Issues in Animal Agriculture

"My steak is too bloody, can you cook it a little longer?" How many times have we all said this at a restaurant? Well, the truth is, your steak isn't bloody at all (even when it's raw!) The liquid that comes out of your meat when you cook it is a mixture of water and a substance called myoglobin, one of the main components of muscle. Myoglobin is also what gives meat its color. Freshly butchered meat that goes straight into a vacuum package will stay purple. In this phase the myoglobin is called deoxymyoglobin because it has not been oxygenated yet. The meat you buy in a tray at the store is bright red because the myoglobin has been oxygenated and is now called deoxymyglobin. This is what most consumers are used to their meat looking like. Once the meat has started to oxidize, either just being in the package too long, or by cooking, the myoglobin is oxidized and turns a grey/brown color, and is now called metmyoglobin. Some grocers add anti-oxidizing agents to their

Confusion, confusion, confusion. That's what most consumers feel in the grocery store. Another point of confusion for consumers is the grass-finished vs. grain-finished beef. Is there a difference? Is one inherently better than the other? What does each one mean? Ususally, when a beef producer refers to the "finishing" phase of production, he usually means the phase when cattle are moved to a feed lot and put on a high-concentration grain diet. However, more and more consumers are demanding a grain-free product. Enter grass-finished beef. You see, a beef animal already spends most of its life on pasture. It is only at the finishing phase does grain enter its diet to add fat deposition quickly. Because of the demand for grain-free products, though, there is a portion of producers who are finishing their animals in pasture without grain supplementation. So which one should you pick? Well, nutritionally, these two products are almost identical. The only advantage to grass-fi

One subject you will hear a lot about these days is animal rights and animal welfare. But these two terms mean very different things. Animal welfare is treating animals ethically and providing the best habitat and health you can to meet their physiological needs. Animal rights is the belief that animals have the same rights as humans and deserve to be treated the same. Livestock producers are greatly concerned with animal welfare. It is one of the key components in providing a quality product and maintaining a stable business. If the animals are not treated well and kept healthy, they will not provide a quality product at slaughter. If you can't market a quality product, you cannot stay in business. It is that simple. So even if a livestock producer wanted to treat his animals poorly, he would not last very long in this business. It's a great thing, then, that most livestock producers LOVE what they do and love their animals. This is not a business you stay in if you hate it. T

In my last post, I wrote to you about CAFOs and swine. One particular hot button topic in the realm of swine operations is the use of gestation crates. These are not to be confused with farrowing crates, which are crates that are used when the sow is giving birth. Farrowing crates keep the piglets safe because mothers have the tendency to roll over on them and kill them without noticing. Farrowing crates allow the piglets to still suckle on the mother without running the risk of getting rolled over. Gestation crates are metal enclosures that hold a pregnant sow through the duration of her pregnancy. She can move forward and backward but she cannot turn around. Those against the use of gestation crates argue that it is inhumane to keep an animal in such a small enclosure and unable to interact socially with other animals. Proponents of gestation crates will tell you that it is easier to monitor the health of the animal, give her the exact amount of food she needs to have a healthy pre

The media these days love to focus on CAFOs. But what are they, really? CAFO stands for concentrated animal feeding operation. Most people, if they have heard this term, have an instantly negative connotation of it. I, myself, was even fooled into the fear of them by a well-meaning but misinformed biology professor back in the day. CAFOs are a little different for every species. For instance, beef animals start in a cow/calf operation, where they are on pasture, move to a stocker/backgrounder operation, where they are still on pasture, until they are about a year old, and then for about the last 3 months in a concentrated feedlot. Swine, on the other hand, spend most of their lives in a "hog house," an indoor feeding and care facility. Why are hogs raised indoors? Simply because it is easier to monitor each individual animal's health that way. Pigs have a tendency to get sick and to hurt themselves and each other. Having enclosed pens with only a few animals per pen makes

So, what's COOL these days? Your meat isn't. Are you confused yet? COOL stands for Country of Origin Labeling. This was a law that the USDA had established that required the labeling of meat sold in the US to state the origin of the animal. However, the World Trade Organization ordered the USDA to reverse this rule, stating that it violated US trade agreements with Canada and Mexico. They claimed that it put an undue burden on producers and shippers to keep perfect record of the path each animal took from birth to slaughter.  With the rule in place, a label on your meat could potentially read "Born in Canada, Raised in Mexico, Slaughtered in USA." So why would we want our meat to be labeled with country of origin? Well, first, the American consumer likes to know that the product they are paying for is raised to a certain standard of quality. Second, it is good for the American meat producer because the consumer is more likely to purchase a product with a label stating