Omnivores Dilemma: Chapter 4

In chapter 4 of Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan tracks one cow’s life. The meat industry has changed, because it is economically logical to keep more animals together, feeding them corn. Making meat cheaper and more readily available comes with an environmental and health costs. By feeding animals corn products and keeping them pent up, we broke an ecological loop. Pollan first visits a ranch in South Dakota where the stage “least changed by the modern industrialization of meat” takes place (69). Beef cattle, born on independent ranches throughout the West, eat grass and milk. When allowed to live naturally, cows help to sustain the grass (as long as they are moved around) and with the help of bacteria in the cows’ stomachs, the grass sustains cows. At 6 months cows are weaned and prepared for feedlots.

Feedlots have problems with disease and sanitation. Cows are forced to eat in ways that evolution did not intend (like cows eating cows). In comparison with other things they eat, corn seems great, but it is still not what cows are made to eat. Almost all of the health problems can be traced to food. It’s so unnatural that, cows could only survive on the feedlot diet for 150 days. To keep them healthy enough, cows are given antibiotics, leading to new antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

Manure now can’t be used as fertilizer, because it would kill plants. So feedlots have to look for ways to get rid of it. Cows live in their own manure, which gets caked onto their hides and can get into the meat we eat, leading to things like E. coli. It may be cheaper for corporations to raise animals this way, but there are many other costs, like taxes, disease, and hurting the environment. From birth to slaughter weight, a cow costs approximately a barrel of oil.

Before the system of producing meat worked so well. The process made ecological sense, but the industry claimed it was not efficient enough. I find what has happened appalling and I’m shocked that I didn’t know more about it before. Logically it does not make sense. I understand that it is cheaper for the corporations, but it comes at such a cost to consumers and the world in general. The food we are eating is causing great harm to our health and to the environment. We are so concerned with speed and efficiency that we have moved away from focusing on the quality. It is great that meat is now more affordable, but that has only happened by reducing the quality, putting our health and the environment at risk.

If so many problems stem from the production of corn, would reducing production force the meat industry to change?

All the problems were clearly created by changes in the industry. At this point, is it possible for us to go back?