The Ethics of Food Production

[bbarrick8383]

Growing up, ever since I can remember when I was living with my parents. I would get up every morning to eat a bowl of cereal. I’d have the jug of milk right next to me and I’d keep filling the bowl up to eat about two or three bowls then drink all the milk. Drank milk every day at school and sometimes with dinner at home.

Believe it or not I could not gain weight as a kid, at the start of high school I think I was about 140 or 150 lbs. About 170 when I graduated which is anorexic looking at my height. Anyway, I’ve been in at least three incidents where I should have broken a bone. I’ve ran full speed into a steel bar that smashed into my cheekbone leaving me wearing an eyepatch and several stitches, but broke nothing. Been hit with a baseball bat, all kinds of stuff that I just knew I had broken something only to get up and walk it off.

My dentist told me that she feels sorry if anyone ever tried to pick a fight with me because my jawbones are so thick.

I’m a firm believer that milk helped my bones.

 

[bbarrick8383]

Always helps to have an oil well. Reminds me of that joke about ranchers. Goes through a long list of all the things a cattleman needs; cows, pickup, fencing tools, corrals, etc, etc. The last line is “And a wife with a job at the courthouse.”

Yeah we try not to have all our eggs in one basket. Our oil field operations are our bread and butter, we just have the cattle, pigs and small gardens for fun mostly.

I’m not sure what part of Ok you’re in, but doesn’t sound like the “Green Country”. I don’t know for sure how ranchers outside the Green Country make things work. But around here (SW Mo) rotation is the key along with having a breed that will thrive entirely on grass, and enough grass to do the job. It has caused a major revival with the classic British breeds that can thrive with no grain at all. We have recently started getting steers up to 700 lb or so before sending them “to town”. Some go higher than that. The feed lots only put 200-300 lb on them with grain, and sometimes “backgrounders” buy the steers (if the season is right) and send them out to graze on the Ok and Ks wheatfields, and the feed lots put very little additional weight on them; just enough to get that “corn fed” marbling people want. So that’s why I say that a lot of the beef people are buying in the supermarkets now is very close to being “organic, grass-fed beef”, though they don’t know it.

Im right off I35 just before you cross into Texas, my front door view is Texas actually. In my vicinity the big ranches are all horses. Polo ranch here had a million dollar horse die of west nile a couple years ago. Just east of here, there are a few bigger ranches. Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert actually own a couple of them not far from here. We dont breed anything specific though, my father told me cross breeds bring better money. And we only keep enough on the 170 acres so that we dont have to rotate them.

I will say that Ok has some of the best Hereford stock I have ever seen. Herefords must do well in Ok, because I don’t see a lot of production sale flyers for other breeds come out of there.

I’ve been noticing a few guys down here are raising all bulls now. I know one of them is trying to get some of his into the PBRA. There is a fella down the road from us who has a bull that is so massive, hes dark brown around his neck and gets lighter as he goes down. I drove by him earlier today and had to stop because I thought it was a buffalo.

The horse ranches in Ok must really be extensive. In June, truckload after truckload of high quality (and expensive) cool season hay is shipped to them from here; brome, alfalfa, timothy, orchardgrass/clover. I guess I can understand why Ok would be popular with horse ranchers. If you don’t have that explosive growth of cool season grass in the spring and fall, horses are much less likely to founder. Around here, if horses are going to founder, that’s when they’re going to do it.

Just in the last 10 years or so they have moved in and bought up as much land as they could. We even had a equine vet move in and built a nice facility here. It’s over 30 miles to a decent size town here, but we got two vets in about 15.

 

[4elise]

If large scale food production is so bad, what is the true solution? How will the organic/free range people be able to feed the country/world w/ their methods? The very nature of organic/free range food production limits production to a level that would not sustain the current population.

Before you start casting stones at the factory farming industry, perhaps it would be beneficial to have an actual solution as well as an unbiased view on so-called factory farms. Without either, you are casting your pearls b/4 swine - in other words - wasting your breath & your intellect.

A vegan diet is one solution (the one I’ve taken )- pull oneself out of the loop of factory farming - if I can’t solve everything I don’t have to continue to contribute to the problem.

 

[vz71]

A vegan diet is one solution (the one I’ve taken )- pull oneself out of the loop of factory farming - if I can’t solve everything I don’t have to continue to contribute to the problem.

Not quite.
It is just further along in the hit lists of the extremists.

