Author David Kirby says cattle eating cattle by-product could risk another outbreak of mad cow disease. The FDA says there’s no measurable risk. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
The hamburger you put on the grill this weekend could be from cattle raised on feed that includes chicken feces. Lester Graham reports…a year-old Food and Drug Administration rule says it’s safe:
Transcript
The hamburger you put on the grill this weekend could be from cattle raised on feed that includes chicken feces. Lester Graham reports…a year-old Food and Drug Administration rule says it’s safe.
The rule came about after the mad cow disease outbreak. It made some changes, but still allows putting chicken litter – that’s the straw, feathers, chicken manure and scattered food left after raising chickens in a building– into cattle feed.
David Kirby wrote a book entitled “Animal Factory.” He says the government buckled to the chicken industry because the industry didn’t have a place to go with all the chicken litter.
“There’s too much to spread on local farmland, so they very often put it into cattle feed. It contains urea which cows can convert into protein.”
Chickens are messy. They scatter their feed and it gets into the chicken litter that’s put in some cattle feed. Some chicken feed contains beef by-products. Kirby says cattle eating cattle by-product could risk another outbreak of mad cow disease. The FDA says there’s no measurable risk.
Barbara Schaefer thinks locally raised heritage meat makes economic and environmental sense. (Photo by Lucy Martin)
Schaefer has added two breeds of heritage chickens. (Photo by Lucy Martin)
Schaefer farms 100 acres of thin soil, her pasture-raised pigs will improve soil fertility. (Photo by Lucy Martin)
Variety isn’t just the spice of life. You could say it is life. And you can’t have variety without lots and lots of genes.
Farmers have spent thousands of years developing livestock that do well in different conditions.
Modern agriculture usually concentrates on just a few breeds that maximize profit. But a lot of people don’t want to see all the valuable genes in older breeds just disappear.
Lucy Martin visited a farmer who says the future needs to include heirlooms from the past:
Transcript
Variety isn’t just the spice of life. You could say it is life. And you can’t have variety without lots and lots of genes.
Farmers have spent thousands of years developing livestock that do well in different conditions.
Modern agriculture usually concentrates on just a few breeds that maximize profit. But a lot of people don’t want to see all the valuable genes in older breeds just disappear.
Lucy Martin visited a farmer who says the future needs to include heirlooms from the past.
(Schaefer entering barn: “Watch your head, it’s a little mucky in here…”)
It’s a bright winter day, inside a classic red barn in Southern Ontario. We’re admiring docile animals whose name says it all: Large Black Pig. They look fine. Even though this pig is listed as critically endangered.
Schaefer: Sometimes you’ll be standing here and you think there are no piglets and suddenly one rises out of the straw!
(Sound of contented grunting)
Barbara Schaefer used live in Toronto. Until a few years ago, her career revolved around managing environmental projects. But when she got laid off, she decided to put theory into practice.
Schaefer: I can’t save the polar bear, but I can save this breed. How many things can you say that about? And that’s why what I’m doing now is 200 times more relevant.
What she’s doing now, is weaving different environmental threads together. Preserving the genetic diversity of rare livestock. Putting marginal land to higher use. Trying to revitalize rural economies. Offering an alternative to factory farming.
Nearly all commercial pork across North America comes from just a few main breeds, usually reared in confinement systems. A lot of science goes into maximizing production. But Schaefer doesn’t think that’s the whole picture.
Schaefer: They’re packed in fairly close, they don’t get the benefit of being outside in the sunlight. They have a artificial concrete floor, which for them, is a horror. Because these guys think with their nose, they want to be turning things up all the time and there’s no opportunity for that.
(Sounds of distant tractor and more pigs grunting)
In the barn yard, I mingle with small herds of thigh-high, curious pigs as they as they mill about, soaking up sun. Some amble over to near-by pastures for naps inside cosy hay huts.
Schaefer’s customers include local restaurants and ‘foodies’, people who like to cook and eat.
Fans admire heritage breeds because these animals were bred to thrive in the specific conditions of small-scale, local agriculture.
Lawrence: They’re rustic, they’re hardy, they’re often good mothers.
