Word: livestock
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that needs a job. "Border collies are incredibly smart, but they get psychotic if they don't have work," says Lilliam Cummings, 42, whose two dogs devoured carpets, sofas and a Don Henley CD before discovering sheep. Typically, the pet is given an instinct test--introduced to livestock under controlled circumstances. If the dog has the genes, its joy in the chase proves irresistible. "When we saw the look in his eyes," says Ted Ondrak of his Bouvier des Flandres, "we said, 'We've gotta try this.'" The Ondraks wound up buying the ranch where today's workshop is being...
...representative of the U.S. meat and poultry industry, I was both dismayed and insulted by Ayres' doomsday article. Modern agriculture and meat production are among the miraculous accomplishments of the 20th century. Today our livestock and poultry convert feed into nutrient-dense protein with phenomenal and increasing efficiency. Cattle graze on rugged, mountainous lands that can be used for little else. The agriculture and meat industries should be commended for embracing--not avoiding--the science and technology that have enabled Americans to have the most nutritious and wholesome food supply found anywhere. J. PATRICK BOYLE, PRESIDENT AND CEO American Meat...
...water to grow. Pass up one hamburger, and you'll save as much water as you save by taking 40 showers with a low-flow nozzle. Yet in the U.S., 70% of all the wheat, corn and other grain produced goes to feeding herds of livestock. Around the world, as more water is diverted to raising pigs and chickens instead of producing crops for direct consumption, millions of wells are going dry. India, China, North Africa and the U.S. are all running freshwater deficits, pumping more from their aquifers than rain can replenish. As populations in water-scarce regions continue...
Unfortunately, this isn't just a matter of productive capacity. Mass production of meat has also become a staggering source of pollution. Maybe cow pies were once just a pastoral joke, but in recent years livestock waste has been implicated in massive fish kills and outbreaks of such diseases as pfiesteria, which causes memory loss, confusion and acute skin burning in people exposed to contaminated water. In the U.S., livestock now produce 130 times as much waste as people do. Just one hog farm in Utah, for example, produces more sewage than the city of Los Angeles. These megafarms...
These concerns may seem counterintuitive. We evolved as hunter-gatherers and ate meat for a hundred millenniums before modern times. It's natural for us to eat meat, one might say. But today's factory-raised, transgenic, chemical-laden livestock are a far cry from the wild animals our ancestors hunted. When we cleverly shifted from wildland hunting and gathering to systematic herding and farming, we changed the natural balances irrevocably. The shift enabled us to produce food surpluses, but the surpluses also allowed us to reproduce prodigiously. When we did, it became only a matter of time before...