At some point (perhaps already), people will begin escribing human traits to plants.
An start crying over the inhumanity of growing plants in crowded conditions…of ‘factory farming’ plants.

I am afraid the only solution the extremists are happy with is elimination of our species.

 

[Cracker_Mom]

Growing up, ever since I can remember when I was living with my parents. I would get up every morning to eat a bowl of cereal. I’d have the jug of milk right next to me and I’d keep filling the bowl up to eat about two or three bowls then drink all the milk. Drank milk every day at school and sometimes with dinner at home.

Believe it or not I could not gain weight as a kid, at the start of high school I think I was about 140 or 150 lbs. About 170 when I graduated which is anorexic looking at my height. Anyway, I’ve been in at least three incidents where I should have broken a bone. I’ve ran full speed into a steel bar that smashed into my cheekbone leaving me wearing an eyepatch and several stitches, but broke nothing. Been hit with a baseball bat, all kinds of stuff that I just knew I had broken something only to get up and walk it off.

My dentist told me that she feels sorry if anyone ever tried to pick a fight with me because my jawbones are so thick.

I’m a firm believer that milk helped my bones.

Me, too.
We used 2 gals. of milk a day from our dairy cows.Made butter, cheese, etc. None of my kids ever broke a bone in spite of falls, farm accidents, etc.
From what I understand, milk makes more of a difference to your bone health when you are younger.The benefits diminish some as you age.
Pre-school kids who drink milk are statistically taller than non-milk drinking children, per studies…

 

[4elise]

Not quite.
It is just further along in the hit lists of the extremists.

At some point (perhaps already), people will begin escribing human traits to plants.
An start crying over the inhumanity of growing plants in crowded conditions…of ‘factory farming’ plants.

I am afraid the only solution the extremists are happy with is elimination of our species.

Actually - my response was to the one by BiologyBrain who asked how will farming feed the country / world - and recommended that “Before you start casting stones at the factory farming industry, perhaps it would be beneficial to have an actual solution…”

SO… that’s my solution (for many reasons) and I would certainly agree that it is extreme in our current society -become a strict vegetarian. Pull yourself out of the loop of factory farming - I also appreciate that for those who work raising animals, have grown up hunting, or even raise their own animals for consumption this is a pretty threatening concept. After all - it is their livelihood - way of life - so I don’t wish to cast stones at them at all. I think the reason for this OP was to consider that the way animals are raised on a large scale for consumption should be looked at - obviously if one is engaged in raising animals they don’t think that they are treating them badly and may not be - but even the Holy Father has commented on treating animals as commodities as being wrong.

And I don’t know what extremists you suggest will be happy with the elimination of our species - but I’ll be that those of us on this thread don’t fit into that group.

At some point (perhaps already), people will begin escribing human traits to plants.
An start crying over the inhumanity of growing plants in crowded conditions…of ‘factory farming’ plants.

I am afraid the only solution the extremists are happy with is elimination of our species.

The slippery slope argument always makes me laugh - if then people begin ‘escribing human traits to plants’ they won’t be around long to make that argument! A plant based diet is healthy and has and continues to sustained life. Happy Easter!

 

[4elise]

GLOBAL WARMING

While the Church doesn’t come out and say Global Warming is a reality - they did bring together individuals of divergent opinions to discuss this - and in the end the final statement was "*“Instead of letting disagreements in the global warming debate continue to stall decisive action, “we have a Christian duty to live simple, responsible lives whether climate change is happening or not,” *

We are called to live simply so that others may simply live…

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’ve been noticing a few guys down here are raising all bulls now. I know one of them is trying to get some of his into the PBRA. There is a fella down the road from us who has a bull that is so massive, hes dark brown around his neck and gets lighter as he goes down. I drove by him earlier today and had to stop because I thought it was a buffalo.

I like the look and the musculature. Got to watch those birth weights, though. It’s one big balancing act, and that’s for sure.

 

[Ridgerunner]

BIOLOGYBRAIN (and I really do love that name), said that farm animals live better lives on the farm than they would in the wild. My response was that they would *not *be found in the wild in these large numbers, or found in the wild at all, and I did not understand the point of her statement. (Even though I love her name!)

