Let Cows Eat Grass!

by Melanie Grace

The average supermarket in your neighborhood, regardless of how “gourmet” they may purport to be, probably carries good old, USDA-approved corn-fed beef.

An almost vegetarian myself (yum, fish!), I used to care less. You could likely care less too, even though American carnivores consume mass quantities of corn-fed beef in the form of hamburgers, rib-eye steaks, sirloin, tacos, kabobs, brisket, and world-famous BBQ. Yet devotees of American beef should be concerned, and even downright incensed, that every juicy, delicious, taste bud-trained bite is, in fact, killing them.

And it’s all about the corn.

Corn—that great commodity of the American industrial food system—has driven down the value of beef, cereal, value meals, and our national health. The obesity epidemic is largely tied to lifestyle choices, but the most insidious, prevalent, and unmentioned cause is the subsidies that are passed onto the processed food aisles.

Those subsidies make Doritos cheaper than carrots. Cows eat corn because government-subsidized overproduction makes the price right for supplying the vast feedlots that populate middle America. Corporations tout grain-fed corn as an ideal, and while we are made to believe this must be a suitable diet for ruminating animals, as boasted by Ruth Chris's steak house, we fail to remember that cows are meant to eat grass.

Cows evolved a complex set of stomachs that do what human stomachs cannot: transform grass into energy. They efficiently harvest the power of the sun. However, grain-fed cows are usually fed a steady stream of antibiotics and medication to prevent illnesses brought on by their diet. They are fattened and killed at a young age (3 years) because the diet wouldn’t keep them alive much longer. “Organic” grain fed bovine may not be pumped with steroids and hormones, but they are still sick and often kept in inhumane conditions—think Horizon—whose cows live out in the sweltering desert—never having time at pasture—but fed “organic” feed.

Throughout history we have depended on cows to sustain both ourselves and the land in a symbiotic relationship that benefits everyone involved. The meat of grass-fed cows is rich in beneficial omega 3 and 6 fats, and can (in a balanced diet) promote a healthy heart. Its chemical make-up is much closer to fish than “conventional” beef.

The most timely question for Americans regarding their health is whether we can extract ourselves from the system we have allowed corporations—with the protection of the government—to create. The American public is losing, from farmers all the down way to consumers. While money may be saved, we are literally killing ourselves to pad the pockets of already rich executives. A call for transparency—for the food on your table, the clothes on your back and the politicians in the pockets of corporate America—is past due. Why would the FDA prize marbling, a characteristic of predominantly corn fed beef, if it makes you sick?

Melanie Grace is a student who prefers the University of Life to the University of Emory.

(Rosy's Closeup from .kimu's flickr stream.)

Comments

[Veghead]

I am young so I don't feel people hear me when I talk about how cows just can't eat corn. So I am writing a paper to enter in our county's fair. I was doing research when I saw this paper. I agreed with everything I read. But this article is missing one thing. The fact that the cows gas that they have because they eat corn is well... is a major cause of our global warming crisis. No I am not kidding, their gas.
LET COWS EAT GRASS!!!!!!!!!!!!