I;m starting to really get the picture that the jerks (some of them no doubt well-intentioned) who developed America's current model of industrial agriculture had just a little bit of 'playing god' going on. 'Carnivorous' cows? (ie cannibalistic practices in feed) Cows that are fed their own manure as a 'protein supplement'?
Factory farmed salmon, for instance- almost the opposite of the cows described below. The practice involves taking an obviously carnivorous fish, confining it and feeding it a vegetarian diet (probably some kind of waste product, I imagine). The result is salmon with no color, which are then dyed red to make the meat attractive to consumers. Disgusting. Mark >A lot of animal manure gets compounded into livestock feeds, also >biogas sludge. What they do is measure the protein content and if >it's "enough" it must therefore make good feed, wherever it comes >from. Actually it's complicated to measure the protein content, so >instead they measure the nitrogen content (N) and multiply by 6.25, >which is the proportion of N in protein. But it's a bit of an >assumption that all of it will be protein, a lot of it is probably >just nitrates and nitrites (which aren't good for you!). Too much >soluble nitrogen or urea in feed causes high blood urea or ammonia >levels, leading to reduced resistance to bacterial infection, and I'd >say that's just a part of it. > >Albrecht of Missouri, the doyen of soils scientists, pointed out that >cattle avoid eating the taller and greener grass growing round manure >"pies" in the pasture because the plants' fertility is out of >balance, with too much nitrogen provided by the manure. "Cows are >competent chemists," he wrote, and proved it too. More competent than >chemists maybe. > >Anyway feeding grain and high-protein supplements to ruminants just >doesn't make any sense, they're made to eat grass, to turn >low-protein feed into high-protein meat, and they're brilliant at it. >They don't thrive on this high-protein stuff, though they might >appear to. But look at all the problems. > >If you graze them, you get much healthier animals, much healthier >meat, good production, low costs, and after a couple of years there's >enough sheer fertility in that pasture to grow six years of >succeeding crops without any further inputs. That's the whole basis >of the mixed-farming rotation that's now been abandoned in favour of >this wasteful, troublesome, expensive and unhealthy industrialized >junk. AND if you do it this way livestock production isn't wasteful, >as alleged by Pimentel et al, giving good (?) food to animals instead >of to hungry people: with mixed-farming rotations the animals provide >very much more food than they consume (only grass), in both animal >products and the succeeding crops. Rational. > >A good example of the problems with industrialized livestock >production is the killer E. coli O157:H7 bacteria. Cornell University >found that virulent strains of E. coli develop in the digestive tract >of cattle mainly fed with starchy grain. Cows mainly fed with hay >generate less than 1% of the E. coli found in the faeces of grain-fed >animals. Nearly all cases of E. coli 0157:H7 poisoning result from >contaminated meat from industrial factory farms and meat processing >plants. USDA vets say 80 to 100% of feedlot cattle tested carried the >deadly 0157:H7 strain. Meanwhile researchers have found that >pesticide sprays encourage life-threatening bacteria to grow on >crops, including E. coli O157:H7, increasing bacteria counts as much >as one-thousandfold. Etc etc. If the aflatoxin doesn't get you >something else probably will! [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
