The Omnivores Dilemma Chapter 4

The Omnivores Dilemma Chapter #4- The Feedlot (Making Meat) 1: Pg.
65- The corn plant has colonized how much of the American continent? 125,000 square miles. 2: Pg. 66-67- How have Americas food animals undergone a revolution in lifestyle? Animals have found themselves leaving widely dispersed farms in places like Iowa to live in densely populated new animal cities. 3: Pg. 67- What is a CAFO? Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation 4: Pg. 67- What happened to the all of the farmland once the animals left? Where did all of the corn go? Corn rapidly colonized the paddocks and pastures and even the barnyards that had once been the animals territory. 5: Pg. 68- What is the idea of a closed ecological loop? When animals live on farms the very idea of waste ceases to exist which is when you have an enclosed loop which is a ecological loop. 6: Pg. 68- What are the two main problems with animal feedlots? Fertility problem and a pollution problem. 7. Pg 70- What is the coevolutionary relationship between cows and grass? Explain. For grass, the cow maintains and expands their habitat by preventing trees and shrubs from gaining a foothold and hogging the sunlight. The cow also spreads grass seeds plants it with its hooves and then fertilizes it with its manure. In exchange for its services, the grasses offer an exclusive supply of lunch. 8. Pg. 71- Why would pastures become the great American desert without ruminant animals? They would become deserts because the cows will no longer help the grass grow and fertilize it. 9. Pg. 71- What gets a steer from 80 to 1,000 pounds in just 14 months? Tremendous amounts of corn, protein, fat supplements and new drugs. 10. Pg. 71- Why is weaning the calves the most traumatic time on the ranch? It is the most traumatic time on a ranch because evolutionary logic represented by ruminant grazing on grass bumps up against the industrial logic that will propel the animal on the rest of its swift journey to a wholesale box of beef. 11. Pg. 73- What is the only reason contemporary animal cities arent as plague-ridden or pestilential as their medieval human counterparts? A historical anomaly: The modern antibiotic. 12. Pg. 73- So if the modern CAFO is a city built upon commodity corn, it is a city afloat on an invisible sea of ____________ Petrolium 13. Pg. 75- Why is corn fed meat less healthy for us? It contains more saturated fat and less omega 3 fatty acids than the meat on animals fed grass. 14. Pg. 75- What practice of feeding cows led to the Mad Cow Disease? Feeding cows rendered cow parts. 15. Pg. 77- How are we choosing which cows we want to select to breed? Selecting a breed that will eat large amounts of corn and transform it to protein without getting too sick. 16. Pg. 77- What is the #1 ailment found with cows fed on corn? Why- explain. Bloat. When diet contains too much starch and too little roughage rumination all stops and a layer of foamy slime in the rumen that can trap the gas. The rumen inflates like a balloon until it presses against the animals lungs. Unless action is taken, to relieve the pressure the animal suffocates.
17. Pg. 78- What is acidosis and what does it cause in the cow? Acidosis is a type of bovine heartburn which can kill the animal. It causes the cow to go off their feed pant and salivate excessively paw and scratch their bellies and eat dirt. 18. Pg. 78- What percentage of cows at slaughterhouses are found to have abscessed livers? 15-30% 19. Pg. 78- What is the leading causes of the evolution of antibiotic resistant superbugs? Antibiotics that are sold in stores are ending up in animal feed. 20. Pg. 79- What chemicals are found in the manure lagoon on CAFOs? Nitrogen and Phosphorus. 21. Pg. 80- How many pounds of corn does it take to make 4 pounds of beef? What is the ratio for chicken? 534 pounds of corn. 2 pounds of corn to one of meat. 22. Pg. 82- How has the new strain of E. Coli (O157: H7) evolved and what is the problem with it? How can this problem be fixed? There is a new anti resistant strain of E coli which has evolved. They can shake off the acid bath in our stomachs and then go on to kill us. 23. Pg. 82- How are the costs associated with the CAFOs externalized? Explain. These costs are externalized by the other costs such as the cost for fertilizer and corn. 24. Pg. 83- Discuss the path of corn backward from the corn fields and discuss the implications. The corn starts in a 125,000 mile square monoculture. Then the nitrogen of pesticide and fertilizer. After that the nitrogen runoff from the fertilizer goes to the Mississippi river which goes into the Gulf of Mexico adding poison to the ozone. And then it goes to the oil fields of the persian golf. 25. Pg. 83- How much of Americas petroleum usage goes to producing and transporting our food? 1/5 26. Pg. 84- If a cow reaches his full weight- how much oil will he have consumed in lifetime? 5 gallons 27. Pg. 84- You are what you eat is a truism hard to argue with, and yet it is, as a visit to a feedlot suggests, incomplete, for you are what you eat eats, too. And what we are, or have become, is not just meat but number 2 corn and oil- Discuss. I would say that the phrase You are what you eat is somewhat true. In a scientific sense, you do indeed absorb the energy from what you have eaten, but does that truly mean that you are what you have eaten? However, if you think of it in a logical sense, you can think of the phrase as meaning, you become what you are due to what you eat. So, if you eat beef that has eaten grass, you are what you are because of that beef and the grass it has eaten.

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The Omnivores Dilemma Chapter #4- The Feedlot (Making Meat) 1: Pg.

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