It Doesn't Become Burgers & Dog Food

Question:
What happens to one out of three dairy cows each year?

Answer:
She is taken from her herd and trucked to slaughter.

The United States Department of Agriculture keeps records
of the ultimate fate of each animal's body parts. That program
is called the Beef Checkoff National Quality Audit. That audit
reveals some previous unknowns:

One out of every eight slaughtered animals is a dairy cow.

More than fifty percent of all dairy cattle end up as "muscle
cuts" rather than ground chuck. The reason for this is that
dairy cows weigh more and move slower as a result of carrying
heavy loads in their udders. Many cows are confined to their
stalls, so that there is not much exercise to toughen muscles.
Therefore, their meat is soft and fatty. Meat producers call
such meat "well marbled."

The USDA audit reveals that two percent of traditional beef
grades as prime (restaurant cuts), while seventeen percent
is graded as choice (supermarket cuts).

When it comes to grading the meat from dairy cows, fifteen
percent is scored as prime, and twenty-five percent is graded
as choice.

Let us consider one other variable which the audit ignores.

Traditional beef comes from grazing animals which are fattened
in feed lots. For the most part, these are healthy animals.
On the other hand, dairy cows are unhealthy animals that no
no longer efficiently produce milk for the dairy farmer.
They are either lame or diseased. That is why they are culled
(removed) from the herd and sent to slaughter. Animals with
blood diseases such as Johne's-which leads to Crohn's Disease
in humans) are also sent to slaughter. Consider that each time
you bite into a slice of bloody-rare filet mignon. That
New York steak cut might be appropriately named by producing
an essence of the dirt and filth of New York's eighth avenue
and forty second street.

I once believed that the most delicious steaks came from free
range black angus cattle, but I was wrong. The tastiest cuts
of meat apparantly come from diseased cows. Eat at Sparks in
New York City (where Gotti shot Costellano) or any of the
fanciest and most expensive beef emporiums such as Gallaghers
or Smith & Wollensky or Mortons, expect to be eating sick and
diseased bovine. Please order your cut of meat rare and bloody.
We seek to cull out carnivores from the human equation.

Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com
i4crob@...