Meet your Meat

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Recommended: Consequences of factory farms

Thousands of people die each year due to the way our meat products are being handled. Animals are being forced to live in poor conditions and they are given drugs and food that are unnatural. The cow herd size has increase 8 times more than it was 16 years ago and two percent of livestock farms now raise 40% of the animals in the United States (Weaver). These statistics are painting a picture of the industry that the beef market has created. The way that these industries are running is having a negative impact on both the animals and society.
Living in Idaho, it is normal to see a few cows. For the most part, I will see cows in open fields just eating the vegetation around them. The owner of Polyface Farms, Joel Salatin, talks about how a cow’s life should be logically lived. They are raised in fields where they have plenty of grass, cloves, and herbs to eat. While in these fields they are fertilizing the land and they are harvesting their own food source. No one needs to plant corn, harvest corn, ship the corn, and find a place for all of the manure. Logically, Salatin’s notion makes perfect sense. We don’t have to ship the food across the county and it isn’t a struggle to figure out where to put all of the manure. Cows don’t naturally eat corn and by eating corn they are gaining more problems than they had before. If cows were to eat grass for just 5 days, the amount of E. Coli was be decreased by 80% (Kenner, Pearce and Schlosser). AFO stands for Animal Feeding Operations. These are defined when animals are raised and confined situations. These places congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals, and production operations on a small land area (What is a CAFO?). Many CAFOs are extremely unsanitary and occasionally co...

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.... Prod. CA] : Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2009. [Los Angeles. 2008.
Hoffman, Mathew. Safer Food for a Healthier You. n.d. 11 December 2013. .
Smith, Tara C. Growth Hormones in Milk: Myth/Fact. 19 June 2012. 11 December 2013. .
Staff, CNN. FDA hopes to curb antibiotic use on farms. 11 December 2013. 2013 December 2013. .
Weaver, Scott. Cow Country: The Rise of the CAFO in Idaho. 1 September 2010. 11 December 2013. .
What is a CAFO? 10 September 2012. 10 December 2013. .

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