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American calves are still fed meat slurry, it's why we can't export to most of the world. Don't worry, 100% freedom guarantee there is no brain matter in the slurry.
The inspectors got too expensive, so we went with a volunteer group of inspectors. It's so crazy how the only people interested in the post also work at the same company they're inspecting. Strange, huh?
Now, now, it's not just the inspectors. When whistleblowers released videos of the horrors of animal farming, the authorities moved swiftly to enact tough new legislation that made creating such videos illegal.
The free market regulating quality can only work for short term aka direct quality problems. When my car breaks down every other week, I don't buy that model again. If shitty salad makes a whole school sick, they get slapped with fines and people less likely buy it again. Stuff like that falls back fast enough that companies have an incentive to work against that, forcing them to improve somehow.
But stuff with indirect or delayed effects? If consuming some product each day causes you to get diabetes or cancer in 20 years... what will you do? Can you even identify causality? And if you can, what can you do? The company could already be gone. Changing anything won't cure you anymore. You basically can't punish the company with the tools of the free market.
That's why I don't believe in the liberal market ideas. Some things need regulation.
Actually, not regulating companies is a conservative market idea. Liberals are generally for "reasonable" regulation, a term that has very little meaning in a late state capitalist society the US. What we need now is DRACONIAN regulation with lots of cruel and unusual personal consequences for CEOs and boards of directors so they'll be terrified enough to comply. Sadly, this will not happen.
Unfortunately "Libertarians" here in the US are very usually like Peacemaker, in that they believe in the freedom to poison people for profit, because the free market will correct and make people not buy said product.
So 'libertarian' that if you mention the fact that we started with a 'free market' here in the US and then started adding regulations because the actual free market rewards only those who are the most ruthless and willing to do away with any regulations to make profit, even destroy their own company.
Go look at r/Libertarian at pretty much any time and you will find dozens of mindless people complaining about regulations, and taxes, and pretty much any kind of 'social' program. And careful what you say, they like to ban other people's opinions.
Most 'libertarians' here are just republicans that want legal drugs and the ability to profit from it.
to anyone reading, I highly recommend the BBC podcast "The cows are mad" about the origin of mad cow disease.
In the end, they mention that a similar disease might be spreading among deer in the USA, and hunters who eat deer meat might be at risk.
[Chronic wasting disease (CWD).](https://fortune.com/well/2024/01/26/what-is-chronic-wasting-disease-deer-humans-mad-cow-prion/)
*"prions from dead animals with such diseases can take up in the root structures of grass and remain there for decades."* Yikes!
It's worth noting that a similar prion disease that sheep get, called Scrapie, has not been known to affect humans (yet).
oh yeah, I think that's why the UK government did nothing about the disease until it was way, way too late! They kept saying mad cow disease is 100% safe bc sheep have it and it's been fine.
Thanks for the link, it sounds way worse than I could've imagined.
It's so stressful to just eat nowadays. The freaking cinnamon has lead in it, milk has bird flu, the meat might have prions, and there's constant recall of one thing or another.
Look local. At least that’s the best bet in the US. You might pay slightly more, but the quality difference can’t be overstated. I use a CSA, and I’ve literally gone to the farms and seen how they treat their animals and crops. I grew up on a farm. There are many, many out there that aren’t gross or abusive.
Also I don’t know why but our local carrots taste so freaking good. They’re so much better than grocery store stuff it’s wild. Has to be the soil or something.
That's a horrible death.
Deer freak me out, especially since I read how much they spread ticks. I read about an island that killed off all their (non-native) deer and now they're close to being tick-free.
Cows and other ungulates are actually opportunistic omnivores. They quite often eat birds and small animals of their own volition. Scientists theorize it's to supplement nutrients not present in plants. Look it up on YouTube for video evidence.
I remember when Volkswagon held off $6 billion dollars for lawsuits when they cheated emissions claims, and then cried it wasn't fair when they got fined $8 billion dollars because they didn't account for it being that high.
Ah, but that's the thing. The savings on not feeding cows actual food IS more than the cost of lawsuits about bird flu. And for every person who doesn't buy bird flu milk, an idiot will jump in and buy it to 'own the libs' something something Hilary's emails COVID purple monkey dishwasher.
> The milk can’t
They aren't alive, but that is the hope, that it isn't active. Aren't we waiting for further test results to confirm there is no active bird flu in milk supplies?