QUOTE]

I guess that would depend on what kinds of animals one is talking about. Without question there were millions of bison in North America before white settlement. Wild bovines are extremely hard to catch and kill if you don’t have transportation (horses, pickups) faster than they are, and pre-horse Indians weren’t able to kill very many of them. Later, some number of escaped longhorn cattle proliferated into gigantic herds without anyone helping them along. The old trail drives were fundamentally of wild cattle that were simply caught, driven to market and sold. Would British or Continental breeds do as well as longhorns in the wild? Hard to know, but I strongly suspect that at least the former probably would. Are there more cattle in the U.S. now than there were bison and longhorns in, say, 1860? I don’t know. But there certainly were millions of them then.

As an occasional killer of feral hogs, I can attest that they can survive readily in the wild. Perhaps not in the same numbers, but they certainly can do it in substantial numbers. They can proliferate so rapidly that the state wildlife people encourage people to kill them on sight. Mighty scary critters they are, too.

What we DON’T have a lot of in North America anymore, are the numbers of large predators; grizzly bears, mountain lions, wolf packs. People eat the cattle and the hogs instead of those predators eating them. So, while the care given to domestic animals is unquestionably better than such animals had in the wild, and has doubtless increased the numbers to some unknown degree, I’m not sure we did not simply cut down on disease deaths and substitute ourselves for other apex predators.

“Nature abhors a vacuum” it is said, and my guess is that if we stopped raising and eating cattle and hogs tomorrow, there would be millions of wild cattle within just a few decades, and millions of wild hogs in one decade or less, all descended from some handful that got away.

 

[bbarrick8383]

Wild hogs are a nasty bunch. An old friend of mine caught a couple and found out that they wont reproduce if caught and penned up.

We’ve had a couple of reports of mountain lions here in Oklahoma in the last year. I’m not sure if they are moving this way a little or there growing in numbers. I know their hunting range can be very very large.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Wild hogs are a nasty bunch. An old friend of mine caught a couple and found out that they wont reproduce if caught and penned up.

We’ve had a couple of reports of mountain lions here in Oklahoma in the last year. I’m not sure if they are moving this way a little or there growing in numbers. I know their hunting range can be very very large.

You know, people who would like to do away with raising animals for food would do well to consider what the countryside would turn into if people didn’t. People would have to build protective walls around towns and cities and pray that they didn’t have a flat tire going from one town to another.

I didn’t know Razorbacks (or Javelinas or whatever you have in OK) wouldn’t breed in captivity. There are a few Razorbacks here, but not many.

We have also had some definite sightings of mountain lions in Missouri.

I greatly fear the return of mountain lions. Old settler stories, if credited, describe them as a very aggressive threat. Their favorite prey is whitetail deer, and the proliferation of deer in recent years makes one worry that mountain lions will expand into those prey-infested areas. Two years ago there was no limit at all on does here. If you killed a thousand of them it was okay as long as you registered them in and had them butchered. There was a limit last year, and I think it was so they could figure out what the effect was of the “no-limit” season.

Black bears are making a comeback; one that I don’t welcome at all.

Red wolves have already made an appearance in the deep Ozarks of South Central Missouri, and I imagine you have some too. I don’t look forward to any proliferation of those either. There weren’t any coyotes here when I was a kid, but they have proliferated to the point that country people have made Great Pyrenees a very popular breed. Bear fighters and Coyote killers. I have two of them myself. Wonderful dogs.

But for cattlemen, horsemen, sheepmen, their dogs and semi-automatic rifles, most of the countryside in the U.S. would turn into a howling wilderness in the blink of an eye, and the PETA types would be afraid to even go into their back yards, and rightly so.

 

[cynic]

So the complete extermination of potentially dangerous wild animals is desirable?

 

[Ridgerunner]

So the complete extermination of potentially dangerous wild animals is desirable?

Never said that. But most people would prefer that their children not be eaten by them either. People and animals that are inclined to prey on people don’t make for a happy mix.
That’s why we have national parks and wildlife reserves.

But as to other wildlife, I have no problem. With people-killers, particularly child-killers, whether two-legged or four-legged, I have a big problem.

