What's Your Beef?
One hundred and forty three million pounds of beef sounds like a lot, especially when it’s all going to end up in the landfill—or an incinerator (it’s gonna smell like barbecue in the old town tonight!)—but it’s probably not all that much after all.
I reckon that the average American eats at least a quarter pound of cattle a day—one Whopper would do it—so, with two hundred and fifty million or so folks from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon chomping away from morning till night, seventy-some tons would be gone in a day or two, certainly a week at most.
I’ll bet, though, if you piled it up, patty upon patty, it would reach pretty high; figure almost 600 million quarter-pounders, each, let’s say, half an inch a piece. That’s 25 million feet in the air, a pile almost 5000 miles straight up. Talk about a king-sized burger!
It’s interesting to me that people associated with the recall are disturbed that the cattle were treated badly by the slaughterhouse, although it seems to me that if they really cared about the ickle cowzies, they would be opposed to slaughterhouses in general. I myself can’t get too worked up over the fact that the so-called “downer cows” were lifted up on forklifts and carried off to be processed; it’s not like the ones who can walk to the abattoir by themselves have it any better.
The real shame in my mind is that a good deal of the bad beef has already ended up on the plates of kids in school lunch programs. If this isn’t a metaphor for the US Educational System, I don’t know what is: slabs of sickened cattle served without humanity to unsuspecting kids in lunchrooms across the country. I always wondered what was in that stuff the lunch ladies at Kerr Elementary called “Salisbury Steak.” I guess this solves the mystery of “mystery meat,” and perhaps also, why it was gray.
I reckon that the average American eats at least a quarter pound of cattle a day—one Whopper would do it—so, with two hundred and fifty million or so folks from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon chomping away from morning till night, seventy-some tons would be gone in a day or two, certainly a week at most.
I’ll bet, though, if you piled it up, patty upon patty, it would reach pretty high; figure almost 600 million quarter-pounders, each, let’s say, half an inch a piece. That’s 25 million feet in the air, a pile almost 5000 miles straight up. Talk about a king-sized burger!
It’s interesting to me that people associated with the recall are disturbed that the cattle were treated badly by the slaughterhouse, although it seems to me that if they really cared about the ickle cowzies, they would be opposed to slaughterhouses in general. I myself can’t get too worked up over the fact that the so-called “downer cows” were lifted up on forklifts and carried off to be processed; it’s not like the ones who can walk to the abattoir by themselves have it any better.
The real shame in my mind is that a good deal of the bad beef has already ended up on the plates of kids in school lunch programs. If this isn’t a metaphor for the US Educational System, I don’t know what is: slabs of sickened cattle served without humanity to unsuspecting kids in lunchrooms across the country. I always wondered what was in that stuff the lunch ladies at Kerr Elementary called “Salisbury Steak.” I guess this solves the mystery of “mystery meat,” and perhaps also, why it was gray.
posted by Professor Dave at 4:25 PM
1 Comments:
I really enjoy your blog but could not disagree more strongly with this post. It surprised me because honestly I thought I knew you a little bit from reading your blog. It would be well deserved if 2 million school kids got very very sick and learned a little bit about suffering. You hold human children in esteem that far above animals? As a yogi you have several lifetimes still to go.. Great blog though..
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