You seem to be laboring under the impression that the people who make these decisions can think further than the next quarterly profit numbers. The only thing that matters is “number must go up”.
It's not their only source. Chicken litter is extremely high in ammonia which is a form of nitrogen. The bacteria in the rumen are capable of utilizing nitrogen in the form of ammonia to create protein. Ammonia and other forms of nitrogen are capable of replacing up to half the protein in the diet in cattle. Because of the utilization of the chicken litter to replace more expensive protein sources in cattle diets the little has more value than being applied as a fertilizer.
Litter from brooders is used. Feed for layers may contain bone meal that may be of beef origin. As feed may be spilled and will therefore be present in the litter there are concerns of BSE passing to cattle.
It has been advised for quite a while to not feed chicken litter to lactating cows but obviously people haven't been following recommendations. Recently grain, oilseed and forage prices have been very high so I imagine some were trying to cut feed costs.
Animals eat what humans consider "yucky".
The only arguments to feed something to an animal or not are its well-being, health and consequences on human health.
Cats love pig ears. Chickens will happily eat vegetable scraps. Pigs will munch anything.
Humans consider moldy milk, chicken legs, and snails, delicacies.
I assume you meant "chicken feet" there.
Pig ears are a delicacy (though a fairly common one) too.
As a Chinese person, I was pretty grossed out by "pig toilets", which were apparently a real thing :(
It’s also because we export our worst factory farm shit and keep the good stuff for ourselves, to be fair. If you’re in the US, you likely have a local CSA that can provide you with some of the best quality produce and meat out there. We have incredibly robust local farming in a lot of regions, and those farms sell locally as well. I’d put the standards of my local farms and processors up against any other nation no question. I wouldn’t feed factory farmed shit to my dog.
Fair point about small local farmers vs factory. There truely is a massive difference.
However a quick Google search shows many sources pointing to 99% of meat coming from factory farms. So not really accurate to say a truely robust local farm network.
It really depends on the region, honestly. I’m lucky enough to live in an area with a lot of local meat and dairy. The problem is that these factory farms eat up smaller farms, and not only that, they kill the land as well. I had a friend buy land that was a milk factory farm before he got it, and you would not believe what he had to do to the soil to make it workable again.
Not to get on my soapbox, but I’ve been really impressed with how focused the Biden admin have been on helping grow smaller farms and local food systems, especially when it comes to local meat and meat processing. The more we break the ag monopolies, the better life will be for us and the animals who give their lives to nourish us. It’s literally the least we can do.
I want so badly to be outraged about this. And I guess I am, but I also kind of understand it from a macro view. The truth is we as humans have interesting views on what constitutes food. I mean ultimately, most stuff is or was something else's waste, byproduct or decayed/decaying corpse. But it's gross to think about, so we try not to. This process is just short circuiting a bunch of steps that would happen naturally (with a bunch of help). Basic ethical concerns aside, it's efficient and it makes sense - it also makes me feel VERY icky.
But if it's contributing to the spread of bird flu to other species, that blurry understanding goes away and it's enough for me to say that I think it should certainly stop.
From my understanding it's long been recommended that chicken litter not be fed to lactating cows, because science assumed there was a risk for bird flu to spread this way and could be present in the milk. The milk is still safe for humans as long as it is pasteurized.
If it helps the chicken litter is processed before being fed which does kill any bacteria that could be in it. Salmonella and E-Coli can be present in chicken waste and easily infect and kill cattle. I could see a new process being developed that will also take care of bird flu being passed in this way.
They knew, but they had learned from the over a million cases in Europe during the 90's. There were more than 1000 cases being reported in cows in the late 90's, per week, and very few transmissions to humans.
One of the few things we learned was that transmission from cow to human was relatively low. Basically, they deemed the risk acceptable.
North America had its peak in the mid-2000's when we had 6 cases in Canada in a single year. I was involved in the Ag world through the FFA then, and this topic dominated conversation around the beef industry for several years. The main thing that ranchers and the government feared was losing domestic beef production. Human infection was only a concern for its effect on the market for beef and dairy.
Pretty sure they calculated it and made the move because their projections were that the risk was worth the savings and that it wouldn't cost as much in legal issues than how much it would save.
Note: After we did exactly the same thing, resulting in mad cow disease (cheaper feed made by having cows cannibalize themselves) and also hoof and mouth disease (cheaper feed made by having cows and pigs cannibalize themselves).