 

[bbarrick8383]

I read two reportings in the last year, one was a email I received and Ill see if I can find it. It contained a picture, the Mountain Lion/Cougar was looking through the sliding glass door of a house here in OK. The other was a hunter, I cant remember if he shot the lion or not, but supposedly the lion was hunting for him while he was in a deer stand. The lion picked up his scent being downwind and tracked the hunter who had heard the lion thinking it was a deer behind him. He looked around and saw the lion and realised that he was not the only one doing the hunting.

cougarinfo.org/attacks3.htm

Four days after the attack, described as alert but uncomfortable, four-year-old Hayley Bazille from Coquitlam, B.C., continued recovering in the hospital from serious head injuries suffered when a cougar pounced on her out of the trees in the middle of a sunny afternoon with lots of people around. She was with her family for an outing near the coastal village of Zeballos about 300 kilometres northwest of Victoria, B.C., Canada. The pre-schooler was perhaps running alone after her older sister, Carlyn, who had jumped out of the car first and headed down the short trail (approximately a minute’s walk) to the river far ahead of her sister. Or perhaps Hayley was walking with her younger sister, as most accounts said she was with her sister. Hayley had jumped out of the car after Carlyn, but her father grabbed her because he was afraid the “stubborn, independent, and free-spirited” girl would not wait for her parents to bring her life jacket before jumping into the water.

The father, mother, and 3 sisters had planned 4 days of camping and swimming in a remote stretch along the Kaouk River. At about 2:00 p.m., with the girls ahead of her, their mother followed. People at the river began shouting about a cougar, and then Ms. Bazille heard Hayley crying. Rushing down toward the cries, Bazille passed two girls coming up, their eyes wide. She rounded a bend and caught sight of her daughter about 10 metres away, lying between some rocks. She didn’t see the cougar at first because it blended so well into the rocks. When she focused better, Monique Bazille was horrified to see a cougar over Hayley, her little girl’s blood on its muzzle. The cat was clawing at her face and neck, preparing to crush her head. Hayley was fighting it, saying, “Get off me, Get off me.” The 40-year-old, 115-pound Ms. Bazille flew at the cat and clubbed the animal with a drink cooler she was carrying. “I grazed it on its shoulder, and it wasn’t fazed. It kept its ground, and it snarled and growled at me,” she said. Ms. Bazille also stood her ground “I was angry, and I said ‘you get off of her.’” She was screaming the whole time. When she launched a kick at the cougar, it shied away and took off into the bush. Ms. Bazille said the attack lasted between 30 seconds and a minute.

Her daughter was covered in blood, her scalp torn open right to the skull. Not only had the cougar flayed her scalp, but it had raked her skull with it’s teeth. An emergency room nurse at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver, Ms. Bazille knew immediately what to look for. Though basically Hayley’s scalp was gone, thankfully her neck wasn’t touched. She was bleeding badly and in shock. The mother expertly wrapped her daughter’s mutilated scalp, and the parents drove to a nearby marina where a helicopter ferried mother and daughter, first to a hospital in Campbell River, then to Vancouver.

“Without a doubt, her actions saved her daughter’s life,” conservation officer Peter Pauwels said the following day. The mother credited the girl’s padded life-jacket, which her father Troy had insisted she put on at their vehicle, with initially saving her life. It was heavily scratched and had bite marks on it. In addition to her torso, doctors said the jacket protected Hayley’s neck and lower scalp.

I do not want to see any animals extinct, but I’d kill an endagered animal, I dont care if it was the last one on earth if it attacked one of my children.

 

[Cracker_Mom]

So the complete extermination of potentially dangerous wild animals is desirable?

Where do folks come up with these comments?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I read two reportings in the last year, one was a email I received and Ill see if I can find it. It contained a picture, the Mountain Lion/Cougar was looking through the sliding glass door of a house here in OK. The other was a hunter, I cant remember if he shot the lion or not, but supposedly the lion was hunting for him while he was in a deer stand. The lion picked up his scent being downwind and tracked the hunter who had heard the lion thinking it was a deer behind him. He looked around and saw the lion and realised that he was not the only one doing the hunting.

cougarinfo.org/attacks3.htm

I do not want to see any animals extinct, but I’d kill an endagered animal, I dont care if it was the last one on earth if it attacked one of my children.

Bears are protected here. I don’t know if Mountain Lions are. However, I do know one can kill a bear lawfully out of “self-defense”. Puts the image in my mind of placing a switchblade knife in the paw of a blown-away bear.

I do know if I had the chance, I would shoot either a bear or a mountain lion on sight and figure out how it was self defense later. Mea culpa.

 

[BiologyBrain]

BIOLOGYBRAIN (and I really do love that name), said that farm animals live better lives on the farm than they would in the wild. My response was that they would not be found in the wild in these large numbers, or found in the wild at all, and I did not understand the point of her statement. (Even though I love her name!)

