Blog Post #1
October 27, 2009 by ymaster
Beef has always been an integral part of my diet. Growing up in a Russian family, many of my favorite dishes include beef and I cannot imagine my life without eating it. Just based on my mother’s home cooked meals, I eat beef or veal at least once a week. But if I include all the inexpensive fast food places that I eat at with friends or between classes, then that number can rise to me eating beef two or three times a week. In my everyday life it would be extremely uncommon for me to actually go an entire week without eating beef whether it is a cheeseburger, beef and broccoli or a steak.
Now normally I would never notice such a statistic about myself, or if I did I would not mind it much attention, but based on the recent reading we have had in class I really began to think about what I eat everyday. Although beef was a topic that we seldom talked about, the idea was brushed upon in “King Corn” and several of the readings and it really caught my eye.
In “King Corn” there was a scene where they showed how cows were force fed with corn in order to make them grow faster and be available for meat faster. Just seeing the conditions that these cows were in was bad enough. They were each put into their own area with almost no room to move and nothing to do but constantly eat. But what really caught my attention was when they mentioned that they would give the cows medicine so they can intake all of this food without their organs shutting down. The required medicine begins to show the abuse that these cows go through. It shows that these animals get pushed so hard that the only way that they can survive is by medicine keeping them alive. But it also makes me think, as a person who is eating this meat, what are these chemicals that are strong enough to keep cows alive while they are being force fed and how are they affecting my food?
I also do not trust the beef industry nearly as much as I used to, especially after reading an article about how in 2008 143 million pounds of beef had to be recalled because crippled and sick animals were being shoved into forklifts and abused before being made into beef. Because the animals did not pass proper inspection for food safety, all the beef had to be recalled. Now one big way that people view this is that we could have had bad food that was not inspected, which is very true. But I also begin to look at this situation in a very different way because it makes me wonder, how many cows were murdered for 143 million pounds of beef that all went to waste? It is a shame that all these cows are just taken for granted when we only think of ourselves right away.
I totally agree with you. The way cows are treated, and how they are put into a small area where all they can do is eat corn, is completely inhumane and is terrible! The way how they give cows medicine to intake all this food without their organs shutting down is awful! The fact that cows are treated this way completely diminishes my desire of eating meat.
I think you made a good point when you said that you do not trust the beef industry as much as you used to. It reminded me of the recent E. coli outbreak in some of the distributed ground beef. It’s a scary thought that people have to constantly worry whether or not they will get sick from eating something so simple like a hamburger. In addition, I definitely think twice before I eat animals because now I know the process it takes for them to go through before they become food, it’s disturbing.
I really agree with your views on beef and I think that these practices are both unethical and unacceptable. I think that we must think sustainable and begin to move towards a more organic beef industry. The things that “King Corn’ addresses are just too clear and must be dealt with.