Change is possible...

Some forward-thinking minds in animal agriculture are figuring out there is gold in higher welfare systems for protein production. Higher welfare eliminates stresses of various kinds that in turn can allow few or no antibiotics to be fed.

The Dutch company started its patio system experiment to solve a persistent problem in chicken-raising: How to keep just-hatched broiler chicks healthy. A meat chicken’s life breaks down like this: 18 days incubating in the shell; three days to hatch; and 42 to 47 days growing to marketable size. Incubating and emerging take place at a hatchery, and growing takes place at a farm—and the transport between the two puts so much stress on the new chicks that a certain percentage either die or become permanently frail. Giving antibiotics, especially during the chicks’ first week, solves that problem, but the Netherlands and EU bans make that impossible now.Vencomatic’s innovation was to hatch the birds where they will be raised. The company’s first step was building a rack that positions ready-to-hatch eggs above the barn floor. When the chicks pop out, they tumble off the rack into their growing area and can eat and drink immediately. That might seem unremarkable, but it is actually rare. Broiler chicks aren’t fed at a hatchery; they don’t eat until they reach the farm where they will grow to chickenhood. The trip is supposed to happen soon after they emerge — but since chicks are hatched in large batches and don’t all emerge at the same moment, some can wait two days for their first meal.“That’s 5 percent of a chick’s life,” Vingerling points out. “The industry has always said that chicks recover from that, but it turns out not to be true.”
Changing when the chicks eat strengthens the birds’ immune systems, so fewer die or fail to thrive. Armed with that discovery, the company re-engineered what a “barn” represents. They created ventilation systems to suck out fumes and exchangers that scavenge heat, to save energy costs while keeping barns at a uniform temperature. The most radical step was housing the birds in the shelf-like stacked units. It keeps them at eye level for easy inspection (a structure like a library ladder slides along the outside) and permits a substrate of plastic under the bedding, which is more sanitary than the dirt or concrete of traditional barns. The attention to welfare extends to the end of the birds’ life. Traditionally, chickens going to slaughter are grabbed by the legs by “catchers” who walk through the barns. In the Vencomatic system, the plastic under the birds’ feet rolls slowly forward on a conveyor belt, dumping the litter and sliding the birds into crates untouched. [More]

Watch it in action. I like the part where the chicks take headers off the egg tray.

With beef consumption plummeting here, and chicken becoming what's for dinner, these expensive solution could become more mainline than many expect. All it would take is a McDonald's or Walmart to endorse them, I would guess.

Meanwhile, speaking of beef, guess what milestone it passed recently - going the wrong direction?

I wonder what is going to happen to our beef industry. With the drought,  and crop insurance reducing pasturage, does it really matter how cheap corn gets for herd rebuilding?

To recap, the market drivers for US domestic lean beef at present include:

• US Cattle prices have surged to record highs, jumping 16pc compared to a year ago and now 80pc from the five-year average. This was a function of very low placements on feed last summer and cold northern hemisphere weather conditions this winter that slowed down feedlot rates of gain.

• The surge in cattle prices has pushed up overall beef prices and stimulated retail demand for less expensive beef options, such as ground beef

• Retailers are constrained in the supply of lean beef they use, with most using only fresh domestic product. Imported lean beef use at domestic retail in the US is very limited, with the bulk of it being used in pattie formulation for quick-service restaurant chains. Further reducing the supply of lean and extra lean product was the removal (and subsequent very slow recovery) in the use of Lean Finely Textured beef from pattie formulations in 2012

• Sharply higher prices for chuck and round cuts also have increased the overall value of lean beef and reduced the supply of whole muscle cuts going into the grinder.

• US cow slaughter in the first quarter is expected to be down 10pc, and the second quarter slaughter forecast is down 12pc, assuming normal spring moisture.

“So far there is a strong demand and a notable shortage of domestic lean beef,” the Steiner report said. [More]

Having performance standards imposed upon your business by customers is less irritating than by government, but the results look much the same. 

No - on reflection, I think market-driven criteria are much more likely to be met.

Meanwhile, an alternative...

The Danes are getting great mileage out of this article on a Danish Crown slaughterhouse and it strikes me as well deserved. The photos are outstanding and this one was the most impressive to me - hogs waiting to be slaughtered.

The slaughterhouse at Horsens was truly one of the most fascinating places I have visited on my travels. It is an experience that will leave a mark on my daily life, and help me to understand, just a little, about another important aspect of my food. As you can probably tell, this post is not an in-depth exposé of an industry, and my experience is not enough to knowledgeably critique the process of delivering Danish Crown bacon to your breakfast table; nor can I account for the processes of Danish Crown outside what I saw in Horsens. But I was pleasantly surprised by the openness of the plant about its operations and methods, and it is clear that when they designed the slaughterhouse they were thinking ahead in terms of what consumers will want to see from food producers: more transparency. And while I can’t comment on the conditions of the lives of the pigs before they get to the slaughterhouse (the vast majority of which come from Denmark), I can only make an educated guess that, through my experience as a resident of Denmark, the laws that govern the treatment of pigs would be about as strict or stricter as they would be anywhere else in the world. Anyone with any knowledge on that would be welcome to chip in. [More]

It is hard for competing meat companies to say things can be done better when faced with examples like this.  Bottom line, this could be the best answer to the slide in meat consumption, not confrontation or security.

The Farm Bill...

Isn't the NCBA's biggest headache, after all, IMHO.




Chipotle is slick and the effect is cumulative.

Heck, I'm going to watch it.

Oddly soothing...  

I dunno - you just get locked on, somehow.

Saves a trip to the farm store for entertainment.

 

The good death...  

