For all the meat-eaters out there who just aren't ready to go vegetarian:

Have a look at these funny and informative videos and learn how you can stop being a part of the problem and start being a part of the solution.

www.themeatrix.com
and
www.themeatrix2.com

I find meat bland and tasteless without the hormones and antibiotics, don't you?

You know, gbn, you are making an excellent point! If you've grown up on meat with hormones and antibiotics, the other stuff takes getting used to!

I remember laughing at the size of chicken when I first came here. Chicken breasts can be up to 3 times as big in the US. You can laugh at fruit and vegetable sizes here, too, compared to what we get in CA.

I'm finding it less and less funny these days, though, that everything needs to be so big and unnatural in America.

When I first came to CH from CA, I remember that my husband and I organised a typical American pancake breakfast with some friends.

I was shocked when these Swiss friends showed up with gifts. One brought real jam his mother had made. I had heard the word "rhubarb" once in a Batman movie, but had no idea what it was and that it could be made into jam with strawberries. The other friend (whose parents are farmers) brought some milk in a rinsed-out Fanta bottle. I asked, "did this come right from a cow?" and they all fell out laughing.

The milk here in CH is so darned .... well, milky! I've become spoiled on Swiss dairy over the last few years.

I found both movies quite interesting and being an ex UK farming type I thought it would be good to let the Brits here know that in the UK

Growth hormones have been banned since the late 70's.
The use of broad spectrum antibiotics not required for specific treament of an identified disease is also illegal.
Battery egg 'farming' is more rigidly controlled since 2002 but not yet banned - it will be phased out but no date yet.


In general, the movie that refers to dairy farming has an obvious flaw. It seems to suggest that small dairy farms using hand milking could provide a nations needs in place of large dairy farms using electric milking machines. I don't know about the USA but in the UK this is nonsense. For public health reasons (e.coli and streptococcus mainly) all milk must eb pastuerised. This means that milk must be collected at a central depot of some size for the pastuerisation process. Then you have the labour. With a small 8 place milking parlour a small herd of 40 cows can be milked in around 40 minutes to an hour by one person. Hand milking takes around 5 mins per cow if you're good at it so a little over 3 hours for the same job. This means that hand milking will produce much more expensive milk.

That leads nicely into the main reservation with the whole meatrix thing. The methods of farming that used to be carried out in the UK and, if the movies are anything to go by, are still being carried out in the USA, are driven by the supermarkets demand for low prices. It is often seen as being driven by consumers but this is not true.

Before large superstores there was more choice, better quality, and less intensive farming. Supermarket corporations like Tescos and Walmarts destroyed the retail market by introducing food at prices whith which the smaller grocers could not compete. The accompanying advertising campaigns lead consumers to believe that they were getting a better deal when really they were just being lead towards homogonised crap. Many people have forgotten that apples, for example, did not always look the same, the same size, the same colour, the same amount of shine (sprayed on by the way). Many varieties of apple that used to be available in the local grocer haven't been seen for years (Russets for example).

A good example iof how the supermarket chains are responsible for most of the problems in agriculture today is that of beef. Believe it or not, beef used to have some fat in it. In Hereford beef this fat gave a mottled effect to the meat which is not seen in supermarket crap where the supermarkets have dictated to the farmers as to what the beef should be like on the shelf. Fat gives meat flavour. No fat means no flavour - people started to notice so now when you buy a piece of beef from the supermarket it may have some fat wrapped around it - often this is pork fat.

There are still some good local butchers where real beef can be bought (try Jessies in Cirencester, best T bone steaks in the world, not as big as the USA perhaps, but no chemicals either) but these are few and far between and they are under a lot of pressure from supermarkets on price because they only sell meat - the supermarkets take a loss on the meat and hype prices elsewhere, like car insurance. It will stay like that until the local butchers disappear and then the supermarket prices will be the same as the local butcher prices but for a much lower quality product.

In my view, the fact that supermarkets now offer financial services shows them in their true light. My advice is to spurn them like you'd spurn a rabied dog (Black Adder, 1980s).

Finally, as I wouldn't want to have a go at supermarket chains without including the fast food outlets, lets ponder for a few moments on Bovine Spongiform Encephalytis. First the joke

What the difference between PMT and BSE?

One is mad cow disease. The other is a virus that effects cattle.

BSE is commonly thought to have come from farmers feeding cattle with feed containing meat recovery product - this is the meat that is scraped from the bones after all the good bits have gone, a bit like fast foods chicken nuggets (do not feed those to your kids if you love them - "MacDonalds Chicken Nuggets, now with REAL chicken Breast", what the feck was in them before?).

First thing, sounding a bit defensive but not meaning to, is that this has not been proven. Nor has there been a positive, proven link between BSE and thingamybob Jakobs diseas, the human form. But lets assume that is the case. Farmers only feed what the feed manufactures supply. The bag says so much protein, so much carbo, etc not where it came from (except fishmeal which is ground up fish).

Who put the crap in the feeds, that's the question. Who owns the feed companies. Surely not the same corporations that own the supermarkets and fast food chains?

In summary, the blame for the farming methods in place today can be allocated in the following priority order.

1. Supermarkets and fast food chains (one and the same) 75% Blame
2. Consumers - to be fair, there's little choice left 15% Blame
3. Farmers 10% blame

Food for thought... I know it's pertaining to the UK but it's relevant nevertheless.

http://www.hillside.org.uk/about-investigations.htm

http://www.tescofarming.com/sc2.php

http://www.supermarket-sweep-up.com/