Canadian Beef

[brin11]

Actually, its not sad at all.  Other than possible links with transmitting disease its a common practice in many species.  They even do it with humans who lose their mother at birth.  These blood proteins (antibodies) are transmitted by the mother's milk and help to protect against disease early in life.  Ingesting proteins that are found in serum and mixed into a milk replacer are alot different than making little calves drink whole blood.

 

[dutchie]

I hope your right.....the article I read, and everything else I read, didn't mention serem as opposed to whole blood, so I just assumed these poor buggers were getting troughs full of blood mixed with feed. The image of a baby calf with a red milk moustache was a little frightening!

I'll take your word for it brin, and see if I can't do some poking around the net to confirm what your saying. How do you account for a lack of ban on feeding blood to calves, as indicated in the article? Are you totally sure that that isn't happening? (on a large scale, not some isolated incident of course).

Does anyone else know anything about this?

 

[FSTO]

I hope your right.....the article I read, and everything else I read, didn't mention serem as opposed to whole blood, so I just assumed these poor buggers were getting troughs full of blood mixed with feed. The image of a baby calf with a red milk moustache was a little frightening!

I'll take your word for it brin, and see if I can't do some poking around the net to confirm what your saying. How do you account for a lack of ban on feeding blood to calves, as indicated in the article? Are you totally sure that that isn't happening? (on a large scale, not some isolated incident of course).

Does anyone else know anything about this?

You must remember that these "articles" are written by people who have little or no understanding of agriculutre. They hear that blood is fed to calves and automatically they write this as fact instead of visiting several different farms throughout the country to see this practice with their own eyes. Qutie similar to the many stories written on the armed forces.

 

[dutchie]

Agreed. But I am a little wary of accepting that this doesn't happen when I do a google search and find no mention of serem only, but lots on 'calves fed blood of cattle'.

On one hand, there's the old saying "don't believe everything you read", but on the other hand, "where there's moke, there's fire".

Which is it? Am I having terrible luck (or ineptitude) while searching for the truth? Or is this one of those practices that is not really talked about?

I'll keep looking, but if there is anyone out there with first hand, recent experience on a dairy farm/veal farm, I'd love to find out the truth.

 

[FSTO]

Agreed. But I am a little wary of accepting that this doesn't happen when I do a google search and find no mention of serem only, but lots on 'calves fed blood of cattle'.

On one hand, there's the old saying "don't believe everything you read", but on the other hand, "where there's moke, there's fire".

Which is it? Am I having terrible luck (or ineptitude) while searching for the truth? Or is this one of those practices that is not really talked about?

I'll keep looking, but if there is anyone out there with first hand, recent experience on a dairy farm/veal farm, I'd love to find out the truth.

though I was not raised on a dairy farm,(purebred Hereford cattle is what I raised) I think that the logistics of collecting and distributing the blood from slaughtered animals to all of the dairy farms in a certain areas is quite beyond any cost recovery for the company involved. Also, there would have to be the blood tanker trucks going to the dairy farms. The only tanker trucks I have seen are the milk trucks, no way are they carrying both. On top of that I have never heard of this story before. Are you sure that the sponsers of this nonsense are not called PETA?

 

[brin11]

My stepfather is still a dairy farmer at this very moment and I can assure you he (and all the farmers in the surrounding area) do not feed troughs of blood to calves.   Its ridiculous.

Serum IS blood, it is the liquid part of blood after it has been allowed to clot and then removed from the cellular components.   As I mentioned before, it is a small amount of dried serum that is fed in a milk replacer to calves when they are first born.   Eventually, they are switched to simply milk replacer as they are, hopefully, protected from disease by these antibodies and/or vaccinated in the conventional way for such things as Scours, for example.

Most dairy calves that are not deemed worthy of keeping for the next generation on a dairy farm (male calves, bad conformation or cross breed calves) are raised by the farmer or sold to another party to be raised as veal.   These calves are fed a milk diet which is why veal is so pale compared to adult beef.   Also, they are usually not allowed much exercise as they are kept in rows of calf "houses" and are not allowed to roam in a field.

Even the practice of feeding herbivores rendered animal parts, while being an avenue to introduce disease to a herd, is not what many people think when they hear about the practice.   Animal protein in small amounts is dried and ground up and put into feed.   You would never know there was animal protein in it to look at it.   They are not eating steaks and roasts of their brethren.

edited to add this link:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/blood010904.cfm

 

[dutchie]

Thanks brin......I was aware, BTW, that animal protien fed to cattle/herbivores was not big chunks of meat, but rather ground up 'meal'.....what   I was concerned about was the one article I read in the Sun, and the subsequent articles on the net that had no mention of serem (which again, I am aware is part of blood), but lots of mention of 'blood'. Refering to serem as blood in an article is irresponsible and sensationalism, and ethically wrong...but I digress.

I was also careful to avoid reading articles from obvious lobbyist groups from the animal rights sector out of suspicion of bias to the point of misinformation.

I guess we've beaten this dead horse, no pun intended, but on a slightly different track, what do you (and others) think of feading herbivores rendered animals of any kind?

 

[Horse_Soldier]

I guess we've beaten this dead horse, no pun intended, but on a slightly different track, what do you (and others) think of feading herbivores rendered animals of any kind?

How would you feel about eating some yummy Solyent Green?  'Nuff said...

 

[dutchie]

What is 'solyent green'?

 

[Horse_Soldier]

Sorry, that should have been Soylent Green  :-[

It's the title of a 1973 movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/ wherein the punch line is "Soylent Green is people"  i.e. the miraculous foodstuff fed to the masses is actually made with rendered humans.  In other words, my point was that a cow would feel the same horror at being fed the remains of its own kind as we would be.

