DAIRY COUNTRY
------------------------
Copyright Acerules
Another big industry in our greater area is dairy. There is some beef production too. Everywhere around are cow paddocks. The milking sheds are modern and packed with stainless steel. Stainless steel tankers come to collect the milk. The industry is a needed employer here. Sometimes when things are quiet I can hear the cows lowing in the paddocks on the edge of town. I follow a blog from a dairy farmer in our region. It's very good. They seem to love their cows. Today's post did not disappoint:
8 comments:
Loved the jokes. Really made me chuckle. Cows give us so much. Pretty, gentle, creatures. Unfortunately BIG industrialised farming treats them like machines with no thought for their well being or health. If you want to know the ridiculous and appalling truths about how some farming is carried out in the world, read this link...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/interviews/pollan.html
Basically cows are fed on corn instead of their natural foodstuff of grass because it 'speeds up their growth'. It actually just makes them obese, which means we can kill them to eat in 14 months instead of 4 or 5 years.
Hundreds of thousands of these poor unfortunate creatures are enclosed standing in their own manure and pumped full of antibiotics otherwise there would be outbreaks of disease akin to The Plague in the Middle Ages. They can't digest corn naturally and have ulcerated livers and all kinds of other conditions. The by product of the use of all these antibiotics is the creation of super bugs which clearly impacts on us. To revert to the old ways of rearing them would mean a slight increase in cost, but ecologically makes enormous sense, not to mention treating these animals with some respect and care. I'm so glad we don't have these industrialised mechanisms in our country. I think I'd just stop eating beef.
In our region they live out in the fields all year round. They come in for milking and thats all. We have a temperate climate.
I think we're pretty good about their welfare. They graze on grass outside until it stops growing in the winter, and then they're housed and fed on hay and feed during the winter months. I know the number of small dairy farmers has dropped significantly in recent years because they can't make a living out of it due to supermarkets charging ridiculously low prices and only the biggest ones have survived. I'd like to think we'd never adopt the model I described above. We don't grow enough corn thankfully!
Fiz
That description is enough to make one stop eating beef...I read a story about a baby brama that was raised with the family dogs. She is still smallish and rolls over to have her tummy rubbed. They are lovable animals and they have feelings. I do eat beef but I am in denial. My ex neighbors used to raise cattle when they lived in Arkansas and she told me she couldn't eat any of the beef they took to market. She watched them grazing during the day from her window so she was too upset to eat them.
Cute jokes....
Fiz
That description is enough to make one stop eating beef...I read a story about a baby brama that was raised with the family dogs. She is still smallish and rolls over to have her tummy rubbed. They are lovable animals and they have feelings. I do eat beef but I am in denial. My ex neighbors used to raise cattle when they lived in Arkansas and she told me she couldn't eat any of the beef they took to market. She watched them grazing during the day from her window so she was too upset to eat them.
Cute jokes....
It's all pretty appalling Kath. I watched a doc about it the other night on Amazon Prime called Food Inc. It's a must see. I had to look away several times. They showed a scene where a guy was extracting the contents from a cows stomach through a big hole that's kept open with a big plastic plug. It's to monitor the bacteria because of a new strain of EColi which is causing big problems. It's lethal to us and has caused quite a few deaths and is directly linked to the cows being fed corn and it's ending up in our meat. The answer is adding ammonia to burgers etc to kill it off. Also chickens are kept in sheds throughout their short lives in complete darkness at all times. A women wanted to keep her sheds with daylight coming through and her contract was not renewed. It was also about a company called Monsanto that apply real bully boy tactics to drive farmers out of business if they don't use their seeds. It's astonishing how it's been allowed to happen.
There was a farmer who still does it all naturally (he had to fight off attempts to have him shut down) but the difference in the way his livestock looked and were treated was incredible. It makes you realise how inhuman humans are when there's a profit margin to shave off. Big bucks and monopolising the market = keeping the public very much in the dark.
I really laughed over the vow jokes.
I haven't eaten meat for years, and now wonder if I can ever face up to a steak even when it's available!
There are a lot of bully boys who are out to monopolise your money.They include the government. ..
Just watching the news about the travel ban. Wonder when things can get back to normal. There's always something to protest about, these days.
Hi, Jane, I'm pleased to see you commenting. Please return frequently.
Post a Comment