Food for our food

I spent a lot of time thinking this week about where to take you readers next on the topic of FACTORY FARMING, and I realized I was a bit ambiguous on several points in my first post.  For starters, what does an "unnatural diet" really mean? I could see one making an argument for the modern human diet as unnatural (all those fried foods!).  So, what makes the diet we feed animals like our cows any worse?  Well, the same way eating french fries all day everyday might be bad for YOUR digestive system, so is a diet of corn for a cow, yet that is the preferred feed for cows found on CAFOs. 

Cows are what we might call picky eaters, or "specialists."  That means they evolved eating a very particular diet to support their particular needs.  Cow stomachs are divided into several chambers, most important in digestion of grass being the rumen.  This highly specialized structure allows a cow to extract complete proteins from grass in a way humans cannot, which may be why it is easy for big companies trying to feed thousands of cows as cheaply as possible to forget that corn is not going to cut it.  But, you cannot fatten thousands of cows in a small area off a few fields.  Instead, the animals are fed grains to save money and increase their speed to slaughter.

Unfortunately, a cow's stomach is not built to withstand the high starch diet they are receiving.  Because these foods are so high in carbohydrates these animals may grow big and fat nice and quick (with the help of hormones), but it is harmful to their health.  The one part of the complicated bovine digestive tract  particularly affected by eating so many grains is the rumen.  This diet causes overproduction of stomach acids, and this malfunction, not to mention malnutrition, can lead to serious illness in a farmer's cattle-or should I say, our dinner.  On top of the insufficient diet, the close quarters factory farmed animals must inhabit can easily allow for the spread of disease between cattle, just like it does for humans.  Except, with humans, typically one thinks of a cold spreading easily in a small apartment.  For cows, this is their small apartment:

So how does a modern day farmer stop their whole herd from getting sick and dying on them before they can make it to the market?  Simple-if you can be almost certain they are going to get sick, then all you have to do is find the right medicine.  That's why corn-fed cows are also fed antibiotics with every meal, like the aptly named Rumensin. It sounds like a fine solution to the spread of disease-in the short term.  However, bacteria has a way of getting around these chemicals when they are exposed to them over time, mutating to withstand the advances modern science has made in combating disease.  The use of antibiotics in cow-feed has even shown a possible link to the rise and propagation of antibiotic resistant MRSA.  Antibiotic resistance is a very real issue for the medical community, and it is unfathomable to think the problem could partially stem from the food that is supposed to make us healthy.  And yet, here we are.

Before I end for the day's blog, I'd like to leave you with a few facts I found particularly interesting that relate to factory farmed feeding.

1) "It's a fact that cattle evolved to eat grass."

-Neil Hamilton, director of Agricultural Law Center, Drake University

 Everyone still with me? Okay, moving on.

2) E. coli is a naturally ocurring bacteria present in the digestive tract of both humans and cows, and many other organisms, for that matter, BUT, certain strains of e. coli are poisonous to humans and can cause very serious illness and death.  One of these strains, E. coli O157:H7, can be found in the stomachs of cattle.

3) E. coli O157:H7 is considered especially dangerous because it can survive at an extremely acidic level, generally higher than that of human stomach acid.

4) Corn-fed cows, as opposed to grazed cows, exhibit high colonic pH and a larger amount of E. coli O157:H7 than do cattle fed a diet of alfalfa hay.

A summary of these findings can be found in the 2000 Nebraska Beef Report, the results of which suggests if you give cows a steady diet of grains, which I repeat, they just cannot digest correctly, they get a special kind of tummy-ache; the kind of tummy-ache in which they breed extra e. coli that is harmful to humans.  You can draw your own conclusions on how this might possibly be related to any or all recent recalls on beef due to e. coli contamination.  Or you can read the article, which clearly states "The organism [E. coli O157:H7] is thought to enter the food chain through fecal contamination of the hide during slaughter."