Dead on the farm

The media had a heyday as scientists solved a curious case of mass death on a Wisconsin farm.

A little more than a week ago, about 200 cattle were found dead of what appeared to be bovine viruses or pneumonia.

Recently, however, laboratory tests revealed that the pneumonia that killed the cows was triggered by a component of the moldy sweet potatoes that had been a part of the animals’ diet.

“Ah-ha!’ I thought when I read the story. Here’s proof that industrial agriculture is more interested in manufacturing a pound of meat than raising a healthy and edible animal.

The diet and environment of the dead cows appear to have shared many similarities with the problematic conditions of industrial agriculture.

Like most animals raised for consumption in the United States, the Wisconsin farm’s cattle were apparently fed a minimally diverse diet designed to fatten them for slaughter in the least number of days possible.

Although corn and other grains fatten cattle at a rate unparalleled by their traditional grass-fed diet, animals have not evolved to handle the acidity of a grain-based diet.

But should we read in their deaths the message that industrial agriculture produces unsafe food?

After all, humans appear to have been at no more risk from these particular cows than any others.

Officials have insisted that the culprit moldy sweet potatoes would not have entered the human food supply chain even had the meat been consumed.

And grains (contaminated or otherwise) have been shown to fatten animals at a faster pace than grass for at least two centuries, destroying the myth that less desirable, grain-fed meat only became encouraged in the wake of World War II.

These facts still do not speak highly of the quality or safety of our food supply.

Coupled with the petri dish-like conditions of an overcrowded feedlot, the industrial specifications of livestock’s diet require them to be inoculated with copious doses of antibiotics to ward off diseases to which they are made newly susceptible.

Overreliance on antibiotics not only for aggressive treatment but also as a routine disease preventative has raised concerns that human consumption of antibiotic-laden meat will increase bacterial resistance to antibiotics, making difficult diseases harder to treat.

And that’s the truly frightening part of the Wisconsin bovine mass-death mystery.

The fact that 200 disease-prone cattle might have easily reached your table doesn’t pose much of a threat to your health.

At least not when compared to the fact that every bite of antibiotic laden meat contributes to breeding super-diseases we may not be able to combat.  
 

E-mail: wallacen@indiana.edu