All the anti-meat fervent has me questioning if fuller disclosure would help any or not (from the perspective of the meat industry). Without a doubt, the slaughterhouses of today are much, much closer to humane than they have ever been, but is it enough for consumers to face the basic idea of killing animals for food?

The next cow, the cow I watch die, is quiet. It is black. It comes casually down a walkway. It steps into a squeeze chute, the metal hugging cage that closes in on the cows’ sides to calm them. Scott Towne, the guy in charge of the killing, hits it with a CASH Knocker, a blank shell shooting from a metal apparatus at the end of the long, wooden-handled device and into the front of the head above the eyes, denting the skull but not penetrating its brain, rendering the animal insensible. Instantly the cow’s eyes close. Its neck is lax and its mouth open, easy as a child asleep at the dinner table, or a businessman asleep on a plane.
Stopping at a bar on the way home to bourbon-gargle the lingering deathiness and nausea from the back of my throat, I ponder the cow’s existence. Whether or not farmers should torture animals, or keep them in disgusting and overcrowded and shit-filled conditions, or murder them slowly, are not even questions. Prather’s Northern California grass-munching herd is obviously as well treated as any in natural life, but “good” death is not so easily codified.
“Can you make a slaughterhouse perfect?” Grandin asked in Iowa. “No, nothing in this world that’s a practical thing can be made perfect. That’s just impossible.”
For those who kill animals for a living, making peace with those imperfections is a daily affair. Sure, Prather’s Towne looks tough enough to kill you in a bar fight, but he smiles easily, giggles sometimes, even. He tells me it makes him sad when the cows aren’t stunned on the first shot. He says that that can happen anywhere, even when a small farm hires him to kill one cow in a field. At Prather, it happens about twice each slaughter day. And the cow that was mooing on our way in isn’t the last one we hear that morning; another starts mooing in the squeeze chute. Because its skull is too old, too thick for a stunner, Towne has to use a 9 mm instead. It moos and moos until Towne yells, “Fire in the hole!” and shoots it between the eyes.
Two cows mooing and two cows having to be shot twice out of 21 is below Grandin’s standards of acceptability, and a higher percentage than at her usual McDonald’s plant audit. But even if I did believe a cow possesses a level of consciousness equal to a human, having seen Prather’s cows living and dead, the Rickerts do live up to their oft-stated goal to “Give them the best life possible.” [More worth reading]

Like most farmers of my era, I have killed animals, dogs, cats, cows, even helped my friend put his horse down, but did not come away from the process with anything but regret and a sense of duty accomplished. I have seen suffering animals as well, and those memories still haunt me more powerfully, though. Maybe there is no way to harvest other animals without an emotional toll, and maybe we ought to acknowledge this and appreciate those who process things we obviously like to eat a little more.

More humane immigration laws would be a start.

The new transparency...  

In my Iowa visit this weekend, I listened to a speaker from US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance about ways to improve "messaging" and ag's public image. Curiously, she did not use the term "listen" once. In fairness, she talked about "conversations" and "acknowledging consumer concerns" but the bulk of here presentation was about what to say that will get the desired response.

The other strange thing was she stressed more transparency about our work, but never addressed this issue.

Now in a pushback led by the meat and poultry industries, state legislators across the country are introducing laws making it harder for animal welfare advocates to investigate cruelty and food safety cases.
Some bills make it illegal to take photographs at a farming operation. Others make it a crime for someone such as an animal welfare advocate to lie on an application to get a job at a plant.
Bills pending in California, Nebraska and Tennessee require that anyone collecting evidence of abuse turn it over to law enforcement within 24 to 48 hours — which advocates say does not allow enough time to document illegal activity under federal humane handling and food safety laws.
"We believe that folks in the agriculture community and folks from some of the humane organizations share the same concerns about animal cruelty," said Mike Zimmerman, chief of staff for Assembly Member Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, whose bill was unveiled this week. "If there's abuse taking place, there is no sense in letting it continue so you can make a video."
Patterson's bill, sponsored by the California Cattlemen's Association, would make failing to turn over video of abuse to law enforcement within 48 hours an infraction punishable by a fine.
Critics say the bills are an effort to deny consumers the ability to know how their food is produced.
"The meat industry's mantra is always that these are isolated cases, but the purpose of these bills is to prevent any pattern of abuse from being documented," said Paul Shapiro, vice president of farm animal protection for the Humane Society of the United States, which conducted the California and Vermont investigations.
In Indiana, Arkansas and Pennsylvania it would be a crime to make videos at agricultural operations.

[More]

How far from transparency can you get? There is no way to put a positive spin on what is essentially a gag effort. This is a major blunder, IMHO. It does two things we don't want to happen.

1. It associates the meat industry with the ability to manipulate legislators. This is not good for either one.
2. It raises the heroic image and market value of new videos. The industry is kidding themselves if they think they can stay ahead of video surveillance technology. Now committed activists will become even braver and more martyr-like in the eyes of their colleagues by capturing clandestine footage.

A maximum security meat industry encourages anti-meat mythology to breed in the popular mind simply by its existence. "Why is it needed unless there are things to hide?" is an easy inference to draw. Less proof of bad action will be needed now to convince the public the meat industry is doing bad things as a matter of course.

One final point. As individual rights (thanks to the courage of Rand Paul and other libertarians) gain traction as an issue on the right, this turns a normally friendly or indifferent section of the public into more skeptical observers. Some consumers will be reminded of such information control techniques when ordering dinner, I'll wager.

Am I the only one...  

To see a market opportunity for US beef in Europe right now? The Great European Horsemeat Scandal could just be beginning.

