Don't Eat Sick Animals

Cows are grazing animals. They're designed to wander through open fields, eating whatever grasses they find along with perhaps a bug here and there. Their droppings enrich the soil and help more grass to grow.

How do we raise cattle for consumption? We stick them in a tiny pen and don't let them move around. Then we feed them grain instead of grass because it's cheaper, which makes them malnourished and sick. So we inject them with hormones to keep them growing until we slaughter them for meat. Their droppings fall on the floor; they don't touch the soil.

I know at the very least the total fat in beef from the latter scenario will be greater, and the proportion of unhealthy fat (omega-6) to healthy fat (omega-3) will be greater as well. I imagine other vitamins and nutrients which would naturally be present in beef are in short supply or completely absent as well.

There's additionally an environmental aspect. Cattle naturally produce methane--a greenhouse gas--in their excrement. Grass-fed cattle produce a little more than grain-fed, but when their put out to pasture, the manure gets absorbed by the soil. So while methane does get into the atmosphere, the soil is also enriched such that it actually absorbs more carbon than the methane is releasing. You didn't think ruminants create global warming in their natural state, did you?

Then of course there's the moral aspect. Shouldn't animals be given an environment which is natural and enjoyable to them rather than penned up and given nutritionally empty gruel? Of course, there's the question of whether to eat meat at all, which is the subject of my next post.

If you're going to eat meat or other animal products, make sure it's from an animal that had a healthy, natural life if possible. Maybe some unhealthy animals still produce healthy meat, and don't negatively impact the environment in their raising, but it seems intuitive that the converse would generally be the case. You don't eat fruit or vegetables that are sick-looking; don't eat sick animals.