All about meat!

Most of us have teeth! They have been fashioned over time to be able to chew meat - making us carnivorous creatures. So now that we've established this little known fact, let's get into this small topic called "meat." This can be a controversial issue to some of our readers as vegetarians and vegans have many valid reasons to forgo this very entity - but not introducing those reasons here, we shall discuss only this topic.

You are what you eat!

We've all heard this before and this holds very true to the meat industry as well as the others. Healthy Animals Make Healthy Humans - as one of the many articles on the topic put it. We wouldn't eat a piece of meat that has a foul smell, we wouldn't eat an undercooked piece of chicken due to know salmonella bacteria, and we wouldn't dare put a potentially poisonous shellfish in our mouth. These are what we know because these are publicized everywhere and so we are comfortable with these notions. What we'll discuss are known facts which may not be as publicized because they affect a major industry as a whole. They are facts which have dramatic effects in brief headlines such as "Mad Cow Disease Outbreak" and "E.Coli Outbreak." We look at the news, avoid the meats recommended, and go back to what we've been doing before once the news has blown over.

The simple truth is that the majority of the meat industry serves the population with a bountiful cheap source of meat for all our wants and needs. From the steaks we eat at the finest of restaurants to the basic cheap burger at the corner drive-in. The average American ate 195 pounds of meat per year back in 2002 (USDA). Chickens only grow so fast, cows can only grow so fast, pigs can only eat so fast. The industry's need to meet demand and maintain profits requires "creative" measures that maintain this need. So the question that the producers asked themselves early on is how to get more from the same? Meaning, how can you get more meat from the same type of animal that we've known and bred since the dawn of time. One quick solution was growth hormones like steroids. The same steroids that are banned in athletics are administered to 80% of US cattle - this meat is more plump, more "meat" from the same animal at a younger age - allowing for a faster return of investment. This is fabulous news to the industry! What else could they do? They also limit the exercise the animal does to keep most of the fat rather than burning it off. This also helped in increasing volume. This practice is legal in the United States but banned throughout the European Union due to concerns about its effects on human health. These drugs have linked to prostate and breast cancer as well as early puberty in girls.

Of course, the animals need to be multiplied at a tremendous rate, feed them, ship them, process them, and finally deliver them to our store shelves. McDonalds ships meat from New Zealand and Australia to meet demand. According to online documents, Mcdonald's says its because of not enough lean meat in the US due to corn-fed cattle - which produces fatty meat. The imported meat is also cheaper - but carries shipping and transportation implications not added in the overall impact.

Let's get back to the live cattle and drugs a little bit. They produce excrement - naturally. Where does it all go? Cadmium, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Selenium (among others) are frequent additives to livestock feed - well much of this is not fully digested when "re-introduced" onto the soil. This soil "addition," with the help of natural runoff, end up in crops which again - we consume. In addition, the hormones affect fish reproduction downstream.

With all that, how does this relate to sustainability? The process of food production veered away from long-term human health to profit. That's not sustainable as the ripple effects from existing production methods and their repercussions affect more than just humans, but the eco-system around us.

For more information, refer to the following:

Cattlenetwork.com - Feed additive basics
Feed Additives for Dairy Cattle
Organic Meat: Healthy Animals Make Healthy Humans
Organic Explained