I want to point you to a post written by Katie Burgess, a community organizer and artist in South Minneapolis (originally from Maine). As executive Director of the Trans Youth Support Network, Katie was invited to give a presentation at the 18th Annual National Coming Out Day Luncheon. It turns out that a major sponsor of the luncheon at which she was to speak was Cargill. You may or may not have heard of Cargill, but if you live in the Twin Cities you know of them as the corporation that … well, owns all the food and the means of producing food (along with one or two other corporations).
Katie went ahead and spoke truth to power. Read the blog post, and the speech with is reproduced therein.
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*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Cargill owns much of our food, ADM owns the rest. Great thing my Texas cowgirl sister-in-law got a heifer and all progeny as a wedding gift. My brother and his wife do not have a ranch, so they do not get calves as presents. My SIL is a technical writer for a major software company and my brother builds green-tech web hosting systems. But the cattle are still thinned out and my bro gets two cabinet freezers full of awesome grass fed beef. This year’s drought made things a little different. Texas drought caused heard thinning and I have a freezer full of beef.
You’ve never eaten beef if you’ve only ever had that feedlot crap. Lean cow is awesome. Flash fry the outside and leave the inside rare. Your teeth will rip it apart. Gotta remember that our ancestors scavenged predator kills. The leopard ate the liver, spleen, lungs, and brain. The muscle tissue was claimed by the humans.
And if you’re into animal rights, slaughter after grass fed is more humane than going to a feedlot. Cow lives a free and comfortable life, trucked off into a trailer, and killed by pneumatic ram. No confinement in narrow pens where they stress eat to obesity.
BTW, a few of the grass fed cattle are diverted to Halal and Kosher butchers in Houston. I can’t imagine a vein cut in the throat is more humane than a ram to the brain.
A friend almost bled to death after having his leg, and a major artery, laid open with a piece of farm equipment. Seemingly at the last possible moment, after he lost consciousness, someone clamped on a tourniquet. It, and a series of blood transfusions, saved his life.
His observation was that bleeding to death from a severed major artery didn’t hurt much. He lost strength very quickly and consciousness a few seconds after that. He described a rather warm, somewhat cloying, sinking feeling followed by a while lot of nothing.
As far as butchery for food goes death by exsanguination is said to allow the blood to be pumped out by the heart, which still pumps for a time after the animal loses consciousness, is said to improve the quality of the meat.
A bolt to the head is claimed to allow the blood to pool and stagnate.
That said it has to be noted that certain medieval chefs claimed that flogging the food animal to death, slowly and painfully, purposefully inflicting as much suffering as possible, lent a favorable taste to the meat. It has to be noted that major cuts of meat were luxury goods consumed only by the rich and many epicurean delights were as much about conspicuous consumption and ceremony as taste. I would think that beating a cow to death would raise enough of a commotion to advertise that great amounts of money, time, and effort where going into the feast.
Nature seems unconcerned with pain and suffering. Death by having your genitals ripped off by a wolf, or slow disease, isn’t much better.