Posted by Jamie Forrest, December 17, 2007 at 10:00 AM
As Michael Pollan discusses in his article in yesterday's New York Times, the rampant use of antibiotics in America's factory farms threatens to undermine its own efficacy. But why are antibiotics such a crucial piece of the industrial agriculture puzzle? Part of the reason is to fight off infections that tend to afflict animals confined to small spaces.
But that's not the whole story, at least with regard to ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats). In these livestock antibiotics are also used to fight infections that arise from abnormally high levels of E. coli, which in turn is a side-effect of the grain-based diet so common on factory farms. I was curious about this other side of antibiotics, so I asked a veterinarian friend of mine for some clarification.
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Posted by Jamie Forrest, September 24, 2007 at 2:30 PM
The consumption of meat and dairy products is increasing worldwide, but especially so in the so-called developing nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Consequently, the genetic diversity of the world's livestock is decreasing at an alarming rate in those regions. For example, according to a recent report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) titled "The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources," the composition of local breeds in the Vietnamese sow population dropped from 72 percent in the mid 1990s to only 28 percent in 2006. And of those 14 local breeds, five are classified as vulnerable, two are in a critical state, and three are facing extinction.
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Posted by Alaina Browne, May 22, 2007 at 10:59 AM
The growing demand for corn-based ethanol is pushing up the price of corn, causing some livestock producers to supplement their animals' diets with more affordable human food:
Dwight Hess, a cattle feedlot operator in Marietta, Pa., is located in the heart of snack country, near Hershey and Herr Foods Inc., a maker of potato chips, pretzels and snack mixes. His cattle ration consists of about 17% "candy meal," a blend of chocolate bars and large chunks of chocolate; 3% of what he calls "party mix," a blend of popcorn, pretzels, potato chips and cheese curls; 8% corn gluten; and the remainder corn and barley he grows. He says the byproducts save him about 10% on feed costs. Still, it costs him about 65 cents to put a pound on a steer, up from 42 cents last year.
No mention of how these animals taste compared to their corn-fed counterparts. [via The Food Section]