Ted Lawrence has spent years on this cause with Rare Breeds Canada. Some really admire the animals. And then there’s the whole ‘insurance’ argument: odd breeds have genes worth keeping. As base stock for even newer breeds, to adapt to changes in climate, or to survive some epidemic.
Lawrence: Food security, that will turn heads more quickly than saying we have to preserve the genetic diversity of minor breeds.
If these animals are special, why slaughter them?
Lawrence: That is actually a slogan that has been used in Great Britain: ‘We must eat them to save them’. It sounds counter-intuitive but what’s the purpose of breeding them if you can’t make any money, if you can’t sell them? Then the genetics will not continue. The breed will go extinct.
(kitchen clatter and music playing at Murray Street Restaurant)
Chef Steve Mitton co-owns a restaurant in Ottawa which features Schaefer’s pork. He’d hate to see old breeds die out.
Mitton: I mean, I get entire animals in and break them down from head to toe, and we use every last bit of it. The yield of the Large Black, in particular, is outstanding.
Mitton says more and more people care about where their food comes from and how animals are treated.
Mitton: I just want to broaden their horizons, open people’s minds a little bit, so they know that this is out there. And it’s just as good as commercial pork.
Most meat eaters have no idea what breed of animal ends up on their plate. But making sure there are lots of breeds around can help keep those plates full, and tasty.
For the Environment Report, I’m Lucy Martin in Ontario.
Ranchers have to pay to let their cows, sheep and goats eat plants on public land.
(Photo courtesy of the USDA)
The US Forest Service has
announced it will not increase
fees for ranchers who let their
animals graze on public lands.
Rebecca Williams reports that
makes some environmentalists mad:
Transcript
The US Forest Service has
announced it will not increase
fees for ranchers who let their
animals graze on public lands.
Rebecca Williams reports that
makes some environmentalists mad:
Ranchers have to pay to let their cows, sheep and goats eat plants on public land. This year, that monthly fee is staying put at $1.35 for each so-called “animal unit.” For example, that’s a cow and her calf, or five sheep.
Taylor McKinnon is with the Center for Biological Diversity. He says livestock grazing is one of the reasons species like the desert tortoise and Mexican gray wolf are in trouble. And he says taxpayers are subsidizing livestock grazing, and then paying to fix the damage it creates.
“We have the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service whose recovery programs are spending tremendous amounts of money to recover species who have been imperiled by livestock grazing.”
McKinnon says raising grazing fees would increase costs for ranchers.
No one at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association was available for comment.
Keith Edwards, a rancher in Kansas, is in favor of poisoning the prairie dogs.
(Photo by Devin Browne)
Often we hear stories about
the government trying to get
farmers and ranchers to do
things that are better for
the environment. But Devin
Browne has a story about a
rancher trying to do something
better for the environment
and getting in trouble with
the government:
Transcript
Often we hear stories about
the government trying to get
farmers and ranchers to do
things that are better for
the environment. But Devin
Browne has a story about a
rancher trying to do something
better for the environment
and getting in trouble with
the government:
In western Kansas, there’s a war going on. People are suing each other and threatening each other and there’s poisons and noxious gasses involved. They all call it the ‘prairie dog wars,’ but few of them agree on what it is they’re really fighting about.
Some people say this is about a bad neighbor who’s ruining things for other ranchers. Some say it’s about whether you can let wildlife live on your land. And still, other people say that the conflict in Kansas is about whether the government gets to tell you what you can do on your own land.
(sound of prairie dog barking)
Prairie dogs about a foot tall, in the squirrel family, though technically rodents. Ranchers hate them because they eat grass that’s meant for cows. But biologists love them because where there are prairie dogs there are also all the other animals that need them for food or shelter – hawks, foxes, badgers, owls, and maybe most importantly – the black footed ferret, one of America’s most endangered mammals. We’ll tell you more about the ferret in a moment.
“It’s been said that prairie dogs are the most important animals on the plains and I agree with that.”
At the center of all this controversy is Larry Haverfield He’s a bearded guy in bib overalls, a born and bred Kansas rancher. Four years ago, he stood up at a county meeting and said he liked prairie dogs. And he wasn’t going to kill them anymore.
Ever since then his neighbors have been organizing against him.
Keith Edwards is one of them.
