"rick etter" wrote in message
k.net...

"John Coleman" wrote in message
...
Is grass fed beef ecological?

NO http://www.foodrevolution.org/askjohn/54.htm


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ROTFLMAO But massive petro-chemical mono-culture crops are? What a
hoot!

I didn't state that Rick, people can buy organic produce.

Here though, read and weep, from you own site, killer...

Funny how you only post the info that makes it look good spin doctor, did
you know many parts of Africa are barron desert due to grazing cattle? Didi
you know that conservationsists don't like grass-fed beef? Here's the rest:

But I wouldn't get too carried away and think that as long as it's grass-fed
then it's fine and dandy. Grass-fed products are still high in saturated fat
(though not as high), still high in cholesterol, and are still devoid of
fiber and many other essential nutrients. They take less toll on the
environment, but the land on which the animals graze still must often be
irrigated, thus using up dwindling water resources, and it may be fertilized
with petroleum-based fertilizers.

And there are other environmental costs. Next to carbon dioxide, the most
destabilizing gas to the planet's climate is methane. Methane is actually 24
times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and its
concentration in the atmosphere is rising even faster. The primary reason
that concentrations of atmospheric methane are now triple what they were
when they began rising a century ago is beef production. Cattle raised on
pasture actually produce more methane than feedlot animals, on a per-cow
basis.

Plus there is the tremendous toll grazing cattle takes on the land itself.
Even with U.S. beef cattle today spending the last half of their lives in
feedlots, seventy percent of the land area of the American West is currently
used for grazing livestock. More than two-thirds of the entire land area of
Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho is
used for rangeland. Just about the only land that isn't grazed is in places
that for one reason or another can't be used by livestock-inaccessible
areas, dense forests and brushlands, the driest deserts, sand dunes,
extremely rocky areas, cliffs and mountaintops, cities and towns, roads and
parking lots, airports, and golf courses. In the American West, virtually
every place that can be grazed, is grazed. The results aren't pretty. As one
environmental author put it, "Cattle grazing in the West has polluted more
water, eroded more topsoil, killed more fish, displaced more wildlife, and
destroyed more vegetation than any other land use."

Western rangelands have been devastated under the impact of the current
system, in which cattle typically spend only six months or so on the range,
and the rest of their lives in feedlots. To bring cows to market weight on
rangeland alone would require each animal to spend not six months foraging,
but several years, greatly multiplying the damage to western ecosystems.

The USDA's Animal Damage Control (ADC) program was established in 1931 for a
single purpose-to eradicate, suppress, and control wildlife considered to be
detrimental to the western livestock industry. The program has not been
popular with its opponents. They have called the ADC by a variety of names,
including, "All the Dead Critters" and "Aid to Dependent Cowboys."

In 1997, following the advice of public relations and image consultants, the
federal government gave a new name to the ADC-"Wildlife Services." And they
came up with a new motto-"Living with Wildlife."

This is an interesting choice of words. What "Wildlife Services" actually
does is kill any creature that might compete with or threaten livestock. Its
methods include poisoning, trapping, snaring, denning, shooting, and aerial
gunning. In "denning" wildlife, government agents pour kerosene into the den
and then set it on fire, burning the young alive in their nests.

Among the animals Wildlife Services agents intentionally kill are badgers,
black bears, bobcats, coyotes, gray fox, red fox, mountain lions, opossum,
raccoons, striped skunks, beavers, nutrias, porcupines, prairie dogs, black
birds, cattle egrets, and starlings. Animals unintentionally killed by
Wildlife Services agents include domestic dogs and cats, and several
threatened and endangered species.

All told, Wildlife Services, the federal agency whose motto is "Living with
Wildlife," intentionally kills more than 1.5 million wild animals annually.
This is done, of course, at public expense, to protect the private financial
interests of ranchers who wish to use public lands to graze their livestock.

The price that western lands and wildlife are paying for grazing cattle is
hard to exaggerate. Conscientious management of rangelands can certainly
reduce the damage, but widespread production of grass-fed beef would only
multiply this already devastating toll.
"Most of the public lands in the West, and especially the Southwest, are
what you might call 'cow burnt.' Almost anywhere and everywhere you go in
the American West you find hordes of cows. . . . They are a pest and a
plague. They pollute our springs and streams and rivers. They infest our
canyons, valleys, meadows and forests. They graze off the native bluestems
and grama and bunch grasses, leaving behind jungles of prickly pear. They
trample down the native forbs and shrubs and cacti. They spread the exotic
cheatgrass, the Russian thistle, and the crested wheat grass. Even when the
cattle are not physically present, you see the dung and the flies and the
mud and the dust and the general destruction. If you don't see it, you'll
smell it. The whole American West stinks of cattle." - Edward Abbey,
conservationist and author, in a speech before cattlemen at the University
of Montana in 1985
While grass-fed beef certainly has advantages over feedlot beef, another
answer is to eat less meat. If as a society we did this, then the vast
majority of the public lands in the western United States could be put to
more valuable - and environmentally sustainable - use. Much of the western
United States is sunny and windy, and could be used for large-scale solar
energy and wind-power facilities. With the cattle off the land, photovoltaic
modules and windmills could generate enormous amounts of energy without
polluting or causing environmental damage. Other areas could grow grasses
that could be harvested as "biomass" fuels, providing a far less polluting
source of energy than fossil fuels. Much of it could be restored, once again
becoming valued wildlife habitat. The restoration of cow burnt lands would
help to vitalize rural economies as well as ecosystems.

And there is one more thing. When you picture grass-fed beef, you probably
envision an idyllic scene of a cow outside in a pasture munching happily on
grass. That is certainly the image those endorsing and selling these
products would like you to hold. And there is some truth to it.

But it is only a part of the story. There is something missing from such a
pleasant picture, something that nevertheless remains an ineluctable part of
the actual reality. Grass-fed beef does not just come to you straight from
God's Green Earth. It also comes to you via the slaughterhouse.

The lives of grass-fed livestock are more humane and natural than the lives
of animals confined in factory farms and feedlots, but their deaths are
often just as terrifying and cruel. If they are taken to a conventional
slaughterhouse, they are just as likely as a feedlot animal to be skinned
while alive and fully conscious, and just as apt to be butchered and have
their feet cut off while they are still breathing - distressing realities
that tragically occur every hour in meat-packing plants nationwide.
Confronting the brutal realities of modern slaughterhouses can be a harsh
reminder that those who contemplate only the pastoral image of cattle
patiently foraging do not see the whole picture.

Again, his presentation is an all or nothing perspective, talking about
the
whole world. Typical vegan deversion, as there are not enough true
vegans
around to really make a difference.

People still have the option, don't blame us again for the lack of
compassion of meat eaters.

I'm only talking about what an
individual *could* do right now to decrease their bloody footprints.
Replacing 100s of 1000s of calories from the veggies you now eat with the
meat from 1 grass-fed cow, or game animal would result in *your*
contributing to the death and suffering of fewer animals.

As usual, no figures and no expert opinion to back this claim. Much game is
still reared by humans using products from monoculture.

John