 

[dutchie]

Here, here.

Feeding animals to herbivores is wrong (especially feeding hebivores their own kind) -   profits or even survivability of individual farming business be damned.

I know I'll catch flak for that, but I won't hide my strong opinion on this.

BTW, I am an avid meat eater, but I won't eat humans. So I don't expect my food to eat their own so I can have cheap steak/chicken/eggs/pork/etc.

 

[FSTO]

I am very much against this practice. My family have never done this, never will and with the current price of cattle in the tank, it is too expensive (in the beef industry) use prepared feed (with or without animal protien supplements) to feed out slaughter cattle.

 

[brin11]

I'm opposed to the practice simply because its an avenue to disease, which has been demonstrated with BSE.   The practice itself is simply not abhorrent to cattle.   They really don't seem to care one way or the other what they're eating as long as it arrives in time every day.   Obviously, due to their digestive system, they are classified as herbivores and, if given the choice, will eat plant material only.   As we know, there are many humans out there who refuse to eat any animal material even though humans are classified as omnivores.   They are not fulfilling their digestive destiny either.

Anyway, Caesar, I wasn't targeting you with my lumps of flesh comment.   Simply trying to make a point that the mental image that people get when they read/hear something is not always what is really happening.

 

[dutchie]

Agreed, Brin, and that's why if what your saying is correct, and calves are only fed serem, and not blood, it's pretty irresponsible to state 'blood'.

I am against feeding livestock anything that is not natural for them to eat. It doesn't have to be 'organic', but if cattle are intended to eat grass, grain, and the like, that is all they should be fed. As far as: "They really don't seem to care one way or the other what they're eating as long as it arrives in time every day." Just because they'll eat it doesn't mean we should feed it to them. I don't think you were necessarily saying the opposite, but I thought I'd address that anyhow. I'm pretty sure if I fed my daughter human meat without telling her what it was, she would eat it....of course that's pretty sick, but the principle is the same, albeit more extreme.

Animals that eat other animals, no problem - feed them as much meat as they should have.

Re:"I'm opposed to the practice simply because its an avenue to disease, which has been demonstrated with BSE." - I agree, but I come at from the opposite angle. I am opposed to it for ethical reasons stated above. I feel that the immoral practice of feeding herbivores food they would never choose to eat in the wild, thus causing wicked diseases is a sign that the practice is a perversion of the natural order, if you will. It serves us right for putting profit ahead of humanitarian practices, fairness, common decency, and above all, common sense.

 

[Armymedic]

I grew up on a farm where we raised purebred Polled Herefords. The animals not quality enough to be kept as breeding stock we sold for beef.

To raise good beef producing animals, you need to feed them protein enhanced feed. The protein supplements (I remember from way back growing up) were soy based from a feed making company.

I do not recall any beef producer making his own feed, but mixing grain, hay, and straw with commercially mixed feed form a feed maker...

So I think the proper question at the beginning of the thread should read, "What are the feed companies putting into the food that CDN Farmers are feeding their cows?"

 

[brin11]

Armymedic,

Yes, soy is an excellent form of protein for cattle and very widely used, as are others.  Unfortunately, meat based protein is a cheaper, more readily available alternative which is why some will use it instead. 

Caesar, you make a good point on the ethics of this issue.  Just because an animal would not or is incapable of having a negative opinion on eating something it isn't designed to eat doesn't mean it should be done.  Since we should be the advocate for animals (since we are raising them and eating them for our pleasure) it is our responsibility that we think about and discuss these ethical issues and agree on what is a responsible practice of feeding our herds.

Cheers.

 

[Rushrules]

The Japanese test every slaughtered animal, but they still come up positives every year.  If we were to do the same, it'll certainly be more expensive (one test costs $100 or so/animal), but that's something the Gov't should pick up the tab for (much like current aquaculture testing) since they allowed this to happen in the first place.  But, since the market is opening up again, the same crap will go on.

The processors are the ones making money off this, since the price of beef at the market is the same (or more) since the ban was in place, but the farmers are still losing money.

We still feed rendered bovine material to poultry, and vice versa. 

 

[Armymedic]

And occasional even feeding them the "right" foods may be a bad thing...

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1105363247324_1?hub=Canada

More than 150 cattle have been found dead on a central Alberta feedlot, and the veterinarian who is investigating the case says the cows were incorrectly fed, causing their ultimately death.

The dead animals were found over the weekend, just days after the feedlot was seized by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

Veterinarian Kee Jim says the cause of death appears to be acute carbohydrate ingestion -- a massive stomach ache that proves to be fatal as the cattle eat too much grain. The cows were fed too rich a mixture of barley, causing their stomachs to become bloated and killing them.

About 20 more bloated and distressed cattle were euthanized over the weekend.

The feedlot with about 6,500 head of cattle had been struggling under the BSE crisis and had fallen under creditor protection.

The operation was transferred last week from the former owners to the receivers, Deloitte and Touche, which hired a company to manage the feedlot.

 

[dutchie]

Yikes! They ate so much their stomachs literally exploded!

Poor buggers.

 

[Armymedic]

Rereading the thread, I failed to see anyone mention a important scientific fact...

The prions (viral bits) that contributes to the cause of "mad cow" disease in cattle, naturally occurs in 1 in approx every 1 000 000 animals. Knowing this, and knowing there are over 3 million head of cattle in Canada, it stands to reason that Cdn cattle producers will grow cattle naturally affected by Bovine spongiform encephalopthy. And regardless of feed bans etc, this disease will still continue to develop around the world.