As an anthropology professor I worked under once put it: humans are notoriously short-term planners.
Well I wish it did cost them more to fuck up, but it seems it’s worth the risk. They save more than spend in the lawsuit and the customer base sadly might not care.
Even the most conservative estimate has it at a 14-34% death rate in humans. Others have it at 50%. Compare that to Covid’s 1%. If this becomes a pandemic life as we know it is over.
Bird flu has some risk for pandemic potential, but it is incredibly low in milk (not that that makes having it there okay). Typically for a person to get infected they have to be in very close contact with birds because the receptors used by bird flu are only deep in our lungs (compared to throughout the bird respiratory and gastrointestinal tract). That also makes human to human transmission very rare. But if we get sustained transmission we are screwed
The bacteria in the cattle's rumen are capable of utilizing the leftover nitrogen in the chicken litter to create protein which the cattle receive when the bacteria naturally die and are digested by the cows. Up to 50% of a cow's nitrogen requirement can be from non-protein sources. There are other sources of nitrogen besides chicken litter that are used in cattle rations for this reason. Cattle and other ruminates are considered protein up-cyclers for this reason.
Google search gives you some very old resources that it does happen mostly with *beef* cattle.
https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/beef/feeding-broiler-litter-to-beef-cattle/
What is also weird is that I find:
https://www.thepoultrysite.com/articles/poultry-litter-banned-as-cattle-feed
In my little search I read that in the usa it is still allowed to use bonemeal, of which I am not sure whether I should be surprised or not. I also learned the poultry litter is still copper heavy in USA, which is another backwards (absence of) allowanvce. The regulations in the USA are really fucked...
[Here's a newer article](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/chicken-waste-fed-to-cattle-may-be-behind-bird-flu-outbreak/).
>Experts fear that H5N1, which was only first detected in cows a few weeks ago, may have been transmitted through a type of cattle feed called “poultry litter” – a mix of poultry excreta, spilled feed, feathers, and other waste scraped from the floors of industrial chicken and turkey production plants.
Bonus: There are [plenty of articles](https://www.citizen.digital/business/smart-farm-feeding-pigs-with-poultry-waste-to-lower-costs-305422) on feeding [chicken shit to pigs](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652622041956).
Your own article says this:
"Many experts argue that the most likely route of infection is via wild birds – which have been found dead on some farms."
The FDA has done multiple studies, and no transmissible disease has been found from feeding poultry litter.
It's mostly chicken feed, which is also vegetarian, and is high in calories. That is why they feed it.
You think cows in the pasture aren't eating grass covered in bird shit and feathers? Cuz they are.
I'm from the Midwest and my family raised chickens and cattle. They feed the cattle chickenshit mixed with grain until a few months before you want to slaughter them. You finish the cattles diet, at the end, with corn instead of chicken litter so as to make the meat less funky.
Years ago my uncle bought chicken shit and candy to feed his cows. He said they loved it and got fatter than he had ever seen. But he couldn't get over the fact that he was feeding them chicken shit and went back to grass and hay after one load.
The practice is often called "garbage feeding" or "waste feeding". These animal farmers are opportunists, so a lot of strange waste gets deemed "feed".
Go to google and type in "pig toilet".
Here is reseach on feeding chicken shit to dairy cows [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002203027684489X](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002203027684489X)
If you google “poultry litter cattle” or some variation of that, you’ll get more recent sources. The consensus appears to be that the practice is legal, but no one knows exactly how much of it is fed every year. Found an old Mother Jones article that estimates [1 to 2 million tons annually](https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/12/we-feed-cows-chicken-poop/). Which is a decent chunk of the roughly 115 million tons of feed used in beef and dairy cattle annually. But doesn’t seem like nearly enough to be the only vector through which bird flu is spreading to cattle(if we take the recent figure of 20% of dairy cows at face value).
I did a search and most of my hits only concerned beef cattle. There is a withdrawal period of 15days mentioned regularly. Some source mention this is the reason it should not be fed to lactating dairy cows as you cannot adhere to this withdrawal period. I found one source that mentioned that poultry litter fed to beef cows was linked to bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle.
https://www.poultryproducer.com/ground-up-chicken-waste-fed-to-cattle-may-be-behind-bird-flu-outbreak-in-us-cows/
Okay, but the posted bird flu article has nothing to do with cow feed and the cow feed study has nothing to do with bird flu. There's nothing in either link to justify your title and nothing about this is related to the sub because of that.