The source of the horsemeat that ended up in beef factories in Ireland and France before being processed into food for British and Irish supermarkets is still unclear. ABP told us it had never knowingly imported horsemeat to its factory and was cooperating with investigators. It initially blamed its continental European suppliers and denied that any of the suspect material came from its own factory in Poland, pointing the finger at other Polish suppliers. Tests on meat from five Polish abattoirs identified from paper records as part of the ABP supply chain came back negative, however, and official Polish veterinary staff suggested the British and Irish look closer to home.
The trail moved rapidly through the week from Poland, back to a cold store for frozen meat in Newry, Northern Ireland, called Freeza Meats, where a large consignment, already quarantined and removed from the food chain by the authorities for irregularities, was found to contain 80% horsemeat.
A spokesman for Freeza Meats' owners told us they had refused to buy the meat because they were suspicious of its state and the accuracy of its labelling with Polish healthmarks, and were merely holding it in store as a "goodwill" gesture for the company that had sent it to them, McAdam Foods.
ABP acknowledged that it had on occasion bought Polish meat "in good faith" for the factory that made the dodgy burgers for Tesco, Burger King and other retailers, from McAdam Foods. But ABP and McAdam could not agree what had been bought when. McAdam in turn passed the blame for the horsemeat to one of its suppliers, saying it had sourced the 80% horse consignment which ended up in Freeza Meats from a Hull-based company called Flexi Foods, which in turn has operations in Poland.
Neither McAdam nor Flexi Foods were answering their phones when the Guardian made repeated attempts to contact them. The French manufacturer Comigel did not respond to requests for comment.
With the next vast round of new tests due in next week, few expect the horse meat scandal to end here. [More]

Of course, we're not so much a ground beef exporter as higher level cuts, but still, the marketing campaigns almost write themselves:

• All the hormones, but none of the horse
•  Beef from America, from American cows. Only.
  

Then again, it's not like we're doing DNA testing on lasagna here at home. Meanwhile, the enormous problem of disposing of unwanted horses - who happen to be made of edible stuff, remember - is bringing pressure to alter the emotionally-driven ban on horse slaughter.

 Rural U.S. lawmakers with ties to the cattle industry and economically-strapped horse breeding registries have been pushing to reopen horse slaughterhouses since the last three plants shut down in 2007 (two in Texas, one in Illinois).
On Tuesday, February 5, 2013, they're poised to try again in Oklahoma when a new bill sponsored by state Senator Mark Allen (SB375) is scheduled for a second reading in the state's Agriculture and Rural Development Committee. Allen's bill would overturn Oklahoma's existing 1963 ban on selling and producing horsemeat.
Representative Skye McNiel is also pushing to overturn the ban with another bill, HB1999.
What's behind it are 140,000-150,000 U.S. horses that are now being slaughtered in Canada and Mexico for the EU and Japan plus about 45,000 mustangs unwisely removed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from public lands and warehoused at taxpayer expense, many in long-term holding pens in Oklahoma.
Quite a few people in the meat trade are pushing to weaken laws that would allow them to legally buy and sell these protected wild horses at a large profit to slaughter plants. (In fact, they've been doing this illegally for some time, as revealed in the National Journal article, "Is the U.S. Government Complicit in the Killing of Over 1,000 Wild Horses?" as well as in an investigation reported on in The Desert Independent).
They also want to slaughter horses disposed of by racetracks, rodeos, horse breeders and owners struggling in the recession -- a surplus market that has made the actual raising of horses as meat animals (the way cattle are) completely unnecessary in the U.S. for decades.
Sen. Allen's and Rep. McNiel's bills are trying to harness that business for their home state, which ranks fourth in the nation in horse ownership per capita and bills itself as the "horse show capital of the U.S."
It also happens to have several struggling racetracks as well as a large cattle industry--same as in Ireland and the UK. They don't raise horses for meat over there, either. [More]

The above source is mildly slanted, IMHO, to be sure, but I'm sure legislators and the equine industry trying to solve this problem were just thrilled to see this blunder across the pond. Great timing, you bozos!

But this fraud does help in one very perverse way: it reinforces the truth that horses are edible. In a protein-short world, burying and burning enormous amounts of nourishment derived at great environmental expense is absurd. Especially when there are people willing to eat it.

There was no health hazard involved, just straightforward substitution larceny. The
bigger question for me is how much expansion this scandal has left.

But it may be a problem for US cattlemen to benefit from the fiasco simply because of our domestic shortage of lean beef needed to mix with corn-fed trimmings to get to the modern standard for hamburger - 80/20. That's one of the reasons we came up with LFTB, after all. (It is ~ 95% lean) It could also be a small factor for the mixing in Europe as horsemeat is generally leaner than beef.

Then there is the whole EU-beef trade battle whichwill outlive me. And the latest on antibiotic use in animals isn't really a selling point either.

[Source] [Click to enlarge]

DNA-testing - it's not just for paternity tests anymore.







 

Good theology, perhaps...  

But questionable behavioral economics. That's my read on Dan Murphy's reaction to Cardinal Tim Dolan's suggestion that Catholics adopt the practice of "Meatless Fridays".

One of the most prominent—some would say most influential—prelates, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the New York City diocese, even attached himself to the losing ticket by giving the benediction at the Republican National Convention after Mitt Romney accepted his party’s nomination. Earlier this year, Dolan garnered applause when he introduced a group of Republican politicians, including Rep. Paul Ryan, at a special Mass he celebrated—despite the fact that many other bishops have been openly critical of Ryan’s proposed federal budget, calling it “immoral” because of cuts to food and other programs that serve the poor.
Now, however, Cardinal Dolan has a bigger idea, one that I believe ought to be seriously considered: He wants Catholics to change in their devotional habits and give up meat on Fridays all year ’round.
Of course, that was the law for practicing Catholics during the 1960s, and any kid who grew up back then can attest to the endless Friday fish fries that accompanied childhood.

...

