A&W gets it wrong

My neighbour is in some 'gold' beef program-I forget name.
Which is supposed to imply regulations, quality control, etc.
The amount of hormones and crap he injects in his cattle is startling.
BLEH.

Ruffledfeathers wrote:
Why heifers, Coopslave?

I just have found, whether it is true or not, the meat is nicer and the flavour is nicer.  They don't get as big, so the cuts can be a little smaller (which I like because I like my steaks THICK) and I find they don't get as fatty as the steers do.  Like I say, just what I have found.  I am not sure what sterilised ones are like, any I have eaten have always been whole heifers.

Spaying, it is called spaying. Duh, the word escaped me when I first wrote this......

LynBar Ranch wrote:My neighbour is in some 'gold' beef program-I forget name.
Which is supposed to imply regulations, quality control, etc.
The amount of hormones and crap he injects in his cattle is startling.
BLEH.

If it is the Pfizer Gold program, it is not hormones that they are injecting. It is a VERY good immunisation program. I think many neglect to vaccinate their cattle and I think that is very wrong.

Very likely that I mis-heard the ad, since I start yelling very early on and often can't hear over my own shouting. Maybe the ad does not mention antibiotics. But when I was at the A&W last night (yes I was) I noticed little promo cards on all the tables. IT says no hormones were used in the raising of the beef, it's quite the little write up. Worth a read and more explanatory than the TV ad is. But print media is aimed at a slightly more literate crowd, and TV is aiming at, well, the drooling masses.

Coop, I chuckled over your preference for heifer meat. I have not heard of anyone spaying a heifer. What would be the point? The cost of the procedure would be considerable. We had a spayed mare, a procedure considered not all that common and quite costly in horses. Only done, according to my vet, in performance horses who are very good a their jobs but bothered by bad heat cycles, so you spay the mare so she is not affected by heat cylces. This is not done, according to vets, on backyard nags.

As for beef? I want a fat, lazy, useless steer finished on grain, laying in the sun, chewing his cud and gaping around stupidly. I like FAT on my beef. White fat. Lots of it. If he's had an antibiotic to cure an ill, I don't care. But I have no idea why a steer of appropriate breed and well fed should even need a stinking hormone. If it's cheating in our athletes, it's cheating in our stock yards too.

coopslave wrote:

LynBar Ranch wrote:My neighbour is in some 'gold' beef program-I forget name.
Which is supposed to imply regulations, quality control, etc.
The amount of hormones and crap he injects in his cattle is startling.
BLEH.

If it is the Pfizer Gold program, it is not hormones that they are injecting.  It is a VERY good immunisation program.  I think many neglect to vaccinate their cattle and I think that is very wrong.

No, it's a Canada Gold beef program or something like that- idea was to ship the best of the best beef to England. Where and I quote my neighbour, the Britains will pay the proper price for a steak dinner.
I know for a fact it's hormones. I had given him a hand til I saw what went into the cattle;(

I read through some of this post the other day and stopped reading because I was getting really frustrated at all of the posts, but I'm not able to articulate why, and what I know, in a manner that would stand up to scrutiny.   So I stopped reading.  Then today I read the article here: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and it so clearly states what I was thinking, that I have to share it.

My question is, how many of us who state such an aversion to 'growth hormones' in our food, actually know the makeup and quantity therein?  

My second question is, when you look at the stats on growth hormone-supplemented beef resource uptake vs. non, how can you argue that they're a bad thing, given the low ng #s?

Food for thought hey?  I know I'll get shot down for posting this, but I thought some of us would appreciate a different perspective, and one that sheds some interesting light on a topic that many people scream about but few actually know the science behind.  If I were smarter, I would find out if the stats in this article are scientifically proven. I sure hope they are, somewhere.

Cheers.

Thank you Farmchiq.

TO be clear, my original post did not make a judgement about anitbiotics or growth hormones being good or bad.

That is an entirely different topic, one worthy of investigation and debate.

My original post pointed more to QAULTIY OF LIFE AND DEATH, not just a few specifics of the animal's life, but the overall general picture of the way an animal is raised and slaughtered. Hormones and antibiotics are a tiny part of the big picture. BY focusing on some small point, you obfuscate the overall bad state of things. Look at this fabulous detail so you don't notice that the big picture is a mess. It's dishonest.

FarmChiq, I will admit that my knowledge of hormones or their application is nil. When dad raised beef we didn't use them. We bred beef that grew the way Gordon meant it to. Period. If a certain breed was a poor converter of food, it was scratches from the breeding program. It was not kept and FORCED into some defined growth rate my means of artificial forces. But that was the olden days.