Corn is Evil

I started reading The Omnivore's Dilemma this weekend. I am not quite halfway finished, but what I've read so far is rather startling. Maybe this is one of those Chicken Little books, or maybe it's got a conspiracy slant like Michael Moore. The author won a James Beard award, so he must have it at least sort of right, yes?

Apparently most of what we eat is corn-based, one way or another. HFCS, sorbitol, meat, eggs, cereals...corn was part of the food production. There's the delish corn on the cob type of corn and what is called grade 2 corn...this is corn that is used in food processing and animal feed. It is cheap and farmers will plant more when corn prices drop. It seems counterintuitive to the laws of supply and demand, except that the farmer needs $x for a year's crop, and if prices are low, he will need to produce more corn to take home the same amount of money. Obviously the increased corn production will further suppress prices and the government pays farmers to make up the difference. According to the book, the US has a 10 BILLION bushel surplus. What to do with all this corn? Find ways to consume it, of course. Hence the ethanol push. And feeding it to animals. Cows are one of the biggest corn eaters. Minor detail though: cows don't eat corn--they eat grass. Their bodies were built to eat grass. Corn makes cows sick. To offset the cow's natural inability to eat and digest corn, the feedlots mix 75% corn with fat, proteins, and hormones. The cows still get tummyaches and other more serious issues, which are treated with antibiotics. The USDA says livestock can't be given antibiotics unless the animal is sick. Well, when a cow is sick because of its food supply, then doesn't it seem obvious to stop feeding cows corn? Nope. Corn is the cheapest feed, so cows must eat it. One vet said that cows can't live on corn for more than about 150 days; coincidentally, the cows don't have to, because they usually get slaughtered right around the 150th day. This makes me wonder about Chipotle's antibiotic stance on their meats...I checked out the websites of several beef producers. Yes, they are much better than most beef processing, I'm sure. But they all say the cows eat corn, so they cows must get treated with antibiotics, right? One of the producers doesn't ship their cows off until 14 months of age, so the cow gets grass for all but two months of his/her life. Not long enough get sick, perhaps? Oh, apparently the cows we eat today are killed at about 14-16 months of age. Back in the 1950s, I think it was at 2-3 years of age; and back in our grandparents' day, it was 4-5 years, when cows were solely grass-fed.

Momma cows birth a calf and they hang out together for about six months before the calf is taken away and weaned. Apparently that's not natural because the author reported that weaning day is a tense day on a ranch (momma cows stay on ranches and eat grass; they are basically baby factories). The calf cries for his/her mother and momma cow moans for the calf. When the calf is six months old, he is shipped to a feedlot and taught to eat corn. Until that point, the calf drinks mom's milk and grazes on grass. Unfortunately calves can't stay with their moms because she usually gets inseminated again two months after she births.

I've sort of digressed about why corn is evil. BTW, I don't really think corn is evil. Just the people who manipulate our soil, ecology, and environment. Here's something that really shocked me: corn requires fossil fuels to grow. So what's with the push for ethanol then?! Corn requires fertilizers in the form of nitrogen to grow, which requires oil to produce. The really weird thing is that farms used to mean a few cows, horses, chickens, plant crops, maybe a few fruit trees. The animal manure is used to fertilize the crops, which in turn feeds the animals and humans. It was like a mini-ecosystem. With the introduction of hybrid seeds (not to be confused with GMO seeds), farmers could plant corn more densely, which required chemical fertilizers. Corn was more lucrative, so farmers kept allocating more land to corn and eliminating livestock and other crops. They used to rotate between corn and soybeans since the legume puts nitrogen back in the soil. Now, some farmers plant only corn on the land year after year.

I can't help but wonder if the changes in technology, food production, and food processing is affecting us as humans. I mean, we are consuming foods that were produced using "unnatural" raw materials or processes. Salmon, chickens, cows, pigs...they are all fed corn. Corn from many producers using different seeds--some hybrids, some GMOs. As a result of carnivores (salmon) eating corn, farmers must feed the fish additional fats and chemicals to maximize production. How do we know these hormones, antibiotics, vitamins, etc aren't being transferred to us? Chickens fed corn are then processed and chicken litter (their bedding, feces, and scraps of their feed) are fed to cows who are in effect consuming corn. Theoretically, cow manure produced at these feedlots can be spread on crops, except they are essentially toxic waste that would burn the plants. Runoff from the manure contaminate bodies of water, causing fish and amphibians to develop abnormal sex organs and body parts. Lovely! What should be black gold is instead toxic. Don't get me wrong--we eat what is available to us. But at the same time, most of us have no idea what we are really eating. The fact that corn requires a lot of fossil fuels to produce is alarming. One cow is equivalent to a barrel of oil between growing the food it consumes, the antibiotics, and other resources necessary to raise a cow.

I bought another book today, What to Eat. I can't wait to see what other eye-opening things I learn. Why stop the spending spree now, right? I also bought a Nintendo DS in red. Woot!