The World Peace Diet: Eating For Spiritual Health And Social Harmony

120 / the world peace diet
tioned to the meat industry and raised for beef. In this case they will face
the intense pain of unanesthetized castration when they are still young.
These poor animals may also be branded—often several times, inflicting
extremely painful third-degree burns—and dehorned, which is also
highly painful. They spend one to one and a half years either confined
or grazing, growing to a size that makes them profitable to slaughter,
and then are sent to the feedlot to be fattened.
On feedlots, hundreds or thousands of castrated cattle are crowded
together for a few months with little or no shelter, in fetid confinement,
and fed whatever the feedlot operators can devise to make them gain as
much weight as quickly and cheaply as possible (when they are sold, the
operators are paid by the pound). The unfortunate creatures, mere
objects in the meat complex, are given artificial steroid growth promotants
such as Ralgro, Synovex, or Rumensin so they will grow to be
much heavier much younger than they ever would in nature. 15 While
cows are natural grass eaters who would never eat grain in the wild,
feedlot operators, like dairy operators, have found that feeding them
grain boosts growth and profits. Because grain (mainly corn, soybeans,
wheat, and oats) is relatively expensive, it is supplemented with cheaper
additives to add even more weight to the cattle. Well-known cattle
feed additives are sawdust, cement dust, chicken manure, and petroleum
by-products. All the toxins in the grain, as well as in the other substances,
concentrate in the fat and flesh of the steer. Other feed additives
are equally unpleasant to contemplate: the ground-up bodies and parts
of animals obtained from the rendering industry. These animal products
are especially high in concentrated toxins, as well as fat, cholesterol, and
animal protein, which helps produce the marbled fat that brings a higher
price. The young steers are not allowed to move around, since that
would burn calories and toughen their flesh. Agribusiness has also discovered
that if animals are fed antibiotics routinely in their feed, they
grow faster, with the result that, according to the Union of Concerned
Scientists, over seventy percent of all antibiotics produced in the U.S. are
administered to animals imprisoned for food. 16 Antibiotics are also
administered to help combat the infections and diseases that are rampant
in the overcrowded feedlot environment where the steers are