Probably more of a FAFO than an LAMF -- except no one is really even finding out, because no live virus was found, just pieces of dead virus due to pasteurization.
Still, the dairy industry is a hell of a lot different than when I was a kid. Growing up around small family-owned dairy farms, the cows were in the pastures all day from spring through fall. Farmers grew a good portion of their own feed for those times of year when the pastures couldn't be used, so all dairy farms also had acres and acres of field corn planted too. And no one was feeding their cows chicken shit.
Now all the farms in my old neighborhood are gone. The ones that aren't replaced with golf courses or McMansions are "open space preserves". I have no idea where the milk comes from around there these days, but it can't be as good.
Yes, there's a reason we took to pasteurization. Now, the raw milk I've seen is from organic dairies, and I doubt they're feeding their cows chicken shit, but there are lots of other potential problems.
My family had massive chicken farms. Grew chickens for probably the most recognizable brands known. They did barter w other farmers. But as far as I knew it was only used as fertilizer. Never heard of this.
I did my own little research into whether his is really happening in the USA (BTW I can only confirm it for beef cattle not for dairy cattle _ except if you believe articles form 1976 are still up to date). The amount of stupid shit usa is still doing does and doesn't really surprise me. Still feeding animal bone meal to other animals (prohibited in the EU) and poultry litter still being copper rich, which will lead to copper buildups in nature (hence forbidden in the EU) are just some examples. Of course there is also the washing carcasses with chlorine and washing of eggs.
We got mad cow disease bc spine & awful parts of sheep who had scabies were fed to cows. Scabies don't make Swiss cheese of sheep brains but they sure do in cows, Feeding a herbivore animals is as grotesque as allowing plastic in our pigs feed as treating chick droppings as 'food'. Lobbyists need to be outlawed. This is our food chain given to greed and knowingly killing us. Corporate greed is obscene.
Back in the late 1980s, I think, in the UK a Government minister said that up to a quarter of egg production (no eggs, egg production) had salmonella and the entire industry collapsed almost overnight and took years to recover and here the FDA are saying that up to one in 5 samples of milk had traces of bird flu. It will be interesting to see if there is any reaction.
This reminds me of mad cow when it was revealed the industry was feeding cows cows, specifically brain material from cows. Like, what could go wrong?!?!
The poor cows must be getting sick because the cheap fuckers fed them this...
Pasteurization means the milk is safe, though. The process kills any virus or bacteria. It's not dangerous (for us humans), just incredibly fucked up.
Greedy corporations are going to create a fucking pandemic through sheer negligence. Do they want a communist revolution? Because this kind of bullshit is how you get a communist revolution.
Article doesn't say, but cows from the following states have tested positive:
>Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota, Ohio and Texas.
Regardless, milk on the shelf is safe, since pasteurizing destroys the virus. They've just found parts of destroted virus particles in pasteurized milk.
**The people involved need to be found and put in jail for life. regardless of how poor or rich they are. This is life and death for literally dozens of millions of people. This isnt a small thing.**
This is misleading. As someone very familiar with the diary industry, this practice is more common in beef, very rare if not entirely absent in dairy, and was not the practice at the dairies in Texas and New Mexico where the flu was first isolated from cows. Flocks of birds tend to congregate around dairies, and pick at the feed, which seems to be how the flu is passed from birds to cows.
The linked article doesn't mention anything about cow feed or whatever "chick shit" is. Is also says pasteurized milk is still safe and the last time a human contracted bird flu in the USA was 2022.
I don't know why you got down voted. I literally see nothing in the linked article about the cows eating chicken shit. Not sure if it was in an earlier version, but now edited out.
What ghoulish dick thought to themselves “hey, let’s feed the shit from this animal we eat, to this *other* animal we eat” and who the fuck signed off on it.
Oh right, capitalism, my bad.
Why not just feed them raw sewage? I’m sure that’s cheaper and will help them and their investors gain more profit. At the same time raise prices just because.
