Convenience vs Ethics in Food Choices

My grandpa would have said: What in the Sam Hell are we thinking?

Most cows in the U.S. are on feedlot diets (fed corn and grain instead of grass). As many as 30 percent of them are plagued by acid indigestion, then ulcers, then the bacteria that sets up shop in their livers. Other maladies: dirt eating, diarrhea, polio, convulsions. Adding insult to injury, cows that collapse are electrocuted or forklifted to standing because a "downer" cow cannot be sent to market.

This meat then makes its way to school lunches.

Three-quarters of the nation's antibiotics go straight to CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). Recently, the USDA's Agricultural Resource Service engineered a vaccine for sick, shipped cows, licensing it to pharmaceutical giant Schering- Plough. We now have two powerhouses feeding off each other and feeding us problems. All these pills and bills seem to be small bandages over our festering food wound.

Grass-fed animals are higher in all kinds of goodnesses: omega-3s, conjugated linoleic acid, Vitamin A. They are lower in fat, cholesterol and calories. The risk of E. coli is nearly nil. According to the American Grassfed Association, if a person switched from their average 66.5 pound consumption of feedlot beef to a grass-fed diet, they would reduce their yearly calories by 17,733.

The lesson is that when meat quality slides, it brings morality — the producers', the buyers', the quality controllers' — down with it.