A few weeks ago, I convinced my boyfriend, Pete, to go to the grocery store for me. This is decidedly not his jurisdiction, and whenever I ask him to go, it is always followed by a fair amount of foot stomping. However, this time he eventually agreed, and grudgingly set off with my list in his pocket and a grimace on his face.

When he arrived at our local Whole Foods, he meandered around a bit (Pete’s a wanderer) sniffing cheeses and grazing on samples before eventually making it over to the meat counter where he asked the butcher for a pound of bison. For some reason, this inspired the woman next to him in line to wrinkle her nose at him. She looked at Pete as if Fear Factor had sent him to the store with their shopping list, and asked him if he actually eats that stuff, and if so, why.

Where to start?

How about the American cattle industry?

The American cow may suffer more indignities than any just about any other species on the planet. We have taken an organism that has evolved to do literally nothing but graze all day on wide green pastures, and we’ve crammed him into a new industrial paradigm - the Contained Animal Feed Operation (CAFO). This vast, dusty, grassless landscape, the central feature of which is normally a giant shit-filled lagoon, is where most of our hamburgers, prime ribs and filet minions come from. Normally these feedlots contain thousands of cows, each of which produces 25 pounds of poop a day. With no modern waste treatment facility available to help deal with all that excrement, it goes without saying these places tend to have a fairly ripe aroma. Just ask any of the lucky individuals who happen to own property next to one.

With no grass to be seen for miles, one might wonder what, exactly, these cows are eating. Have you ever heard the term “corn-fed” beef? If you have, it is probably because the cattle industry pours millions of dollars into making us believe that corn spells quality when it comes to cows. But I’d like to propose that there is one reason that the cattle industry chooses to feed their cows corn instead of grass and that is, quite simply, that it is much cheaper to do so. (stay tuned for more articles on this phenomenon)

What the beef ad campaigns don’t tell you is that cows cannot digest corn. They have a rumen, which has evolved, over thousands of years, to digest grass and grass only. When they eat corn, their stomachs, which normally have a base pH, become acid and this ulcerates the walls of their rumen and often leads to liver disease. Many of them also get gas, or bloat, which expands their stomachs so much it crushes their lungs and they suffocate to death. Logic (as well as science) would dictate that the answer to these serious feedlot problems would be to introduce some hay into the cows’ diet. But the industry doesn’t do that. Rather it solves all these problems with a continual stream of antibiotics (a full half of all the antibiotics purchased in this country are consumed by feedlot animals. See Michael Pollan's interview with Frontline ) Constant exposure to antibiotics contributes to the growth of drug-resistant super germs that can and do infect humans. And it may explain why I had to try 3 different antibiotics to get rid of a sinus infection this year.

And that’s just the corn. Let’s not forget that until the 1997 law against cannibalistic cow feed was passed, they were feeding cows the rendered bone, blood, brain and spinal chords of their fellow cattle. This led to outbreaks of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or Mad Cow Disease. (According to Charlotte’s Sun-Herald on March 29th, 2006, there have been at least 1,000 violations since the passage of that law, some of which were committed by repeat-offenders, meaning that there are still “farmers” out there who feed their cattle the slaughterhouse leftovers.)

Even within the law, there are many loopholes that still exist. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists it is still lawful in this country to feed rendered cow products to chickens and pigs, and then feed rendered chicken and pig products to cows. Gone are the days of a linear food chain in American agriculture. We’ve opted instead for a system more befitting a tea party at Hannibal Lector’s house.

A WORD ON BSE and the government – Bill Fielding of Creekstone Farms, a cattle producer in Arkansas City, Kansas, whose primary customers were in Japan, Russia and Mexico, lost his clientele after the 2003 Mad Cow scare. His Japanese customers, who were paying $17 a pound for tongue, assured him they would return with their business if he could demonstrate that he tested 100% of his cows for BSE before slaughter. Mr. Fielding was more than happy to comply and tried to, but was stopped by the “invisible hand of the market” (better known as big business lobbyists on Capital Hill). On April 9, 2004, the USDA forbade Creekstone Farm to test its cattle stating that there was “no scientific justification” for doing so. This act, they claimed, might confuse American consumers into thinking there was a problem with current USDA standards or the beef industry as a whole. (New York Times, April 18, 2004).

At the time of Mr. Fielding’s complaint, the USDA only tested 1% of the 100,000 cows slaughtered everyday in the United States. In August 2006, the USDA announced that they would cut that rate by 90% to 110 cows a day. (USA Today, August 3, 2006).

But let’s be fair. BSE is not the only disease that has been born out of these CAFOs. There’s also E. Coli!

The new and deadly strain of E. Coli, 0157:H7, which was unheard of until 1980, was born in the belly of a corn-fed cow. This strain of E. Coli has learned to survive in the hyper-acidic environment of a cow’s diseased rumen. As a result it can easily survive in human stomachs where it can then go on to infect us with a deadly toxin. As few as 10 microbes of this strain can kill a healthy adult. (Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma)

Now compare all this with the life of a Bison. Perfectly suited to live in North America, having spent thousands of years doing just that, they roam the prairies, happily grazing on native grasses. They are resistant to local parasites and native viral diseases by virtue of evolution. And, at the moment, most commercially raised bison are still permitted to graze freely and naturally on the open plains.

The quality of life that bison enjoy shows up in the end product as well. Far from being riddled with various lethal pathogens, Bison meat is leaner, more nutrient-dense and richer in iron than beef. And it’s delicious

Now, obviously, Pete didn’t go into all this with the woman standing next to him in line at the meat counter. The truth is he was literally dumbstruck by the industrial phenomenon that has led people to believe that eating something natural and indigenous is deranged. So he simply shrugged and turned away, secure in his own choice to go native.