Sprol Again: This piece, our most popular, originally ran May 14th. It’s been updated with a few more links. Do you know of a large feedlot or other industrial facility near you? Tell us.
If you’ve ever driven between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and you were in too much of a hurry to take the coastal route, you’ve probably smelled this place before you saw it. This is what 120,000 cattle look like from space. You don’t need any fancy chemistry lessons or to imagine deadly radiation or dioxins slowly building up in your system here. One glance tells you that this is pretty disgusting.
It’s what goes into these animals that’s the really gross part.
This is the gigantic cattle feedlot in Coalinga, California along Interstate 5. Aside from the state prison, it’s the largest employer in west Fresno County, employing 1,500 persons in the feedlot, slaughterhouse, and fancy steakhouse. Vertical integration.
A feedlot is a confined area for controlled feeding of animals. This one is the largest in California and has several characteristics that are typical of the modern cattle feedlot in the United States. The cattle here are bound for places like McDonald’s, California Safeway stores, and precooked pot roasts and TV dinners. Lock ‘em in. Fatten ‘em up.
You’ll note that there is no shade, shelter, or grass on the ground. Cattle are ruminants, meaning that they would primarily graze on grass. Cattle in feedlots, however, are fed grain, and are often implanted with a series of steroid hormone implants inserted under the skin behind their ears. It makes them grow faster and can increase profit by $80 per steer. That this has the effect of poisioning the water, as well as every burger eater who snarfs one, is a fact that millions of dollars per year go to supressing.
After all, at 120,000 heads, we’re talking almost ten million dollars extra, every few months. Just for a few steroids. Just for this lot. They’re performance enhancing! Not okay for pro baseball but just fine for your 8 year old.
Cattle have four stomachs designed to process the cellulose fibers in grasses. Grain mixed with garbage like chicken feathers and bone meal really isn’t what these beasts are supposed to be eating. The food combined with regular doses of antibiotics cause the cattle to put on so much weight that their internal organs fall out and have to be stuffed back in by the ranch hands. No veterinary care is provided.
I spent countless hours stuffing 25lb of cow back inside the animal and then sewing the wound, the whole force of a 600lb heifer straining against me. source
All of that homones, antibiotics, and other garbage in the meat isn’t very good for people. It turns out that the hormones in the meat cause estrogen levels to rise in people who eat it. Even though the EU won’t allow it, the USDA insists that the rise in hormone levels is safe. Especially for children.
Do any of your friends have daughters who have experienced premature sexual development? You’d better not ask them.
Many doctors maintain that things like elevated levels of oestradiol, a powerful sex hormone, in your beef can cause all sorts of problems, such as the increased levels of cancers in the prostate, breast, and ovaries. Incidence of these diseases have been rising since the 1950s as beef consumption, heart disease, and obesity have all skyrocketed.
This feedlot is owned and operated by Harris Ranch. The premium beef supplier for the western US. It is marketed as “All Natural”. Yeah, and so is Plutonium and Arsenic!
Have a beautiful day!
[...] John Harris will receive the award as California’s Agriculturalist of the Year for 2006 on Aug. 4 at the CA State Fair Gala. Harris owns and operates the Harris Ranch Inn and Restaurant, where guests of the 153–room establishment are afforded expansive and manicured courtyards, a sparkling 25–meter Olympic pool, and elegant dining. Harris Ranch Inn and Restaurant serves approximately 2,000 meals every day, featuring the guests of its other enterprise, the Harris Ranch Feeding Co., better known to most of us as 120,000 cows from space. [...]
you people are disgusting. meat.org look at it and gag up your rotting colon.
imagine if someone tied you by your foot to a ceiling and slit your throat.wouldnt be so happy would you? you would cry and beg and scream, which is what all those animal are doing, and just because you cant understand them, they slit their THROATS anyway.
or picked you up by your hind legs and bashed you on the ground numorous times infront of all the other animals that wake for the same fate
wake up world.YOU EAT DEAD BODIES.
If only feedlots were the worst of what happens on these type of farms….I have heard of believe it or not..WORSE things that happen with farms such as these. At least these cattle get to move around a little bit. I saw a picture of an animal who was not allowed to turn around, because of the way it was caged.
And the people who have to work in those facilities…imagine what they go through as human beings..treating animals in an inhumane way goes against what we are supposed to be, and we are worse off for it.
I am what you might call a redneck. I grew up in the mountains in rural Oregon with a family that hunted and fished. I vote conservative. After finding out what the farming practices are in America; I will not eat beef, pork or chicken. If you want to eat meat in America, raise it yourself or find someone who you can trust to raise it correctly and buy it from them. Hunting and Fishing are other options, but when you hunt make sure you are in an area that is not tick-infested.
I have been searching online for an article on the type of practices that are WORSE than these, haven’t found it yet. It seems that industry is very closed mouthed on how they do things.
A few years ago, when the hormones for milk cows came out and made the cows produce twice the amount of milk, a dairy in the Tacoma area, did not want to use those hormones and wanted to put a label on their on their product, hormone free. They were not allowed to do so. Why, because no on in their right mind given a choice, would consume those kind of hormones willingly. We just close our minds to it, and not think about it.
And we wonder why we are sick in our bodies and our minds? We are poisoning ourselves people with this type of farming. And to call it farming is really a slap in the face to historical true farming.
[...] O157:H7 does live in the unnaturally acidic digestive tracts of cows fed on grain, which is the classic ration on most industrial cattle farms. As a result of this diet, the contaminated cow manure pollutes the groundwater and transfers the dangerous bacteria to produce, such as spinach, being grown on surrounding farms. [...]
Very good!
Hate to burst your bubbles, dear vegetarians, but Just because you don’t eat the meat, doesn’t mean you won’t suffer the horrible diseases associated with these lovely feed lots.
Breast Cancer, Ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, etc. etc.. the hormones get into the ground water, and can’t be gotten out. If you drink water, or eat food that is grown with water, you are getting bombarded with growth hormones, just like the cows. And guess what you will be growing?
-Great big robust cancers. Yee haw! God Bless America. Put on your pink hats, and run for the cure ladies! -Pay no attention to the stench of death in that feed lot. Do something about cancer. Put on your damn pink ribbons and run. Run like the wind!
survival of the heartless!
Nietsche and Hobbes said it before… but of course, we also have a brain. poor humanity
no, you’re an idiot for disregarding the consequences. have fun with heart disease though.
If you think that just because you don’t eat beef means that you are not supporting unfair treatment to cows in these large feedlots, think again. Your house is full of products that are made from by-products of cows. Check it out. There is nothing wrong with raising cattle so that they have as much food as they could possibly want and can eat to their hearts content. Grow up you vegitarians and quit telling everyone else what they can a can’t eat!
I love beef, let me tell you a steak and taters is just heaven to me! However, I’ve been learning and EDUCATING myself on what I’ve been eating. I am trying to take better care of myself so i don’t have a heart attack, diabetes, or keep this nasty fat on me. I learned that veggies and fruits have more of what my body needs, it’s better closer to the farm and uncooked. along the way ive learned of how beef, pork, and chicken are being ‘factored’ and i’m not really able to eat it any more. I won’t stop eating meat completely, but I will buy from more conscious people. Also, don’t hate on the farmers either, the companies put the farmer in debt and then they are forced to work for them to pay that debt. What looked like a great family opportunity was really a way to take advantage. I love my family and want the best for them, so from know on, I plan to watch what they consume. I don’t want them growing up fat with diabetes and heart problems, which is on both sides of the family.