Beef

What comes to mind when you think of the cattle that provide us with beef? A child’s sketch of a cow would probably show a happy animal in a pasture of green grass, a smiley-faced sun in the top right corner, right? The reality is far from that.

Most beef sold around the world is produced out of feedlots. While regulations vary from country to country, most cattle spend their lives crammed into these lots, hooves covered in shit, where they’re fed a steady diet of pellets containing grain, growth hormones, various antibiotics and who knows what else. Not only does growing corn to service this diet take up huge tracts of precious land, it’s also totally unnatural. A grain-based diet for cattle dismisses the fact that they are ruminants (animals that acquire nutrients through grass or plants via a fermentation process that takes place in their rather special stomachs prior to digestion). Consider the term “to ruminate”. It means to take your time or to process something (while thinking); for cattle, it describes the function of their digestive system. Feeding them pellets in feedlots turns these creatures from evolved animals with four stomachs into single-stomached beef machines. They become walking colostomy bags! It’s unnatural, not good for the cattle and, in our opinion, unlikely to be good for you too.