I guess I don’t understand why the numbers matter. Let me put it to you this way. On our hog farm we had some sows that were kept in buildings w/ specific pens, automatic water & feed, ventilation, pits for excrement, etc. We also had some sows that were kept outside in large pens (5-6 acres) to forage mainly for themselves w/ supplementation from us. They drank out of ponds/mud puddles. The sows that lived indoors invariably lived better lives than those outside. They wanted for nothing. Their litters of 10-16 were healthy and able to be treated for any problems prior to suffering. They didn’t kill their own offspring by drowning, laying on them, or just plain eating them. However, the outdoor sows had cuts & bruises (leading to infections & possibly death) from foraging, fighting amongst themselves, & predators. The outdoor sows litters of 10-12 (average) were generally reduced to only 4-6 due to the sows drowning them, laying on them, eating them (yes, it happens - pigs can be omnivores if they’re so inclined), and predators. If I had equal numbers in the beginning in both places - which animals are being treated more humane-ly?

The same would be true for animals in the wild as opposed to those kept on farms. Even our outdoor kept sows had better lives than those ultimately left to fend for themselves b/c we would supplement their feed, treat injuries & diseases, ensure plenty of water, try to keep predators out, etc. That’s why the number of animals in the wild will not/can not equal the number of animals kept domesticated on a farm - the conditions themselves kill the animals b/4 we get a chance to kill them for their meat! Quality of life is an important catchphrase to some, but I say that domesticated animals on a farm (even a commercial farm) have better quality of life than those on their own.

 

[BiologyBrain]

So where this exists, would the good farmers not want to see that it is addressed? If you take care of the bad apple…

Taking care of the bad apple is one thing, but most of the information presented by the other side (non farming friendly) wants to throw out all farming - not just the bad ones. There are already regulations in place that respectable farmers follow. Also, most respectable farmers know that mistreating their livestock will decrease their effectiveness at producing a product. Therefore, most farmers don’t mistreat their livestock. There is already peer pressure in farming to use the best methods to get the best product. Most farmers are in their field b/c they enjoy the work (trust me, its not for the $$ b/c they aren’t getting rich and staying that way) and b/c they truly want to help feed the country/world. Most farmers agonize over the best bloodlines to breed, the most modern veterinary care, the best facilities, etc for their animals b/c it increases productivity even though it may hurt the bottom-line. We get sick of hearing that we’re all mistreating our animals and that we are evil for keeping them in confinement. I’ve seen farmers get attached to a prize/favorite boar, bull, sow, cow, rooster, etc and mourn their passing. I’ve seen farmers neglect their families to ensure that their animals got the best care possible. What the other side doesn’t want to admit is that throwing out the baby w/ the bathwater is not the answer. All farms & famers aren’t evil. Not even all confinement farmers/farms are evil. I hazard a guess to say that not even most confinement farmers/farms are evil.

All my life I’ve experienced the put-downs, disrespect, and downright rudeness of the ‘animal rights’ people against farms. Sometimes its just the ignorant being lead by the ‘animal rights’ propoganda, but other times its supposedly ‘learned’ and/or ‘educated’ people decrying all types of farming. I’ve dealt w/ people who wouldn’t come to my house b/c sometimes the wind blew the smell of our hog farm toward the house. I’ve had people call me all sorts of names for participating in farming. However, when it comes time for a banquet - no one’s too good to slaughter the fatted calf or pig and eat it up. They’re not too good to use our commercially produced grains for their consumption. That to me is the ultimate hypocrisy and injustice of the matter. I will speak out against those animal rights people who disrespect farming until I die b/c I know they’re wrong 95+% of the time. And I’m sick of being a 2nd class citizen for defending a livelihood I know requires great sacrifice (on the whole family’s part), compassion, and skill.

 

[cynic]

Bears are protected here. I don’t know if Mountain Lions are. However, I do know one can kill a bear lawfully out of “self-defense”. Puts the image in my mind of placing a switchblade knife in the paw of a blown-away bear.

I do know if I had the chance, I would shoot either a bear or a mountain lion on sight and figure out how it was self defense later. Mea culpa.

So if you came across a bear out in the wild. quietly going about it’s business at the edge of a stream somewhere, posing no immediate danger to anyone, you would just kill it.

 

[Calliso]

So if you came across a bear out in the wild. quietly going about it’s business at the edge of a stream somewhere, posing no immediate danger to anyone, you would just kill it.

Yeah I donlt get that attitude either. I mean I can understand if the animal was about to attack. Or if you were a rancher and you saw the animal in your land. But just killing an animal for no real reason or because maybe it might pose a threat in the future…I just don;t what to say to that.