To Eat Steak or Not to Eat Steak, That is the Question

Omnivore's Dilemma: Chapter 4

The meat-making process is long, hard, and disgusting in several ways.  Raising steer, hogs, and bulls the "traditional" way is seen as illogical, stupid, and even offensive these days. Big companies like Tyson, Cargill, and Perdue are only concerned with being economically efficient with their production and do not care about the animals' well-being. Michael Pollan took it upon himself to follow the meat being produced from birth of the animal to consumption. Besides being a product of unnatural insemination, the calf is born in a normal way more or less. He begins nursing, and then shifts his diet toward grasses. However, about a month after he is born his life turns upside down. He is branded and castrated. He still continues to eat grass for a couple months after, but about seven months after his birth he will never eat  grass again. So what does the calf eat for the rest of his life until he grows into a steer and is slaughtered? You know it folks, corn. Everything always goes back to corn. It is cheap and provides enough carbs and other nutrients to make the calf grow fatter quicker. An average cow in a feedlot consumes thirty two pounds of corn and gains four pounds per day. A major downside of this consistent corn consumption not only effects the steer itself, but it also effects the consumer. E. coli. Ever heard of it? A deathly bacteria that lives in feedlot cattle, forty percent of which carry it in their gut. So what stops these microbes from getting into our food? Studies have shown that if a feedlot steer were to simply eat grass or hay for only a couple days before being slaughtered, eighty percent of the E. coli in the cattle would be eliminated. So does the cattle industry use this practice? No. They use a practice called irradiation, more simply sterilizing the manure that gets into the meat. I think we can all tell who's wrong here.

I think that what the cattle industry does in all aspects of its business practices is repulsive. All they care about is producing meat at the fastest rate they can. They don't give a shit about our country's health or that people actually die from E. coli infections. Three days worth of eating grass or hay and a vast majority of the bacteria living in the cattle would disappear. Three days, that's it. Would it really cost the cattle industry that much more money to feed grass and hay to their products for the last three days of their miserable lives? If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say probably not.