“We’ve had county meetings, we’ve had a petition, we’ve filed the legal complaints that you can go through the county, and we’ve done that several times.”
Second, third, fourth generation ranchers will tell you so in no uncertain terms they’ve been fighting a war against the prairie dogs. But now these ranchers are fighting against one of their own, Larry Haverfield. It’s gotten ugly. Some might even say petty.
Again, Larry Haverfield.
“Well, they’ve threatened to come in on us, and they have, we haven’t paid all the bills yet either.”
When he says come in on us, he means come in onto his property. Exterminators hired by the county to poison the prairie dogs, the one or two days a year when he’s not home – when he and his wife are in court, in Topeka, battling lawsuits. And then, not only the poisoning, but the bill for the poisoning – for thousands of dollars.
This might sound like illegal trespassing, but, in Kansas, there’s nothing illegal about it. An old law, from 1901, says that the government can poison varmints on your land & then bill you if you don’t kill them yourself.
Haverfield says it’s not just the prairie dogs that are affected by the poisoning. The endangered black footed ferrets eat prairie dogs to survive. Since there are so many prairie dogs on the Haverfield’s land, it was decided that they should host one of the first re-introductions of the ferrets. Since it’s endangered, it can’t be legally poisoned.
But the ferrets didn’t stop the county. Haverfield says the state law and the federal Endangered Species Act are working against each other.
“That’s quite a conflict, we think the endangered species act will rule in that argument.”
And an environmental group thinks Haverfield should be able to do what he wants on his land. Ron Klataske is with the Audubon of Kansas.
“Basically, the conflict in western Kansas is: are landowners allowed to have native wildlife on their land?”
Ironically, ranchers such as Keith Edwards say they’re worried about being able to do what they want on their land too.
“Our question is: what will be able to do with our land when the black footed ferret becomes established? And we poison prairie dogs and it accidentally poisons a ferret? Does that leave us open for a lawsuit? Scares us to death.”
Edwards is afraid that this is only the beginning – that if he can’t poison what he wants on his own land, will he have any freedoms as a farmer at all?
Haverfield says he plans to stick to his principles and keep the prairie dogs & the ferrets on his land, no matter what it costs him.
Cows burp methane gas and their manure also emits methane. Methane is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
(Photo courtesy of the USDA)
The US Department of Agriculture
is planning to give dairy farmers
more money to cut some of their
greenhouse gas emissions. Rebecca
Williams has more:
Transcript
The US Department of Agriculture
is planning to give dairy farmers
more money to cut some of their
greenhouse gas emissions. Rebecca
Williams has more:
Cows are gassy. They burp methane gas and their manure also emits methane. Methane is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
In Copenhagen, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions on farms. He said the government will be giving farmers more money for methane digesters. They’re machines that capture methane from manure.
Katie Feeney is with the environmental group Clean Air Council.
“If you can make it easy for them and cost effective for them to be sustainable, to reduce their emissions, then I foresee a lot more people participating in programs such as that.”
But some environmentalists say voluntary programs are not enough. They say big dairy farms should be regulated more.
Starting in the New Year, all kinds of businesses will have to report their greenhouse gas emissions. But there’s a big exception: large concentrated animal farms don’t have to.
Regulators in Wisconsin say, for the most part, their big dairy farms are doing a good job with manure management. They say most of their water quality problems come from smaller farms in the state - farms that are not monitored as closely.
(Photo courtesy of the USDA)
The dairy industry often uses images
of cows grazing in a green pasture.
But that’s not how most dairy farms
look these days. Instead of green
pastures, thousands of cows are penned
up in huge metal pole barns. The
mechanization of dairies makes for
cheaper milk at the grocery store.
But, in many places around the country,
it’s also meant a lot of pollution.
Mark Brush visited a place where they
say big dairies are doing it right:
Transcript
The dairy industry often uses images
of cows grazing in a green pasture.
But that’s not how most dairy farms
look these days. Instead of green
pastures, thousands of cows are penned
up in huge metal pole barns. The
mechanization of dairies makes for
cheaper milk at the grocery store.
But, in many places around the country,
it’s also meant a lot of pollution.
Mark Brush visited a place where they
say big dairies are doing it right:
(sound of a farm)
Tom Crave and his brothers run this dairy in central Wisconsin. Crave says, when they first started out, he and his brothers were single, they had 80 cows and a used car.
