By now, you may have heard about or seen this video (look for “Cheap Meat” if it’s no longer the main video) showing workers at a California slaughterhouse trying to get diseased cows to walk so they can pass inspection. Watch as the cows are dragged, picked up with forklifts, poked with an electric prod, and sprayed with high powered hoses. These cows are known as “downers” and should not be allowed into the food supply as, by USDA regulations, cows have to walk into the facility under their own power. But that won’t stop the meat industry from doing everything possible to get these diseased cows, caked with manure and dirt, to get up and walk in so they can make a buck off of them.

Oh yeah, and these cows are being fed to the children of this country through the school lunch program. I don’t know if anyone can watch that video and then go to the meat case at their local grocery store and pick out anything. Maybe this will be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back, inducing a backlash against the meat industry that gets people to reject this kind of garbage and opt instead for cows raised the way cows should be raised and treated the way all animals should be treated. Yes it costs more. Videos like that one are part of the reason why. Find your local farmers at Eat Wild. Order a half or a quarter or an eighth of a cow from them.

Over at The Ethicurean, Bonnie P. sums the meat industry up perfectly:

The meat industry in this country is broken from start to finish. We take ruminants and feed them grain their stomachs weren’t designed to eat, treating them like garbage disposals for our industrial leftovers; implant steroids so they’ll grow faster; feed them antibiotics so they can survive the poor diets and crowded feedlot conditions; then ship them to slaughterhouses where they are killed and processed at speeds that practically beg for bacterial contamination and worker injuries.

And here are some reports that I picked up from Ross Enamait’s post on this debacle:
The Welfare of Cattle in Beef Production
The Welfare of Cattle in Dairy Production
Plenty of Other Reports

I have my reading cut out for me with that last link. I am officially appalled.

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Tags: grass-fed, red meat, Vegetarianism