"The Omnivore's Dilemma" - 2

In the second part of The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan delves deeper into the food industry of today.  He visits one of many Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), a so-called "farm" where corn, carbohydrates (specifically including the isotope carbon-13), are converted into protein and fat, "meat."  On several acres of land, cows are confined to pens in which they feed on around 40 pounds of corn per day.  If you know anything about cows, they are creatures that have adapted to eating and digesting grass (cellulose).  They have a special compartment in their digestive system called the rumen, where bacteria help to break down the cellulose from the grass.  They poop out the grass, which in turn sends more nitrogen into the ground which fertilizes plants.  Cows are not meant to eat corn.  They actually get sick from it, and bad bacteria builds up in their body.  Farmers give these cows antibiotics so they can survive long enough to gain the needed weight for slaughter.  Their waste is strewn about the pens, unused; the floor of their home is covered in it.  When there is too much of it, it is dumped into "lagoons" full of waste.  In about 3/4 the time of a normal-dieted cow, these corn-fed cows quickly gain the weight needed in order to be slaughtered. 

These CAFOs are not farms; they are industries.  These cows are treated like products rather than animals; they are the vehicles in which corn is converted to meat.  This is simply unethical.  On a normal farm, the cows eat grass and poop it out, which in turn gives the soil sustenance, and chickens spread the manure around and eat the parasites within it, producing great-tasting eggs.  In CAFOs, waste lagoons are produced, and they just sit there.  I would never know if a cow lives a happy life in a CAFO, but my guess is no.  There is so much corn that it has to be used somehow, and a CAFO is one of the places that utilizes it.  Like I said before, the only way to break a system like this is to stop advertising it; stop the subsidies.  These industries would not be able to function without subsidies from the government, and eventually they would perish.  For a healthy posterity, these industries need to be indirectly removed.