Now, they have around a 1,000 cows and families to look after. He says they had to get big to survive.
“It takes a lot of money to live. That’s what’s… that’s what’s driven this here. It’s just basic economics.”
It’s a theme farmers all over the country have been hearing for decades. Get big or get out. You can’t make money unless you grow.
The Crave Brothers milk their 1,000 cows three times a day. They use automated milking machines. And they turn that milk into cheese that they make across the street in their cheese factory.
But milk is not the only thing cows produce. These farms deal with millions of gallons of liquid manure.
Most farms store the manure in lagoons – basically huge pits of waste contained by earthen berms. Then, when these lagoons fill up, they spray or inject the liquid manure onto the ground as fertilizer for crops. It’s also the main way they have to get rid of all that waste.
Sometimes these big dairy farms have problems. Liquid manure runs off the crop land, contaminating rivers and lakes. And, in some cases, the earthen berms holding back the manure has leaked or given way, releasing a wave of manure, causing huge fish kills or polluting well water.
But regulators here say the Crave Brothers have been doing a good job taking care of their manure. As have most of the other big dairy farms in Wisconsin. That’s in part because these farms actively regulated in the state.
Gordon Stevenson is the Chief Runoff Manager for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
“It is not coming from these largest farms for the most part. The manure management on our 30,000 other smaller farms can be a good bit worse, and those people are not regulated.”
Dairy farms that have fewer than 700 milking cows usually are not regulated under the Clean Water Act until there’s a major problem. And some farms stay under 700 cows to avoid regulations.
“When we encounter environmental problems associated with one of these smaller farms, they can be offered cost share assistance. They’re largely voluntary programs.”
If Stevenson finds a smaller farm that’s polluting, he can offer them some state money to fix the problem. But, beyond that, he says there’s not much his office can do. As a result, some smaller farms pollute.
Jamie Saul is with Midwest Environmental Advocates. His group has represented people who were sickened from well water contaminated by manure. Saul says, there have been some problems with bigger farms in the state, but he admits the bigger challenge is how to control pollution coming from smaller, unregulated farms.
He says just offering them money to clean up is not good enough.
“We are the habit now of paying, and I think it’s pretty unique to the agricultural industry, that we pay them to reduce their pollution. Most other industries we don’t do that. We expect whatever industry it is to come into compliance with whatever standards are needed to protect the environment and public health.”
Saul says all states needs better policies to keep small farms from polluting. He says the regulations have to have that magic mix of stopping water pollution without putting too much burden on small farmers.
While Wisconsin regulators seem to be keeping an eye on their bigger farms, environmental activists say that’s not the case in other states. They say Clean Water Act rules are often not enforced against livestock farms – big or small – and that puts the environment and people’s health at risk.
Organic steak is hard to find, partly because so few slaughterhouses are certified organic. (Photo by David Benbennick, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Organic farmers would love to have you dig into more of their pork, chicken and beef. It’s not just because they’re proud about how they raise their animals – it’s because certified organic meat fetches high prices. But organic meat is harder to find than you’d expect, and it’s partly because there are few organically-certified slaughterhouses.
Shawn Allee found a farming community that came up with a solution:
Transcript
Organic farmers would love to have you dig into more of their pork, chicken and beef.
It’s not just because they’re proud about how they raise their animals – it’s because certified organic meat fetches high prices.
But organic meat is harder to find than you’d expect, and it’s partly because there are few organically-certified slaughterhouses.
Shawn Allee found a farming community that came up with a solution:
Dennis and Emily Wettstein turned their Illinois farm organic a while ago, mostly because conventional farming wasn’t practical for them.
“All the money seemed to go to pay for the fertilizers and the chemicals. And then I was more or less allergic to the chemicals. And so we were interested in getting away from that, especially if we were going to raise a family out here.”
The Wettsteins didn’t just raise grain organically – they kept chemicals and hormones out of their cattle.
“We started raising meat for ourselves and our families. Then, pretty soon, just word of mouth, friends and neighbors wanted meat.”
And, they found people who’d pay top dollar for their meat.
“We sell at the Oak Park farmers market.”
That’s just west of Chicago.
