If you are a meat eater, I think it should be a requirement to drive by a feed lot. If you don't know what a feed lot is, it is a fenced in paddock sized for however many cows it can hold ... meaning there is enough room for the cows to squeeze by each other, that's it. Grass? I don't think so. More like manure. Lots and lots and lots of manure. If it rains, it becomes manure soup. Take a look at this one:
No room for roaming and their sole purpose for being there is to be fattened up on things that cows were never intended to eat. Think I'm just "over selling"? Take a look at this paper from the NC Extension Office -
Broiler Litter as a Feed for Beef Cattle. Do you know what that is? Yes, really is what you think it is: chicken poop. And that is just ONE of the "acceptable" forms of feed for cows. Dead cows are also acceptable forms of feed.
Yes, you're right, cows are herbivores. They don't eat meat in nature. Yet, USDA says feeding dead animal parts is OK. Can you say, Mad Cow Disease?
The smell driving by these feed lots is probably one of the worst smells you can imagine. And you can smell them coming and going for MILES! We talked with a cattle hauler and he called it the "smell of money". Yep, you and I are paying for these animals to eat other animals poop every time we eat meat out. Or buy conventional beef at the grocery store. We can hardly wait to start growing our own cows. On grass. As God intended.
Time to jump down off the soapbox, but thought I would share one of the things we saw on the road...
