Posted on 06/23/2008 11:05:09 AM PDT by aft_lizard
Dodge City —
Earlier this month, more than a hundred thousand South Koreans demonstrated against newly elected president Lee Myung-bak as his entire cabinet offered to resign. At the root of this massive protest was not a declaration of war against North Korea, a boycott of the Chinese summer Olympics, or even escalating oil prices. It was a treaty allowing U.S. beef imports. Beef production accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than automobiles. Its insatiable demand for feed grains has raised world food prices to levels beyond the reach of the world’s hungry and the relief agencies that support them. Creation of beef pastures is the key cause of worldwide deforestation, including the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. A beef-based diet requires more than 20 times as much land and water as a plant-based diet with equivalent amounts of calories and protein. Nutritionally, beef offers protein, iron, and some B vitamins, but no fiber, carbohydrates, nor most vitamins and minerals. On the other hand, it is replete with saturated fat, cholesterol, pesticides, and pathogens, including occasionally, the prions of “mad cow” disease. We should have a hundred thousand demonstrators marching on Washington to protest taxpayer subsidies to the U.S. beef industry. In the meantime, each one of us can demonstrate our own outrage with beef production on our next trip to the supermarket by selecting from the rich variety of soy-and-plant-based meat alternatives in the frozen foods and produce sections.
Dean Koch Dodge City
Beef? Great, now I’m starving.
I prefer Soylent Green - “it’s peeeeeeeeople!”
“Beef...it’s what’s for dinner”!
Hell, I’m pure evil then..
Big ol briquette grill, starter fluid... giant slabs of BEEF cooking away...
MMMMMMMMM
They’ll have to pry my cheeseburger, ribeye, T bone, porterhouse, ribs, flank steak and glass of cabernet from my cold, dead, greasy fingers.
For them meat is not a luxury. For many of them whole grain diets are poisonous.
If more land is required to raise herd animals to feed such people then the sugar and starch eaters should be made to make way.
I’ve heard that sacred cows make the best hamburgers.
Beef has been on the leftist hitlist for awhile. They complain about methane and hormone suppliments. This is nothing new.
Beef was also directly responsible for WWI and WWII as well as allowing slavery to exist in America for several hundred years. It has caused billions and billions of deaths over the breadth of humanity and now it is changing global weather patterns. It must be stopped in our lifetime. How can we as human beings continue to allow cows to continue to expel gas unabated. Do we not care for our children? Something must be done! Aaaaaagh!
What is ignored is that prior to the US expanding westward, a herd estimated at upwards of 40 million bison roamed the central Great Plains. Given the weight of these large animals (a male bison can weigh over 2,500 pounds), when compared to the weight of cattle and the number of cattle, the Great Plains today are supporting just as much mass of animal meat as it historically sustained.
Given these facts, it is just silly to assert that cattle are bad for the planet.
those hormone supplements are no joke. no other first world country allows farmers to drug their animals with steroids that produce hormonal imbalances in people
I can do my part by switching to pork.
I may not agree with eating red meat, but I will defend to the death your right to clog your arteries and get heart disease. :-)
Eeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! On second thought, pass the burgers, already!
I think they were protesting US beef because of mad cow disease and the fact that the US has the most lax testing and oversight. It has nothing to do with the environment or green house gases, etc.
Done!
You’re exactly correct.
There’s one additional factor in beef vs. cattle: bison are mighty hard on the range. Bison like to create these “dust wallows” - where they tear up a 10’ diameter hold in the sod/grass/cover and they use this to roll around in the dust to cover themselves with dust to discourage ticks, mites, fleas, etc on their hides.
Cattle don’t tend to do this. Cattle rub themselves on everything that stands up off the ground (fenceposts, trees, parked cars, barbed wire, you name it), but bison are in a whole new league when it comes to “gotta scratch that itch” behavior.
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