“Right. The Oak Park market managers, they are working on all the farmers to go towards organic.”
And that worked for the Wettsteins – they had USDA certified organic chicken.
“There’s one other meat vendor there – it’s not organic. So, we have no competition. We feel that, with that label on there, we can set our price to where we can make a profit.”
But Emily Wettstein says that term – organic – gave them trouble when it came to beef and other meat.
“We were getting a little bit pressured from other people, ‘Well, you can’t call your item organic. You don’t have a processing facility with the term of certified organic.'”
Here was the problem: For meat to get labeled USDA certified organic, it’s gotta be certified from the farm to the slaughterhouse.
The Wettsteins had someone to process organic chicken, but they were out of luck with pigs and cows.
There was no certified slaughterhouse for beef or pork in Illinois.
So, the Wettsteins and some relatives prodded meat lockers to get certified.
There was one taker.
“I’m inside a meat locker that’s about a fifteen minute drive from the Wettstein farm. It’s owned by Scott Bittner, and I’m here to understand what organic certification means for his business. How do I put this, there’s a headless, hoofless, skinless cow hanging from your ceiling. Where are we exactly?”
We’re on the kill floor. We had seventeen, eighteen cattle today. Seven of those were organic.
So, walk me through how you have to treat that organic cow differently.
It’s the first thing we did this morning – that’s one thing. Other than that, it’s segregating it in the cooler from the non-organic product and then processing it at a later time, which, again, you have to do first thing in the morning.
So, the basic idea is segregation?
Yeah, it is. The whole way through. Exactly.
Bittner’s simplifying things, but not much.
He has to clean or swap equipment between batches of organic and conventional meat.
There are rules on the kinds of chemicals he can use. And he hires a certification company to monitor his paper work.
Bittner says overall, it’s easy, and he’s surprised more slaughterhouses haven’t done it.
“Here we’re doing all our fabricating – grinding sausage, ground beef. Cutting some chops, ribs.”
“How does it feel to be the only guy who can process an organic side of beef?”
“I want to keep it quiet – I don’t want too many people to get started doing what I’m doing because it’s nice. I get two or three customers every year that I didn’t have before. When you go to bed at night and think about this economy being the way it is, every little bit helps.”
Bittner says farmers drive animals up to four hours to slaughter their animals here.
He says he’s proud of his work but can’t take too much credit; he knows he’s got a local organic slaughtering monopoly going.
That might change some day, but for now it’s reason enough to keep his knives sharp.
Some American bison are contaminated with cow genes. The genes are left over from the early days of cross-breeding. (Photo by Paul Frederickson, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
In iconic images of the Great Plains, you always see the land dotted with bison. Those bison helped make the prairies what they were. But the bison that you see on prairie preserves today are not exactly the same as the ones that once roamed the plains. The Environment Report’s Charity Nebbe has more:
Transcript
We have a handful of ranchers to thank for the fact that we have any bison today. At one point there were only about a thousand and now there are half a million. Bob Hamilton is the Director of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma. He says the ranchers who saved the bison also put them at risk.
“Part of their motivation was also to see if they could cross breed bison with domestic livestock to see if they could produce a hardier winter resistant ‘beefalo’.”
The beefalo were not hardy and the ranchers abandoned their project, but the cattle genes remain. Bob Hamilton’s herd consists of 2,700 bison. Thanks to genetic testing, Hamilton has been able to weed out all of the bison carrying the most damaging kind of cattle DNA. But, there is some genetic material he just can’t get rid of. Chances are, there will always be a little bit of beef in the buffalo.
One environmentalist is arguing that hormones in cows may actually be better for the environment (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
The cow hormone known as rBST or rBGH
has taken a beating in the environmental community.
Injecting the hormone into cows makes them produce
more milk. But some people are afraid the hormone
can find its way from the cow, to the cow’s milk,
and into our bodies. The government insists that’s
not the case. Shawn Allee says one researcher
wants to change the debate about rBST – and convince
environmentalists to support the hormone:
Transcript
The cow hormone known as rBST or rBGH
has taken a beating in the environmental community.
