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Subject: MAD COWBOY ...! Yucky Yuck Yuck!

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PLANETNEWS broadcast...

Yucky Yuck Yuck...!

MAD COWBOY: Plain Truth From the Cattlerancher Who Won't Eat Meat

by HOWARD LYMAN with Glen Merzer

I am a fourth-generation dairy farmer and cattle rancher. I grew up on a
dairy farm in Montana, & I ran a feedlot operation there for 20 years. I
know firsthand how cattle are raised and how meat is produced in this
country.

Today I am president of EarthSave International, an organization that
promotes plant-based eating.

Sure, I used to enjoy my steaks as much as the next guy. But if you knew
what I know about what goes into them and what they can do to you, you'd
probably be a vegetarian like me. And believe it or not, as a pure
vegetarian now who consumes no animal products at all, I can tell you that
these days I enjoy eating more than ever.

If you're a meat-eater in America, you have a right to know that you have
something in common with most of the cows you've eaten. They've eaten meat,
too.

When a cow is slaughtered, about half of it by weight is not eaten by
humans: the intestines and their contents, the head, hooves, and horns, as
well as bones and blood. These are dumped into giant grinders at rendering
plants, as are the entire bodies of cows and other farm animals known to be
diseased. Rendering is a $2.4 billion-a-year industry, processing forty
billion pounds of dead animals a year. There is simply no such thing in
America as an animal too ravaged by disease, too cancerous, or too putrid to
be welcomed by the embracing arms of the renderer.

Another staple of the renderer's diet, in addition to farm animals, is
euthanized pets-the six or seven million dogs and cats that are killed in
animal shelters every year. The city of Los Angeles alone, for example,
sends some two hundred tons of euthanized cats and dogs to a rendering plant
every month. Added to the blend are the euthanized catch of animal control
agencies, and roadkill. (Roadkill is not collected daily, and in the summer,
the better roadkill collection crews can generally smell it before they can
see it.)

When the gruesome mix is ground and steam-cooked, the lighter, fatty
material floating to the top gets refined for use in such products as
cosmetics, lubricants, soaps, candles, and waxes. The heavier protein
material is dried and pulverized into a brown powder-about a quarter of
which consists of fecal material. The powder is used as an additive to
almost all pet food as well as to livestock feed. Farmers call it "protein
concentrates." In 1995, five million tons of processed slaughterhouse
leftovers were sold for animal feed in the United States. I used to feed
tons of the stuff to my own livestock. It never concerned me that I was
feeding cattle to cattle.

In August 1997, in response to growing concern about the spread of bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (or Mad Cow disease), the FDA issued a new
regulation that bans the feeding of ruminant protein (protein from
cud-chewing animals) to ruminants; therefore, to the extent that the
regulation is actually enforced, cattle are no longer quite the cannibals
that we had made them into. They are no longer eating solid parts of other
cattle, or sheep, or goats. They still munch, however, on ground-up dead
horses, dogs, cats, pigs, chickens, and turkeys, as well as blood and fecal
matter of their own species and that of chickens. About 75 percent of the
ninety million beef cattle in America are routinely given feed that has been
"enriched" with rendered animal parts.

The use of animal excrement in feed is common as well, as livestock
operators have found it to be an efficient way of disposing of a portion of
the 1.6 million tons of livestock wastes generated annually by their
industry. In Arkansas, for example, the average farm feeds over fifty tons
of chicken litter to cattle every year. One Arkansas cattle farmer was
quoted in U.S. News & World Report as having recently purchased 745 tons of
litter collected from the floors of local chicken-raising operations. After
mixing it with small amounts of soybean bran, he then feeds it to his eight
hundred head of cattle, making them, in his words, "fat as butterballs." He
explained, "If I didn't have chicken litter, I'd have to sell half my heard.
Other feeds are too expensive." If you are a meat-eater, understand that
this is the food of your food.

We don't know all there is to know about the extent to which the consumption
of diseased or unhealthy animals causes diseases in humans, but we do know
that some diseases - rabies, for example - are transmitted from the host
animal to humans. We know that the common food poisonings brought on by such
organisms as the prevalent E. Coli bacteria, which results from fecal
contamination of food, causes the death of nine thousand Americans a year
and that about 80 percent of food poisonings come from tainted meat. And now
we can also be virtually certain, from the tragedy that has already
afflicted Britain, that Mad Cow disease can "jump species" and give rise to
a new variant of the always fatal, brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
in humans.

For all too many humans, the first decision they consciously make about
their health is the stark one between by-pass surgery and angioplasty, or
between chemotherapy and radiation. In reality, however, we knowingly make
choices every day that can either lead us toward these grim options, or else
toward happier ones. We do so, of course, every time we decide what fuel to
put in our bodies.