Personally, I think it’s a great idea. And here’s why.
Giving up meat by itself doesn’t make one any holier or more devout, and even if Catholics took Cardinal Dolan’s initiative seriously, it’s a voluntary plan. Nobody’s going to be held accountable if a burger or a pepperoni pizza makes a Friday appearance on the dinner table, and given the compliance rate of Catholics with the church’s proscription against using birth control, it’s doubtful that many people would offer anything other than lip service to a call to ban Friday meat-eating.
But here’s why such a recommendation is valuable: You don’t sacrifice something that has minimal value, dietary or otherwise. Nobody would propose giving up carrots or graham crackers or even pasta, despite those products’ popularity. They’re peripheral, unimportant individually to our nutritional well-being.
Making it “mandatory” to give up meat on Fridays restores beef, pork and poultry to their rightful place as the centerpiece of our daily fare. Catholics pray to be provided their daily bread, but we all know that animal foods are more important, nutritionally and culturally, to our collective diets. [More]

I always reach back to Abraham and Isaac when the term "sacrifice" is used. I agree with Dan that true sacrifices must hurt, or they have no meaning. It is not a sacrifice to give from your surplus or to vote for policies that give to those in need. It is when you do without, at cost to your own well-being that you begin to understand why sacrifice required the best, the first, the dearest to have any beneficial effect.

That said, this cannot be good marketing news on the whole for a protein industry looking at flagging consumption and growing criticisms about the health and economics of meat-eating. Adding a day when the devout learn to adapt to meatless, and I would suspect cheaper, meals can only grease the slide toward leaving meat out on other days.

Perhaps becoming a special occasion dietary item is higher status. But it doesn't look like a sales booster to me.

It's not just feed costs...  

There's the cage issue and now this:

 A new study suggests eating egg yolks can accelerate heart disease almost as much as smoking.

The study published online in the journal Atherosclerosis found eating egg yolks regularly increases plaque buildup about two-thirds as much as smoking does. Specifically, patients who ate three or more yolks a week showed significantly more plaque than those who ate two or less yolks per week.
It may seem harsh to compare smoking with eating egg yolks, but lead study author Dr. David Spence says researchers needed a way to put it into perspective since both eating cholesterol and smoking increase cardiovascular risks - but the general public believes smoking is far worse for your health.

The issue is with the yolk, not the egg, says Spence, who is also a professor of neurology at the University of Western Ontario's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. "One jumbo chicken egg yolk has about 237 milligrams of cholesterol."[More]

Now throw into the mix news that long-range studies are sifting out some myths about cholesterol in general. For example, maybe there is no such thing as "good" cholesterol.

Cholesterol in the blood is carried by particles called lipoproteins, which come in different sizes and densities, according to the researchers. There is a well-established connection between elevated LDL levels and heart attack, and decades of research - including genetic studies similar to the new study - paved the way for the development of lipid-lowering drugs known as statins.
But research has been less clear on HDL, since a study more than 30 years ago found the higher levels of HDL a person had, the least likely they were to have a heart attack. Mouse studies since then have reported similar findings, but researchers haven't been able to prove the link conclusively. The new study may provide the clearest evidence yet of the role HDL plays, the researchers said.
"Through our research, we have found that all roads that raise HDL do not always lead to the promise land of reduced risk of heart attack," said study co-author Dr. Benjamin F. Voight, an assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a university written statement. [More]

Even more alarming (to Big Pharma) is the heretical idea that statins aren't the panacea.

Statins such as Lipitor and Crestor are among the most widely prescribed drugs in the world. Their effectiveness in lowering LDL cholesterol has been firmly established; however, the overall impact upon the health of those using statins is questionable. Serious side effects such as liver damage, cataracts, muscle pain and renal failure have been known for some time, but thought to be rare; however recent evaluation of statin use outcomes reveals that the risks may in fact outweigh the benefits. Is the practice of prescribing statins as a preventative measure for individuals with borderline LDL likely to cause more harm than good? Perhaps, exercise, good diet and plant sterol supplements should be the vigorously endorsed as the frontline treatment, prior to any consideration of statin therapy. [More]

The egg yolk study strikes me as a little narrow and solitary in the research literature, but it was large enough to be respected. After having outlived a mound of bad press a few years ago, this cannot be helpful to the egg industry. If egg producers are infighting over cages, they may miss this health broadside that could really lose them some market share.

The white other meat...

This struck me as an idea that might reshape protein markets...along with sky-high feed costs. 

Brown got into fake meat after working in the clean-energy business. He says he loves the taste of meat, but his childhood on a family farm convinced him to refrain from killing animals*, and he’s been vegan for many years. In 2009, he met Fu-Hung Hsieh and Harold Huff, food scientists at the University of Missouri who’d been working to create a meat substitute for more than a decade. The three formed a company, and they’ve been working to build the perfect fake meat ever since.

The process has moved along in fits and starts. “It’s a combination lock,” Brown says. “There are three different parameters we’re working with—heat, cooling, and pressure.” To make the meat, the firm starts with a powdered protein—for the chicken strips, they’re using soy; for the beef, they’ll use a protein from a kind of pea—that they form into a liquid paste. The paste is heated, then it’s extruded through a machine that resembles a pasta press, and then cooled. “It was a process of trial and error to get all of those to align exactly right in the right sequence,” Brown says. “But if you do—if you get the heating and cooling sequence right, and you apply exactly the right pressure through the extrusion—you get the proteins to align in a way that makes them almost indistinguishable from animal proteins.”

