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Where does the meat you
buy in your local grocery
or
supermarket come from?
How is it produced? Why is
it becoming more difficult to
find real/y
GOOD
meat to–
day
-
even at high prices?
And what is the solution to
this growing problem?
b y
Dale
L.
Schurter
and Eugene M. Walter
Here's What
You Need
to
Know About
H. Armstrong Roberts
THE MEAT
YOU
EAT
M
EAT CONSUMPTION
is atan aH–
time high. The average person
in one of the "have" nations
consumes an average of 230 pounds of
red meat and poultry each year. This
fact, by ítself, makes meat a vital factor
in human diet - and health.
Yet few today seem to know -
oc
care - how this important food is pro–
duced and brought to their table. Too
many housewives and consumers are
concerned only with its price. They do
not think beyond their local market
when considering where their meat
comes from.
But drastic changes have taken place
in livestock feeding, management and
marketing during the past 20 years.
The same is trae for poultry. Yet
many consun1el.'s are totalfy unaware
of the effect these far-reach ing changes
are having on the
q11ality
of the meat
they eat.
Let's look "behind the scenes," using
beef, the most popular of all meats, as
an example. Let's see what happens to a
calf - from birth tu the time it
becomes a juicy steak for your dinner
table.
From Birth to the Feedlot
The wobbly legged calf is born.
If
he
happens to be a dairy breed, the very
latest practice is to whisk him from his
mother about twelve hours later and
deliver hím to a mechanized feeder - a
"Metal Mother." He is put into a small
individual pen where every four hours
around the dock a large metal tank
wíth nipples protruding from it auto–
matically comes along a rail within
mouthing distance. After six to eight
weeks the calf is parted from this mech–
anized "mother" and sent to a larger
pen for more growing up.
The beef calf has a more carefree life
- until it is 1ive to seven months old.
Then it is given a shot of antibiotics to
help deter the possibility of shipping
fever, and shipped from five to 1500
miles to a feedlot by truck or raíl.
Upon arrival at the modero feedlot,
the calf immediately goes through what
is called "feedlot preparation." In sorne
of the most modern feedlots the calf is
weighed, put through a squeeze chute
where it is dehorned, castrated,
branded, given five shots of varíous
types, and put through a 20-foot-long
dipping vat fi.lled with chemicals- all
in as little as
three min11tes
time! After
standing a few minutes to drain, it's on
to the feeding pen. Feedlot operators
say the average animal put through
this ordeal will lose 30-40 pounds of
unregainable weight. Now the calf will
be put in a peo which allots him about
25 sguare feet in which to live out
the rest of his life. From this day for–
ward the animal will live under con–
stant stress.
Feedlot preparation varíes from lot to
lot. But virtually every lot gives at least
some of the above-described treatment
- many of them
much
of it. And an
increasing percentage give
ALL
of it.
Feedlots vary in size from relatively
small family-farm-type operations to
huge 100,000-head lots that are virtual
"beef factories." Lots of 10,000 head or
more are cornmoo. Ao estimated 80 per–
cent of all U. S. beef comes from large