Injecting the hormone into cows makes them produce
more milk. But some people are afraid the hormone
can find its way from the cow, to the cow’s milk,
and into our bodies. The government insists that’s
not the case. Shawn Allee says one researcher
wants to change the debate about rBST – and convince
environmentalists to support the hormone:
Before I introduce you to the researcher who supports rbst or rbgh, I want
you to understand what she’s up against.
It’s well-meaning people like Steve Parkes.
Parkes co-owns New Leaf natural food store in Chicago. He decides what’s
on the shelves.
“A lot goes into making that decision. First and foremost, is it something
I would eat myself?”
And as for milk produced with rbgh, Parkes won’t sell it.
“People have been drinking milk for thousands of years from animals
that didn’t have have rgbh in them, so, I think I’m a little more
comfortable drinking milk from a cow that didn’t have rgbh than I am
from something that is a very, very new technology.”
A lot of people distrust rbgh, and that’s changed the milk market.
For example, some retailers like Starbucks won’t buy milk from dairies that
use it. More and more dairies are asking farmers to pledge not to use the
hormone.
The trend has frustrated researcher Judith Capper.
“People aren’t questioning the science basis of it.”
Capper is with Cornell University. She argues environmentalists and
consumers should take another look at the hormone, and see it as part of the
solution to global warming.
Capper recently co-wrote a study that began with a simple observation – in a
few decades, there will be many more Americans.
“The US population will have gone up from about 300 million people to
377 million people and we wanted to look at the environment impact of
producing enough milk to feed all those people.”
That scares Capper – because producing milk can make the global warming
problem worse.
That’s because feeding cows, and the cows themselves, lead to more
greenhouse gas emissions.
“Okay, there are six major inputs and outputs in terms of carbon.”
I won’t go through six, but here are a few.
First, there’s the feed that cows eat. Tractors have to plant grain. That burns
fossil fuels. Greenhouse gasses. Then feed is trucked to the dairy farm.
More greenhouse gasses. More cows, more greenhouse gasses.
So, you want as much milk as possible from each cow.
“If you give rbst to a cow, it will produce an extra ten pounds per day,
that’s quite an increase.”
And then there’s the other greenhouse gasses. From, um, the ugly end of the
cow equation.
The manure puts off other potent greenhouse gasses. And Cows belch
methane. Cows that use rbst poop and belch, spare the atmosphere even
more carbon.
All this leads Capper to a startling conclusion.
She says if farmers gave a million cows the hormone –
“Using rbst would be like taking about 400,000 cars off the road, or
planting three hundred million trees. Those are really big numbers.”
Judith Capper says she expects scientists will challenge her research – and
she welcomes a good debate about rbgh and rbst.
She says that’s better than this vague idea that the hormone might somehow
be bad without understanding the whole story.
“Choose organic, choose rbst-free, whatever, but base it on facts and
science, not on consumer perceptions that may not be factually correct.”
But, Capper’s got her work cut out for her.
Government statistics show consumer fear about rbgh has made farmers cut
the percentage of cows injected with the hormone.
Today’s cattle are much bigger than they were back in the 1920s. They’ve been bred to
big and beefy. But, it turns out, you can actually produce more meat with the smaller
cattle.
(Photo by Keith Weller, courtesy of the USDA)
Because of feed and energy prices,
some cattle farmers are scaling back.
They’re not reducing the size of their
herd. They’re reducing the size of their
cows. Kinna Ohman reports:
Transcript
Because of feed and energy prices,
some cattle farmers are scaling back.
They’re not reducing the size of their
herd. They’re reducing the size of their
cows. Kinna Ohman reports:
Today’s cattle are much bigger than they were back in the 1920s. They’ve been bred to
big and beefy. But, it turns out, you can actually produce more meat with the smaller
cattle.
Richard Gradwohl has been breeding miniature cattle for more than forty years. He
says with today’s larger beef cattle on five acres, you can produce 2400 pounds of
meat. He can raise as much as 7000 pounds of beef on that same five acres.
“It’s surprising to me how many large cattle breeders call me almost every day
because they’re interested in reducing the size of their animals to achieve more
feed efficiency.”
Gradwohl thinks the emphasis on breeding large cattle might be reversing.
Author David Kirby says cattle eating cattle by-product could risk another outbreak of mad cow disease. The FDA says there’s no measurable risk. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