Brown says that other hurdles remain, and Beyond Meat is constantly working to refine its methods. Making the perfect fake beef is harder than making chicken, because people expect real beef to look a bit red, from blood. Beyond Meat can add a red hue using beet juice or other natural colorants, but Brown doesn’t know yet if people will consider it strange to have bloody-looking fake meat. This sounds like a trivial factor, but one study has shown that a meat substitute’s appearance is the most important factor to consumers—even before you taste it, you decide whether fake meat is acceptable based on how it looks.

Over time, Brown believes, the firm will get all these little details just right. He’s also confident that society will accept his innovations just as it has adapted to tech revolutions of the past. “Once, we had the horse-drawn carriage, and then we had the horse-less carriage, and then we had the automobile,” he says. “I’m firmly convinced we’re going to go from beef and chicken products that are animal in origin to those that are made with plants—and at some point in the future you’ll walk down the aisle of the supermarket and ask for beef and chicken, and like the automobile has no relationship to the horse, what you get will have nothing to do with animals.” [More]

More reviews here, here, here.

Commercial ag has been justifiably dismissive of the faux meat market threat, yet it is hard not to sense a number of things to cause rethinking.

First, the animal cruelty cause doesn't seem to be going away. We're just a Walmart away from junking gestation crates everywhere - without any loathsome government regs to blame.

Second, as shown above the meat imposters are getting better, and given our preference for prepared (i.e. seasoned and cooked) food, the differences apparent raw begin to become meaningless. All they need is some economies of scale to undercut real meat, and I think a significant market share could switch, at least in categories like frozen dinners.

Finally, as pork and beef follow chicken into near total concentration due to economic pressure from feed costs, public connections to producers will likely unravel. CAFO's just look like CAFO's. And they don't match what the public wants farms to look like. Or what we peddle in the PR marketplace.

*But what really struck me was the highlighted line above. I thought putting kids to work (on ROPS-less tractors, for example) was how you made them stalwart champions of producing food the way Grandpa did.

Perhaps not always.

What's wrong with this sentence?...  

I read this and blinked:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration prohibited some unapproved uses of antibiotics in livestock on Wednesday.

Farmers will no longer be able to administer a class of antibiotics called cephalosporins to cattle, pigs, chicken and turkeys in unapproved doses or frequencies, or as a means of preventing disease, the agency said. [More]

I assumed I understood what "unapproved" meant, but maybe not.

That has long been a concern of many public health experts, including the Pew Health Group. Pew said in a press release today that while "the FDA has approved cephalosporins to treat some infections in food animals, the drugs often are administered in ways not specifically approved by the agency."
This "extralabel" use of antibiotics by livestock producers is linked to the emergence of resistant bacteria, or superbugs, that have infected tens of thousands of people, according to David Wallinga, a physician at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and a member of the Keep Antibiotics Working coalition.
Today, the FDA said the drugs remain critically important for humans, so their use should be restricted only to humans.
The decision to restrict the cephalosporins comes just two weeks after the FDA announced it was trashing a 1977 proposal to remove approvals for two antibiotics, penicillins and tetracyclines, used in livestock and poultry feed.
An association of veterinarians says the new rule on cephalosporins won't have a big impact. They can still use these other antibiotics to keep animals healthy. [More]

How can off-label use not be prohibited? 

So, is this just the FDA, saying "We really mean it this time!"?

Save the mice!...  

An interesting response to the anti-meat position - at least for Australia.

Published figures suggest that, in Australia, producing wheat and other grains results in:

• at least 25 times more sentient animals being killed per kilogram of useable protein
• more environmental damage, and
• a great deal more animal cruelty than does farming red meat.

How is this possible?
Agriculture to produce wheat, rice and pulses requires clear-felling native vegetation. That act alone results in the deaths of thousands of Australian animals and plants per hectare. Since Europeans arrived on this continent we have lost more than half of Australia’s unique native vegetation, mostly to increase production of monocultures of introduced species for human consumption.
Most of Australia’s arable land is already in use. If more Australians want their nutritional needs to be met by plants, our arable land will need to be even more intensely farmed. This will require a net increase in the use of fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides and other threats to biodiversity and environmental health. Or, if existing laws are changed, more native vegetation could be cleared for agriculture (an area the size of Victoria plus Tasmania would be needed to produce the additional amount of plant-based food required).
...
Most cattle slaughtered in Australia feed solely on pasture. This is usually rangelands, which constitute about 70% of the continent.
Grazing occurs on primarily native ecosystems. These have and maintain far higher levels of native biodiversity than croplands. The rangelands can’t be used to produce crops, so production of meat here doesn’t limit production of plant foods. Grazing is the only way humans can get substantial nutrients from 70% of the continent.
In some cases rangelands have been substantially altered to increase the percentage of stock-friendly plants. Grazing can also cause significant damage such as soil loss and erosion. But it doesn’t result in the native ecosystem “blitzkrieg” required to grow crops.
This environmental damage is causing some well-known environmentalists to question their own preconceptions. British environmental advocate George Monbiot, for example, publically converted from vegan to omnivore after reading Simon Fairlie’s expose about meat’s sustainability. And environmental activist Lierre Keith documented the awesome damage to global environments involved in producing plant foods for human consumption.
In Australia we can also meet part of our protein needs using sustainably wild-harvested kangaroo meat. Unlike introduced meat animals, they don’t damage native biodiversity. They are soft-footed, low methane-producing and have relatively low water requirements. They also produce an exceptionally healthy low-fat meat.
In Australia 70% of the beef produced for human consumption comes from animals raised on grazing lands with very little or no grain supplements. At any time, only 2% of Australia’s national herd of cattle are eating grains in feed lots; the other 98% are raised on and feeding on grass. Two-thirds of cattle slaughtered in Australia feed solely on pasture.
To produce protein from grazing beef, cattle are killed. One death delivers (on average, across Australia’s grazing lands) a carcass of about 288 kilograms. This is approximately 68% boneless meat which, at 23% protein equals 45kg of protein per animal killed. This means 2.2 animals killed for each 100kg of useable animal protein produced.
Producing protein from wheat means ploughing pasture land and planting it with seed. Anyone who has sat on a ploughing tractor knows the predatory birds that follow you all day are not there because they have nothing better to do. Ploughing and harvesting kill small mammals, snakes, lizards and other animals in vast numbers. In addition, millions of mice are poisoned in grain storage facilities every year.
...
Each area of grain production in Australia has a mouse plague on average every four years, with 500-1000 mice per hectare. Poisoning kills at least 80% of the mice.
At least 100 mice are killed per hectare per year (500/4 × 0.8) to grow grain. Average yields are about 1.4 tonnes of wheat/hectare; 13% of the wheat is useable protein. Therefore, at least 55 sentient animals die to produce 100kg of useable plant protein: 25 times more than for the same amount of rangelands beef. [More]

