COWBOYS VERSUS MEATPACKERS: THE LAST ROUNDUP - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 94

smaller firms. Today there is no place for an independent rancher to take his herd to market and get a fair
price.
Eric Schlosser, author of the best seller Fast Food Nation , has an apt description of the industry.
Over the last twenty years, about half a million ranchers sold off their cattle and quit the business. Many of
the nation's remaining eight hundred thousand ranchers are faring poorly. They're taking second jobs. They're
selling cattle at break-even prices or at a loss. The ranchers who are faring the worst run three to four hundred
head of cattle, manage the ranch themselves, and live solely off the proceeds. . . . Ranchers currently face a host
of economic problems: rising land prices, stagnant beef prices, oversupplies of cattle, increased shipments of
live cattle from Canada and Mexico, development pressures. 1
Just how do cattle become burgers? Increasingly, the whole process—from farm to plate—is industri-
alized, beginning with the vial of semen that is used for artificial insemination. Production of semen is
dominated by three corporations—World Wide Sires, Cooperative Resources International, and ABS Glob-
al—that you have likely never heard of but whose progeny you have eaten if you eat beef.
Beef cattle are raised successively in different types of operations before they go off to slaughter and
processing, known in the industry vernacular as “packing.” In the first stage of production, cow/calf farms
have breeding heifers and raise calves that have a nine-month gestation period, weigh sixty to one hun-
dred pounds at birth, and are weaned at between six and ten months. Cows can reproduce for seven to nine
years, but they are often plagued with birthing problems that can cause the loss of calves and high veter-
inary bills. Calves graze on pasture or rangeland alongside their mothers until they are weaned, lowering
the risk of disease that happens under crowded indoor conditions. Raising calves is done by smaller family
farms, who are willing to do the nurturing required and take pride in raising the animals.
When calves reach about 400 to 650 pounds, most are sold to stock-feeding operations, also often run
by family farmers, that raise the cattle on pasture or range as they mature and gain weight. Sometimes this
stage is skipped, and calves are kept longer at the cow/calf operation before they are sent directly to a feed-
lot. In 2008, half of all beef cattle were raised on 675,000 farms and ranches with fewer than one hundred
head of cows. 2 But most of these cattle ultimately end up on feedlots.
Feedlots fatten cattle using a grain-based diet until the animals are just under two years old or weigh
around twelve hundred pounds. Feedlots increase rates of weight gain by the use of pelletized natural or
synthetic sex hormones that are implanted in the ear skin of cattle. According to Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, pro-
fessor emeritus of environmental and occupational medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago School of
Public Health, the hormones used in beef production are associated with an increased risk of reproductive
and childhood cancer. He says that “residues of these hormones in meat are up to twentyfold higher than
normal” and “still higher residues result from the not uncommon illegal practice of implantation directly
into muscle.” Unfortunately, the USDA does not monitor the meat for hormone residues. 3
Feedlots have become larger and more profit-driven over the past two decades, as meat production and
packing have become more monopolized. But cattle have not always been raised this way. Until the 1960s
the animals were raised on open rangeland or pasture located on ranches around the nation, especially in
Texas and the western states. Changes in farm policy and the development of hybrid grains and irrigation
encouraged the production of large amounts of grain that could be used to feed cattle, even though their
digestive systems are designed for grass, not grain. By the 1970s, feedlots became the preferred method
of fattening cattle, a process called “finishing” in the industry. Over the following decades, research and
technology also facilitated the creation of new, specialized grain-based feeds and hormone injections or
implants to increase weight gain.
Until recently, feedlots were run as family-owned operations that housed fewer than a thousand cows.
Today, many thousands are housed in acres of steel pens, each corralling around two hundred cattle that