Mindful Eating #5. Cow-Pooling by Jill Davies 1.24.09

Mindful Eating #5. Cow-Pooling by Jill Davies 1.24.09

It is time to talk about meat and what is missing in the factory-farm meat that is to be found in the chain stores. I want to make it very clear how insane this part of our food systems is. In the ‘50’s and ‘60’s our food experts were telling us to cut way down on the consumption of animal fats. Why? -we were having too many heart attacks. (In M.E. article #2 we covered the fallacy of that advice.) At the same time, the USDA was pouring subsidy dollars into the Midwest, turning it into a 125,000 square mile sea of corn producing cheap feed for the new CAFO’s being built (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations). Why? -to get fat into our meat. Michael Pollan’s book, “Omnivore’s Dilemma” describes the history of this eloquently.

Now we have lovely ‘marbled’ beef that most people can afford to eat in large helpings. But what happens when you take animals marvelously designed to digest grass and make them eat mainly seeds, i.e. corn? Ruminants; cows, sheep, bison have something called a ‘rumen’ which is essentially a big fermentation tank (stomach) in which a resident population of bacteria, which have coevolved with the animals, happily digest the grass for the animal which then turns it into high quality protein. The normal acidity (pH) of a rumen is neutral, unlike our own highly acid stomachs. But feed the animal corn and the rumen becomes highly acidic which actually makes the cow sick, manifesting as diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease, and a weakening of the immune system. Up to 30% of feedlot cows (some pens even more) are found at slaughter to have abscessed livers. If kept on the feedlot diet for more than 150 days they will die. What keeps the cows standing (and eating) are antibiotics and antacids. That’s what happens to the cow. What happens to the meat?

There are two fats that are called “essential”, meaning our bodies cannot make them so we must get them in our food. Named Omega 6 and Omega 3, they both have important roles in our bodies, but their functions are often opposites and they compete for space in our cell membranes. Om.3s lower the inflammation response, Om.6s excite it. Om.3s slow the clotting of blood, Om.6s speed it. Om.3s are produced in the leaves of plants, Om.6s in the seeds of plants.

Om.3s facilitate the transformation of light into usable energy in the plant chloroplast and are intimately involved in the growth, health and function of the neurons in our brains and eyes, a fascinating coherence in function between plant and animal. Om.6s serve as a store of energy for the future seedling, and are involved in fat storage in the animal.

Our Western, industrial food system has taken the animals off the family farm and put them in CAFOs and shifted their diet from grass to corn – from leaves to seeds. Consequently the ratio of Om.6 to Om.3 in their meat has shifted from 2:1 to more than 10:1. This marked shift applies to all factory farm products where the main food is cheap, subsidized corn: beef, chicken, pork, dairy, eggs. Also, since our diets also shifted from whole foods and pastured animals to refined corn and soy oils where Om.6s dominate and the process of hydrogenation of vegetable oils destroys Om.3s, the same ratio of Om.6 to Om.3 is found in our bodies as well. But in pre-western-diet populations, the ratio was 1:1 or 2:1.

Since we now are full of Om.6s and deficient in Om.3s, what are the health effects? An excessive inflammation response yields auto-immune diseases like arthritis. Blood clotting = heart disease. Brain cell deficiency = learning and behavioral problems in children, to name just a few of the consequences. In this light, what the animal has eaten becomes more important than choosing what animal to eat. For example, farmed salmon that are being fed grain may be worse for us than grass-fed beef which have the proper ratio of these fats. And from a ‘whole systems thinking’ perspective, (see M.E. article #3), the corporate agenda has taken the light out of our food.

Sustainable Living Systems is working to build (actually rebuild) a local food system. In this valley, we have lots of stock producers, mostly beef, and we have several meat processors as well. Lots of people here are using the processors to cut and wrap either their own wild meat or locally produced beef and lamb. But only a few producers are called on to provide a grass-fed (grass-finished) animal. Apparently, people still think fattening with corn is the way to go.

The cattle producers here who are running fattening operations have to bring in train car loads of corn from the Midwest. We cannot reliably produce feed corn in this climate but we can produce great grass here. Producing corn-fattened cattle in this valley does not make sense and is not sustainable. But if more people started asking for grass-fed beef we could build our local economy around it.

On our website, bitterrootvalleyfood.info, is a Producers’ Directory where you can locate producers of grass-fed animals. Look for the words ‘grass-fed’ highlighted in green. Team up with friends or neighbors and arrange to buy ¼ or ½ a cow, have it cut and wrapped to your specifications and put in your freezer. You will be saving dollars overall and you will have the peace of mind from knowing how your steaks were produced, and that they are contributing to your health. Also, your food dollars will be supporting a local, sustainable food system and staying in a local economy. There are many other issues with factory-farm foods which we will address later. If you have missed any of the M.E. articles in this series, they all are posted at sustainablelivingsystems.org. - - Jill Davies, Director, Sustainable Living Systems.