I was vaguely aware of the problems in Australia due to a lack of predators to control introduced species like the famous bunny problem. But I did not know they were still battling occasional mice population explosions.

These calculations may be of little value to our grain-fed beef industry, but the new research in methane accounting and measurement could be altering even those numbers.

New CSIRO research indicates that the amount of methane emitted from cattle fed on tropical grasses in northern Australia is up to 30 per cent less than previously believed.

Current greenhouse gas accounts indicate that methane from the northern cattle industry contributes about 4.5 per cent of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions

CSIRO research leader Dr Ed Charmley says he hopes the new data might allow current estimates of the industry's contribution to Australia's greenhouse gas emissions to be updated.

"Measurements from cattle in CSIRO's custom-built respiration chambers show that Brahman cattle fed a wide range of tropical grasses emit up to 30 per cent less methane than previously determined," he said.

"While you always have to be cautious in extending lab data to the field and across an industry, we have been able to cross-check our findings with methane detecting laser systems used in the field. [Only a little more]

Again, I can't find anything to match this assertion for corn-fed meat, but as better methods for measurement are developed, perhaps those numbers, too will move us on from the caw-fart presumption of GHG contributions of meat.

FMD...

May not be the panic-maker it used to be.

The mass culling of cattle to control outbreaks of foot and mouth disease may soon be a thing of the past, according to scientists who have made a breakthrough in understanding how the virus is transmitted.A study has established a hidden "window of opportunity" between the point when a cow becomes infected with the foot and mouth virus and the time when she is able to transmit the virus to another animal.Scientists said that this discovery, combined with the realisation that cattle are only infectious for about a two-day period, means it should be possible to identify infected animals and eliminate them from a herd before they can pass on the infection. [More]

While I understand and agree with the draconian responses needed to control FMD, I can't help but wonder if the testing materials won't be priced right at the max-profit level where many farmers will elect to avoid detection rather than know for sure.

The pattern of reaction to this type to discovery has been to extract maximum shareholder value first. I have no real objection with that, but wonder if a longer term outlook might benefit both the test manufacturers and the livestock industry simultaneously.

If it is possible it will likely occur in the EU before here, IMHO.

I guess it's similar to husbands...

We're getting closer to answering a question that concerns many: are wild animals happier (less stressed)? 

That’s a much harder question to answer, in part because we don’t have good baselines for wild animals. Until recently, studying stress hormone levels meant drawing blood - which, as you can image, is a stressful event in and of itself for a wild animal. However, newer methods have been developed that can measure the stress hormone levels in scat and urine left by wild animals, so it’s now possible to get an assessment of stress that doesn’t involve capturing the animal first.What we do know so far is that evidence suggests wild animals can be as happy in captivity as they are in nature, assuming they are treated well. Confinement alone doesn’t mean an animal is automatically worse off. If we give an animal all the good things they would have in the wild (food and water, fellow members of their species, a certain amount of space) and take away that stresses or hurts them (predators, parasites, extreme weather), then it can live just as happily in an enclosure. Zoo animals with proper care and enrichment, for example, have similar hormone profiles, live longer, eat better, and are healthier than their wild counterparts. Why? Because life in the wild is hard. In captivity, it’s easy.We also know that when we change our care of an animal to try to decrease stress, we succeed. Stress hormone levels drop, for example, when leopards are given a larger enclosure or things to play with. This means we are able to modify our standards of care to ensure that any animals we place in captivity, domesticated or wild, are as happy as they can be.So overall, are wild animals happier? While there is a lot more science that can be done to answer that question, the answer seems to be: no, not if they’re cared for well in captivity. The more we study animal behaviors, the better we get at figuring out what they need to pursue their own happiness, even when they are not allowed to be ‘free.’ [More]

While I believe we could do more to improve farm animal care in the US, and should do, the basic premise of natural being better and wild better than domesticated doesn't seem to hold up.  The author sums it up well:

This bias for what is "natural" is pervasive, affecting our judgement on everything from sexual orientation and medical care to farming practices and clothing fibers. But there is nothing inherently better about something being natural, and the idea that something that occurs in nature without us is somehow better than something we have altered or taken part in is a dangerous fallacy (the use of Rotenone by organic farms, a natural but unbelievably awful pesticide that was still usable in Europe until 2009, is a prime example). I love the natural world. I became a biologist because of my passion for all kinds of creatures, and conservation is one of the core tenants of what I do on a daily basis. But while I appreciate and fight for the beauty and brilliance that is our planet, I firmly believe we need to see ourselves as a part of it, not above or below it. We are, after all, "natural," too.

An economist's analysis of antibiotic resistance...

Truly interesting and worth 12 minutes. Megan McCardle shows why our economic system isn't working for antibiotics.

It's about market forces and market rules.



[More]

Incremental steps...

