Animal nutrition - from sludge and sewage!

Animal nutrition is probably the one area where modern nutrition is at its worst.

In order to raise farm animals quickly at the lowest possible cost -- and thereby maximise profits -- farm animals are fed atrocious foods derived from sawdust, sludge and sewage.

And in order to produce exotic foods like foie gras or to produce supposed healthy foods like veal, farm animals are purposely made sick through "special diets". Foie gras is the swollen liver of an overfed sick goose while veal is the meat of a calf so sick from anaemie that, if it is not slaughtered promptly, it would die on its own.

This is animal nutrition. It is not only strange, it is sick!

This article was first published in a 1994 issue of The Good Life, which had the theme, Strange foods.

STRANGE ANIMAL NUTRITION

A Singapore company was rather proud recently (early 1990s) to boast of its latest “environment friendly” plan. It found a way to recycle chicken feathers -- by burning it and turning it into cattle feed.

What sort of cows -- and what sort of beef and milk -- would we produce when we feed them with chicken feathers? The question never appears to have crossed the minds of the people involved. They seem more interested in how much protein there is in chicken feathers.

This is typical thinking of nutrition, in this case, animal nutrition. The focus is simply on what a food contains, not where it comes from, not even what it is.

It is not an isolated case. Instead, it is is just one of many examples of animals being given strange foods, of bizarre animal nutrition.

Sometime back, I heard a BBC radio report about an experiment in Australia in which pigs are fed a diet of pure sugar. Nothing else.

Why? To make them grow fatter, faster, of course.

All this is not new. Take the example of veal… Immediately after birth, veal calves are separated from their mothers and deprived of milk. Instead, they are given a special formula that contains absolutely no iron.

As a result, they become anaemic -- which is why their flesh is pink, not red. Veal calves are so sick that, if they are not slaughtered on time, they will die on their own. Yet veal being touted as healthy simply because it is “white meat”.

Even ordinary beef is not so ordinary. In nature, cows eat grass. In modern feedlots, they are fed corn and other grains. This makes them produce more fatty, “prime” or “choice” beef... The beef is “marbled”, meaning it has fat integrated into the meat. You cannot trim the far off.

What happens when cattle eat grains instead of grass? They get sick. Grain-fed cattle often develop liver and digestive diseases. About 8 percent of all the cattle slaughtered in the US have liver infection.

Modern farm animals are very sick indeed -- because of their unnatural diets and their cramped, dirty living conditions. And so their diets must include regular doses of antibiotics. Everyday.

Than there are the pesticides. People often worry about pesticides in vegetables. But farm animals, too, eat plants that contain pesticides. The pesticides accumulate in their bodies and it has been found that, on average, meat contains 14 times more pesticides than vegetables.

What else? In Beyond Beef, Jeremy Rifkin reports that cattle are also fed “sawdust, sludge and sewage.” Yes, that, too, can be recycled into animal -- and ultimately human -- food.