Concentrated animal feeding operations account for more than 40% of world meat production, up from 30% in 1990. Once limited to North America and Europe, they are now the fastest growing form of meat production worldwide.

<snip>

Among the leading concerns cited in the report:

* Crowded, inhumane, and unhygienic conditions on factory farms can sicken farm animals and create the perfect environment for the spread of diseases, including avian flu, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease), and foot-and-mouth disease.

* Factory-farmed meat and fish contain an arsenal of unnatural ingredients, among them persistent organic pollutants (POPs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), arsenic, hormones, and other chemicals. Overuse of antibiotics and other antimicrobials in livestock and poultry operations, meanwhile, is undermining the toolbox of effective medicines for human use.

* Factory farming is resource intensive: producing just one calorie of beef takes 33% more fossil-fuel energy than producing a calorie of potatoes. Eight ounces of beef can require up to 25,000 liters of water, while enough flour for a loaf of bread in developing countries requires only 550 liters.

* Despite the fact that fisheries worldwide are being fished out, about a third of the total marine fish catch is utilized for fish meal, two-thirds of which is used to fatten chickens, pigs, and other animals.

* Only about half of all livestock waste is effectively fed into the crop cycle; much of the remainder ends up polluting the air, water, and soil.

<snip>

While many in the agribusiness industry have embraced food irradiation and genetic engineering of livestock as solutions to the myriad problems caused by factory farming, technology-based responses are often merely stop-gap measures, says Nierenberg. "These end-of-the-pipe remedies are certainly innovative, but they don't address the real problem. Factory farming is an inefficient, ecologically disruptive, dangerous, and inhumane way of making meat."