With all the charges and counter-charges about animal welfare, some entrepreneurs are looking to provide answers. This is why I think patience and listening can reduce, but not eliminate, the bulk of the public apprehension about animal agriculture.

Two premium chicken producers, Bell & Evans in Pennsylvania and Mary’s Chickens in California, are preparing to switch to a system of killing their birds that they consider more humane. The new system uses carbon dioxide gas to gently render the birds unconscious before they are hung by their feet to have their throats slit, sparing them the potential suffering associated with conventional slaughter methods.

“When you grab a chicken, turn it upside down and put it on the line, it’s stress, stress, stress,” said Scott Sechler, the owner of Bell & Evans. “Our system is designed so that we put them to sleep without stress and we kill them without stress.”

That is sure to appeal to a segment of the chicken-buying public. But telling them about it presents a marketing challenge.

“Most of the time, people don’t want to think about how the animal was killed,” said David Pitman, whose family owns Mary’s Chickens.

Anglia Autoflow, the company that is building the knock-out systems for the two processors, calls the process “controlled atmosphere stunning,” but Mr. Pitman said his company was considering the phrase “sedation stunning” for use on its packages. Also on the short-list: “humanely slaughtered,” “humanely processed” or “humanely handled.”

The trick, he said, is to communicate the goal of the new system, which is to ensure that the birds “not have any extra pain or discomfort in the last few minutes of their lives.”

In a typical processing plant, birds are unloaded in what is known as the “live hang area.” Workers hang the chickens upside down from metal shackles connected to a mechanical rail that conveys them into the plant. They go first into a unit that uses a mild electric shock to make them unconscious, and then they are brought to the “kill machine,” where a blade cuts their throat and they bleed to death.

In the new system, birds will arrive at the processing plant in special containers that will go directly into a chamber to which carbon dioxide is slowly added, displacing some of the oxygen and making the birds unconscious. Only then will workers handle the birds and hang them on the shackles.

Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University and a prominent livestock expert, consulted with Bell & Evans as the company worked with Anglia to design its system. She said it was better because the chickens were not aware of what was happening to them. “Birds don’t like being hung upside down,” Dr. Grandin said. “They get really stressed out by that.”[More]

I don't underestimate the endorsement by Temple Grandin, a voice that carries weight with both sides.  Nor do I dismiss the economics of this upgrade, but remain convinced the market will support such measures.

We can make this transition to different meat production techniques that allay consumer dismay and exact recoverable costs.  It will just take time, and during that interval, getting in consumer faces is the wrong strategy, IMHO.

Loners and meat consumption...

I have been uneasy about the insistence of the protein industry that false accusations are largely to blame for the declining public image of the livestock industry.  There are more undercurrents perhaps t shifting the status quo to a new equilibrium that we currently accept.

One of these is the growing solitude of our lives.

But we live now in a climate in which friends appear dispensable. While most of us wouldn’t last long outside the intricate web of interdependence that supplies all our physical needs—imagine no electricity, money, or sewers—we’ve come to demand of ourselves truly radical levels of emotional self-sufficiency. In America today, half of adults are unmarried, and more than a quarter live alone. As Robert Putnam showed in his 2000 book Bowling Alone, civic involvement and private associations were on the wane at the end of the 20th century. Several years later, social scientists made headlines with a survey showing that Americans had a third fewer nonfamily confidants than two decades earlier. A quarter of us had no such confidants at all.
In a separate study, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, authors of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (2009), surveyed more than 3,000 randomly chosen Americans and found they had an average of four “close social contacts” with whom they could discuss important matters or spend free time. But only half of these contacts were solely friends; the rest were a variety of others, including spouses and children.
Here, as on so many fronts, we often buy what we need. The affluent commonly hire confidants in the form of talk therapists, with whom they may maintain enduring (if remunerated) relationships conducted on a first-name basis. The number of household pets has exploded throughout the Western world, suggesting that not just dogs but cats, rats, and parakeets are often people’s best friends. John Cacioppo, a University of Chicago psychologist who studies loneliness, says he’s convinced that more Americans are lonely—not because we have fewer social contacts, but because the ones we have are more harried and less meaningful. [More]

This idea that animals are moving up in social status seems to me to be mirrored by the spending trends I posted earlier. Given this changed inter-species relationship, I think it will be unlikely meat sales in the US will resume any upward climb or match previous levels of per capita consumption, regardless of ambitious campaigns to "educate" consumers.

The spending stats also make doubtful the power of cheap protein to overcome emotional decisions about meat eating.  If we're spending more on pets, we obviously already have disposable income at hand that could be going to steaks.

Our future, I suspect, for protein is elsewhere, and this startling chart impressed the immediacy of the global economic rebalancing on my vision of the near future.

[Source]

The growth in households with >$10K disposable income will be in the BRIC's (Brazil, Russia, India, China), not the US or Europe.  And it will occur in the next 10 years!

The sooner we align our protein industry to the markets of tomorrow instead of trying to argue 'round increasingly overfed consumers who see animals more as friends, the sooner we'll revive the health of this industry and reduce the friction that has produced no good result other than righteous indignation on both sides. 

More importantly, an attitude of belligerence and confrontation likely contributes to the fraying of social networks and friendship (ever had a food argument over say, veganism that turned out well between friends?) One possible implication of the essay above is that groups are more likely to eat meat than loners.

There is an irresistible urge to yell back, but it could be our our worst possible choice, both economically and culturally.

Our money, our animals...

Consider this chart about where Americans are spending more in their household budgets.  Note if any item seems a little a startling.

[Source] [Also note where we are spending less]

For me, the increase in pets is fascinating.  Are we taking more comfort in scary times from our companion animals? Is this simply an ongoing trend?

