"Wildbilly" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:

"Wildbilly" wrote in message
...
In article , Charlie wrote:

Joel Salatin.

Some of ya are familiar with this man and his work. His attitude
towards farming also works small scale, as in gardening.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment...oel-salatin-ad
voc
ates-a-better-way-to-raise-food


“We should at least be asking, Is there a righteous way to farm and an
unrighteous way to farm? ... The first goal is to at least get people
to appreciate that how we farm is a moral question,” he says. “Once
you get to that point, then you can actually discuss: What is a moral
farm? What is a moral way to raise a chicken?”

Thanks, Charlie, a real keeper.

"Back to nature" farming but he keeps pigs indoors? Thats very unnatural
so
I I certainly won't bother keeping it. Too much emphasis on
righteousness
and too little on nature TMWOT.

When I look down on that poor animal on my plate, the last thing I want
to think about is whether it had been tortured. We have canine's. We
are
facultative meat eaters, but that doesn't mean that we have to be
sadists.

The militarization of the country, with the increasing bloodiness of
entertainment (movies and video games), seems to be morally
de-sensitizing the populous.

I mean, who cares , if their dinner had to be delivered to the
slaughter
house by fork lift?

Huh?

http://www.texasgrassfedbeef.com/chi...imal_abuse.htm
More than two weeks after Wrangler's video caused a sensation
online, the USDA issued the largest beef recall in the history of the
United States: 143 million pounds of beef products, most of which has
already been consumed. About 40 percent of that meat went to the
National School Lunch Program and other federal nutrition programs.
Amazingly, all of the abuses occurred with USDA inspectors on the
premises.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallmar...acking_Company
The USDA stressed that it is "extremely unlikely" that the cattle
involved were at risk for Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or
mad-cow disease due to the employment of multiple safeguards. The USDA
felt the recall was required, however, as the plant had allegedly
violated USDA regulations.
(The USDA helps farmers sell their crops.)

http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournew...ion_update_013
008.html

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...ner_cow05.html
The video, taken by an HSUS investigator working undercover as a plant
employee at Bushways Packing in Grand Isle, Vermont, shows plant workers
attempting to skin sickly-looking calves while still alive and hitting
them with electric prods. The plant's co-owner is allegedly identified
as participating in the abuse, while the USDA inspector jokes with the
workers that if another inspector had been present, "he'd have to shut
them down."

Read mo
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...html#ixzz0gTOe
ZtXz

I guess it is just us effete, quiche and arugula chewing liberals, who
feel revulsion at the torture of animals. A real farmer, like you,
probably just takes it as another chore to do, but even so, skinning
calves alive seems a bit much.

http://www.all-creatures.org/book/r-slaughterhouse.html

http://www.vivausa.org/campaigns/chi...sterfarms.html

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1208-07.htm

And lastly, Joel Salatin:

p. 126

"Grass," so understood, is the foundation of the intricate food chain
Salatin has assembled at Polyface, where a half dozen different animal
species are raised together in an intensive rotational dance on the
theme of symbiosis. Salatin is the choreographer and the grasses are his
verdurous stage; the dance has made Polyface one of the most productive
and influential alternative farms in America.

Though it was only the third week of June, the pasture beneath me had
already seen several rotational turns. Before being cut earlier in the
week for the hay that would feed the farm's animals through the winter,
it had been grazed twice by beef cattle, which after each day-long stay
had been succeeded by several hundred laying hens. They'd arrived
by Eggmobile, a ramshackle portable henhouse designed and built by
Salatin. Why chickens? "Because that's how it works in nature," Salatin
explained. "Birds follow and clean up after herbivores." And so during
their turn in the pasture, the hens had performed several ecological
services for the cattle as well as the grass: They'd picked the tasty
grubs and fly larvae out of the cowpats, in the process spreading the
manure and eliminating parasites. (This is what Joel has in mind when he
says the animals do the work around here; the hens are his "sanitation
crew," the reason his cattle have no need of chemical parasiticides.)
And while they were at it, nibbling on the short cattle-clipped grasses
they like best, the chickens applied a few thousand pounds of nitrogen
to the
pasture-and produced several thousand uncommonly rich and tasty eggs.
After a few week's rest, the pasture will be grazed again, each steer
turning these lush grasses into beef at the rate of two or three pounds
a day.

By the end of the season Salatin's grasses will have been transformed by
his animals into some 40,000 pounds of beef, 30,000 pounds of pork,
10,000 broilers, 1,200 turkeys, 1,000 rabbits, and 35,000 dozen eggs.
This is an astounding cornucopia of food to draw from a hundred acres of
pasture, yet what is perhaps still more astonishing is the fact
that this pasture will be in no way diminished by the process-in fact,
it will be the better for it, lusher, more fertile, even springier
underfoot (this thanks to the increased earthworm traffic). Salatin's
audacious bet is that feeding ourselves from nature need not be a
zero-sum proposition, one in which if there is more for us at the end of
the season
then there must be less for nature-less topsoil, less fertility, less
life. He's betting, in other words, on a very different proposition, one
that looks an awful lot like the proverbially unattainable free lunch.
---
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dile...ls/dp/01430385
83/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815576&sr=1-1
--
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

Thanks for those comments Wildbilly. Far more useful than the Christian
Science Monitor article.

I read the comments attached to the cites you put in but I didn't go to any
as I'm sure I'd find them too distressing. Anyone who mistreats animals
needs a good whipping at the very least IMHO.

As a beef producer, I've been to both abattoirs and feedlots in this country
and been reasonably impressed with the handling of the stock and the killing
process. It's not ideal but given health regs and the need to protect human
health, I guess it's the best that can be done in the circs. Mind you, I'm
more impressed with most animals than humans so when I come to power, I'll
ditch the human health regs and make the rules all about the animals.