It Doesn't Become Burgers & Dog Food
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Robert Cohen http://www.notmilk.com [email protected]
January 2007

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.

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