Regardless of the cause, it is sobering tangential evidence of the challenge facing animal agriculture. Coupled with the insuperable power of video to evoke emotions, our apparent inclination to elevate other species to human priorities means our failure to establish a distinction between food and companion animals will become increasingly problematic.

Don't let little kids play with piglets, chicks and calves, is my advice.

It makes you wonder why we try...

To persuade people to our point of view.  It's really hard, and I think becoming harder for us to change our  minds, especially on issues we deem important.  This could be one reason political compromise is so hard, and Congress so dysfunctional.

Much of the reason may be simply how our minds are built.

Max Bazerman, Harvard Professor and author of one of our favorite books, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, offers some clues on why we find it so hard to appropriately weigh new informaiton that goes against our prior beliefs:

The first has to do with the way the human mind is designed to retrieve information from memory. The mere consideration of certain hypotheses makes information that is consistent with these hypotheses selectively accessible (Gilbert, 1991, How Mental Systems Believe). Indeed, research shows that the human tendency to entertain provisional hypothesis as true even makes it possible to implant people with false memories.

We also succumb to the confirmation trap due to how we search for information. Because there are limits to our attention and cognitive processing, we must search for information selectively, searching first where we are most likely to find the most useful information. One consequence is the retrievability bias. Another consequence is that people search selectively for information or give special credence to information that allows them to come to the conclusions they desire to reach (Kunda, 1990, The Case for Motivated Reasoning).

A lot of this boils down to psychology. Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions (ideas, beliefs, attitudes, or opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent. Dissonance produces an uncomfortable mental state the the mind needs to resolve. In resolving dissonance our minds trend towards self-justification which makes it hard to admit mistakes. [More]

Notice the reaction to the HSUS/OFB compromise on animal care standards.

“Dismayed” and “betrayed” are two words being used being used by farmers and ranchers in Ohio—and across the entire U.S.—in reaction to the compromise agreement between Ohio’s ag and livestock organizations and HSUS.
Ohio Farm Bureau spokesman Joe Cornely says he understands those strong sentiments, many of which are based on the belief that HSUS wants to abolish animal agriculture.
“I could not agree more with those people,” Cornely says. “We at Ohio Farm Bureau fully recognize and believe that is the ultimate goal of the Humane Society of the United States—just as our ultimate goal is to not let that happen.  We haven’t given up the battle—we’ve just changed the rules of engagement.” [More]

That is a real stretch even for FB spin, IMHO.  My assessment is they essentially read the handwriting on the wall, and then committed farmers who couldn't be there because they hadn't been born yet to the solution.  Given the age of a typical FB group, it would appear they allowed time for themselves to finish a career before massive changes in practices have to be implemented.

But there are certainly other interpretations.  Perhaps negotiators are trying to stall, while pushing for ex post facto changes by the legislature, hoping the HSUS will lose clout over time.  Perhaps they think more producers agree with the changes than is apparent now.

Finally, we could be overestimating the actual production and economic impact of these changes.  At best they add a few percentage points of rather grim efficiency to production.  Showing evidence of being sensitive to consumer concerns could outweigh these losses in the long run.

One thing I suspect is certain: farm negotiators were not optimistic about what would happen in a referendum.  Those kind of stark expectations can change your mind.

The protein industry can't catch a break...

I have great concerns about the future of our meat and dairy sector.  While I expect it to survive, I also cannot see a way for it to avoid wrenching changes and probable downsizing as additional costs move their business plans to less, but more expensive meat consumption in the US.

Look at the list of challenges: assorted consumer health concerns, food trends, animal welfare issues, environmental liability (especially with CAFOs), ethanol-fueled feed cost increases.

And now blowback from our immigration turmoil.

Residents of a small city in eastern Nebraska voted Monday to banish illegal immigrants from jobs and rental homes, defying an earlier decision by the city’s leaders and setting off what is all but certain to be a costly and closely watched legal challenge.
In Fremont , a meat-packing town of about 25,000 people, unofficial results from The Associated Press late Monday showed that 57 percent of voters approved a referendum barring landlords from renting to those in the country illegally, requiring renters to provide information to the police and to obtain city occupancy licenses, and obliging city businesses to use a federal database to check for illegal immigrants.
Opponents of the new law, including some business and church leaders, had argued that the City of Fremont simply could not afford the new law, which is all but certain to be challenged in court. In a flurry of television commercials and presentations by opponents in the final days before Monday’s vote, opponents said paying to defend such a local law would require a significant cut in Fremont city services or a stiff tax increase — or some combination of the two.
“There were a lot of tears in this room tonight,” said Kristin Ostrom, an opponent who gathered with others in an old V.F.W. building to await the results. “Unfortunately, people have voted for an ordinance that’s going to cost millions of dollars, and that says to the Hispanic community that the Anglo community is saying they are not welcome here. They thought they were coming to a small-town community with small-town values.” [More]

I have no advice for the citizens of Fremont, nor would it be welcome or even useful.  I have lived in a lightly populated rural community for long enough to expect such major debates unfortunately have to drag to an exhausted surrender by both sides. I don't live there - they do.  I do grieve for the collective pain they will be wading through for too long.

But it adds one more burden on an industry already struggling, and probably is spooking the feeders who depend on that plant.

Perhaps it is the cumulative consequences of an industry that failed to temper economic efficiencies such as large feeding facilities, demanding processing work, and wrenching production culture shifts with some inkling the limits of low cost food as a reason for all.

Like too many other examples, the dimly understood and analyzed externalities like smell, or in this case community upheaval have finally shown up on the industry P & L.  Big time.

At any rate, we will be reinventing our protein sector pretty rapidly, I think.  The intensity of public rancor over these issues may no longer allow thoughtful, deliberate action - just wins and losses.  And I suspect there will be more losses than wins.