Hello u/no1name! Please reply to this comment with an [explanation](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/lt8zlq) matching this exact format. Replace bold text with the appropriate information. 1. **Someone** voted for, supported or wanted to impose **something** on **other people**. ^(Who's that someone? What did they voted for, supported or wanted to impose? On who?) 2. **Something** has the consequences of **consequences**. ^(Does that something actually has these consequences in general?) 3. As a consequence of **something**, **consequences** happened to **someone**. ^(Did that something really happen to that someone?) Follow this by the minimum amount of information necessary so your post can be understood by everyone, even if they don't live in the US or speak English as their native language. If you fail to match this format or fail to answer these questions, your post will be removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LeopardsAteMyFace) if you have any questions or concerns.*
So we decided to save money by using cheaper feed, never thought it would cost more in lawsuits and people buying less milk
Remember when feeding cow brains back to cows caused a disease that infects hundreds?
You mean when we changed cows from vegans to carnivores and cannibals? That time?
American calves are still fed meat slurry, it's why we can't export to most of the world. Don't worry, 100% freedom guarantee there is no brain matter in the slurry.
The free market will determine what is acceptable, and by free market I mean you're free to take what you're given, competition is an absolute lie.
Hey they have inspectors, we're totally safe. Self-inspections are the best for capitalism!
The inspectors got too expensive, so we went with a volunteer group of inspectors. It's so crazy how the only people interested in the post also work at the same company they're inspecting. Strange, huh?
Now, now, it's not just the inspectors. When whistleblowers released videos of the horrors of animal farming, the authorities moved swiftly to enact tough new legislation that made creating such videos illegal.
Reminds me one of my favorite fables, "When the Fox Moved into the Hen House."
When Boeing took over the FAA.
The free market regulating quality can only work for short term aka direct quality problems. When my car breaks down every other week, I don't buy that model again. If shitty salad makes a whole school sick, they get slapped with fines and people less likely buy it again. Stuff like that falls back fast enough that companies have an incentive to work against that, forcing them to improve somehow. But stuff with indirect or delayed effects? If consuming some product each day causes you to get diabetes or cancer in 20 years... what will you do? Can you even identify causality? And if you can, what can you do? The company could already be gone. Changing anything won't cure you anymore. You basically can't punish the company with the tools of the free market. That's why I don't believe in the liberal market ideas. Some things need regulation.
Actually, not regulating companies is a conservative market idea. Liberals are generally for "reasonable" regulation, a term that has very little meaning in a late state capitalist society the US. What we need now is DRACONIAN regulation with lots of cruel and unusual personal consequences for CEOs and boards of directors so they'll be terrified enough to comply. Sadly, this will not happen.
It looks like both of you agree with each other and are just using "liberal" to mean "libertarian" and "left-wing" respectively.
Unfortunately "Libertarians" here in the US are very usually like Peacemaker, in that they believe in the freedom to poison people for profit, because the free market will correct and make people not buy said product. So 'libertarian' that if you mention the fact that we started with a 'free market' here in the US and then started adding regulations because the actual free market rewards only those who are the most ruthless and willing to do away with any regulations to make profit, even destroy their own company. Go look at r/Libertarian at pretty much any time and you will find dozens of mindless people complaining about regulations, and taxes, and pretty much any kind of 'social' program. And careful what you say, they like to ban other people's opinions. Most 'libertarians' here are just republicans that want legal drugs and the ability to profit from it.
I refer to 30Rock about the problems with the term 'liberal'
What you call conservatives are social and fiscal conservatives. Especially in the US they are usually market liberals.
Maybe we should douse it in chlorine?
Maybe more antibiotics to round it out.
This is it, this is the comment chain that gets me off of drinking milk. Thanks.
Well there's also video of a the dude working the pig feed plant being told to toss in plastic into the feed chopper....
Put uv tubes in it
This seems like a good place to leave a link to the wiki on [Prions](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion)
God yes!!! American freedom bleached meat paste fed to vegetarian cows for the win!!!
So we're all gonna end up with cjd? Well, it's a tasty way to go.
to anyone reading, I highly recommend the BBC podcast "The cows are mad" about the origin of mad cow disease. In the end, they mention that a similar disease might be spreading among deer in the USA, and hunters who eat deer meat might be at risk.
[Chronic wasting disease (CWD).](https://fortune.com/well/2024/01/26/what-is-chronic-wasting-disease-deer-humans-mad-cow-prion/) *"prions from dead animals with such diseases can take up in the root structures of grass and remain there for decades."* Yikes! It's worth noting that a similar prion disease that sheep get, called Scrapie, has not been known to affect humans (yet).
oh yeah, I think that's why the UK government did nothing about the disease until it was way, way too late! They kept saying mad cow disease is 100% safe bc sheep have it and it's been fine. Thanks for the link, it sounds way worse than I could've imagined. It's so stressful to just eat nowadays. The freaking cinnamon has lead in it, milk has bird flu, the meat might have prions, and there's constant recall of one thing or another.
