Mad Cowboy Summary

The book that I chose to read for this class was titled the “Mad Cowboy” written by Howard F. Lyman. The book has nine chapters that talk about the problem with the meat farming industry and how the author became a vegan. The book began with Lyman on Oprah Winfrey’s show and them talking to the audience about how feeding cows with other cows can result in the cow getting mad cow disease. Oprah Winfrey’s reactions were that she might never eat beef again. A few days after that the meat industry market crashed. This gave the meat industry enough ammunition to sue both Lyman and Winfrey for the crash of the meat market. Following the introduction, Lyman went into details about the reason why meat is bad for human consumption. Lyman explained that

Lyman (1998) explained that organic farmers in the past had to pay attention to details. Such details are: what plant they were growing so that the soil would get the nitrogen naturally, leaving the field fallow once every few years so that moisture can be restored to the soil, ways to raise the animal so that they do not overgraze the land, and work with nature and not against it (p. 85). The work of traditional organic farming is very labor intensive and the product is not always profitable. Lyman explained that the uses of chemicals made farming easier because he can buy fertilizer in bulk and put it into the soil. The fertilizer helps increase grass growth, which also increases the size of the cows, providing the farmer with greater profit. He then explained that his profit allows him to buy more cattle to make an even bigger profit. However, Lyman no longer has the choice of leaving the field fallow for the grass to regrow. Once the number of cows increases, the land becomes overcrowded, which makes it easier for diseases to spread from one cow to another. To address this problem, the farmer would buy medicine and antibiotics to treat the cow to prevent it from dying. Over time, the weeds become herbicide resistant and the microorganisms that are making the cow sick are also resistant to antibiotics. The farmers now must spend more money to buy herbicides,

132). As we talk about in class, it is not that we are not growing enough food, but it is because we are not distributing the food equally. I agree with Lyman and the class lecture that spending a lot of resources to grow corn so that we can feed cows is not efficient. There are other studies out there that support the claim that animal farming is not sustainable (Sequi, 1999). Lyman did a great job providing the basic overview of why the way we are growing cows and feeding them corn is the wrong way to go. When the lay audience reads this book, they will learn about the things that farmers must go through to grow the food for us to