Guzzlin the Beef!

I will admit it, up front and honest...I like steaks. Now vegetarians will scream and moan and I hear you, but nothing is better than a nice medium rare slice of beef. But like almost every other commodity on this earth, consumption and demand for beef is starting to climb. In their weekly round up the New York Times looked at the high consumption of meat within the U.S. (Seriously, what commodity do we not consume the most of in this world? Rice?) and the impacts that industrial meat production has on the land, air, and the cows themselves.

The average American consumes half a pound of meat daily, which is twice the world average. We enjoy a cheap and plentiful source of protein that we all tend to take for granted. We ignore the mass amounts of energy inputs it takes to produce this product. This has fueled and industrialization of the process and it is these huge industrial operations that are proliferating around the world that serve the sole purpose of fattening the animals as fast as possible. This requires huge inputs of energy: grain production (most grain production in the US goes to livestock feed), antibiotics, processing, shipping, etc, and create environmental nightmares (think 100,000 cows crapping everywhere everyday) such as the fact that possibly 1/5 of all greenhouse gas emissions comes from livestock production (including more than just cows, but still). Unfortunately these confinements that help speed up the production of meat (and lets us enjoy our $0.99 hamburgers from Wendy's) make the cows very sick.

Cows are ruminant's and their stomachs are made to digest grasses, not grains. They can eat some grains no problem, but a diet based primarily on corn makes the digestive system of cows very sick, meaning they need lots of antibiotics. This can lead to drug resistant forms of certain bacteria that can be transferred to humans. The close confined pens in which the cows are pent up in also can lead to rapid spread of other terrible diseases that can also affect the food chain...think Mad Cow Disease.

It makes me laugh when I hear or read the phrase "Corn fed Beef!" making it sound like its the best thing since sliced bread, when really it is telling that your meat came from an unhealthy animal. Clearly we can all cut back on our crazy obsession for all things meat. It, like many other sustainable steps we can all take, does not mean you can NEVER have a steak, hamburger or ribs. But every night? Its just something to think about and if you are like me, we could all use a little less meat and a couple extra helpings of veggies and fruits. But man does that steak taste good...pass the A.1 please

Finally a little bit of good citizenry that I just had to put in. Usually if you loose a high end tech toy you can pretty much kiss that tech investment good bye. There have been to many instances where people just snag the lost Ipod or camera and it becomes their new little toy. Finders Keepers is the mantra. Luckily for some there are still people around like Brian Ascher. Brian's fiance found a camera in the backseat of a taxi cab in NYC and he proceeded to do detective work to try and reunite the camera with its former owner. Looking through all the photos for clues he was eventually able to piece together the story of who the person was and eventually get the camera back to its rightful owner. If only more people were like Mr. Ascher! Cheers!