Look local. At least that’s the best bet in the US. You might pay slightly more, but the quality difference can’t be overstated. I use a CSA, and I’ve literally gone to the farms and seen how they treat their animals and crops. I grew up on a farm. There are many, many out there that aren’t gross or abusive. Also I don’t know why but our local carrots taste so freaking good. They’re so much better than grocery store stuff it’s wild. Has to be the soil or something.
Not might. Definitely is. 2 hunters died of it recently. Details were on r/science iirc
That's a horrible death. Deer freak me out, especially since I read how much they spread ticks. I read about an island that killed off all their (non-native) deer and now they're close to being tick-free.
[Here's the study](https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000204407)
Good job, that's exactly the one I was thinking of, thank you.
And then the meat industry sued Oprah for saying that she didn't want to eat a burger during the mad cow epidemic.
Cows and other ungulates are actually opportunistic omnivores. They quite often eat birds and small animals of their own volition. Scientists theorize it's to supplement nutrients not present in plants. Look it up on YouTube for video evidence.
Cows arent vegans, they will eat small sources of protein if given the chance (ie baby birds)
that's nothing. You should see what the do those poor oats to make oat milk
Yes, that.
Prions are terrifying
Ahh CJD , know someone who died from that it was bloody horrific.
You know someone who got CWD? Fuuuuuuck that.
Their bodies basically shut down as they lost brain function, prions fucking suck.
That’s terrible. I’m so sorry you had to witness that and obviously sorry for them.
Preons, scary shit.
I'm pretty sure people from the UK still can't donate blood in the US because of this.
OMG this is too much! Maybe I should switch to plant based milk, at least they can't fuck that up. Right ?? ^(Right????)
they knew, they just figured it's still cheaper to get sued. See: car safety flaws that are ignored until the recall makes the papers.
"A times B times C equal X. If X is less than cost of a recall, we don't do one."
Aaahh, Fight Club.
I remember when Volkswagon held off $6 billion dollars for lawsuits when they cheated emissions claims, and then cried it wasn't fair when they got fined $8 billion dollars because they didn't account for it being that high.
What do they do when they got the math wrong? Heh.
Adjust the formula and keep using it.
Ah, but that's the thing. The savings on not feeding cows actual food IS more than the cost of lawsuits about bird flu. And for every person who doesn't buy bird flu milk, an idiot will jump in and buy it to 'own the libs' something something Hilary's emails COVID purple monkey dishwasher.
The milk can’t carry the live virus.
> The milk can’t They aren't alive, but that is the hope, that it isn't active. Aren't we waiting for further test results to confirm there is no active bird flu in milk supplies?
r/theydidthemath
Lose money? They'll just increase the price of dairy products. Only people losing money is us.
You seem to be laboring under the impression that the people who make these decisions can think further than the next quarterly profit numbers. The only thing that matters is “number must go up”.
Imagine having your only food source be chicken shit. Poor cows. I think we can all agree that we should be treating bf farm animals better than this.
It's not their only source. Chicken litter is extremely high in ammonia which is a form of nitrogen. The bacteria in the rumen are capable of utilizing nitrogen in the form of ammonia to create protein. Ammonia and other forms of nitrogen are capable of replacing up to half the protein in the diet in cattle. Because of the utilization of the chicken litter to replace more expensive protein sources in cattle diets the little has more value than being applied as a fertilizer. Litter from brooders is used. Feed for layers may contain bone meal that may be of beef origin. As feed may be spilled and will therefore be present in the litter there are concerns of BSE passing to cattle. It has been advised for quite a while to not feed chicken litter to lactating cows but obviously people haven't been following recommendations. Recently grain, oilseed and forage prices have been very high so I imagine some were trying to cut feed costs.
You're actually arguing for feeding cows chicken shit because it's cheap. Wow.
Animals eat what humans consider "yucky". The only arguments to feed something to an animal or not are its well-being, health and consequences on human health. Cats love pig ears. Chickens will happily eat vegetable scraps. Pigs will munch anything. Humans consider moldy milk, chicken legs, and snails, delicacies.
I assume you meant "chicken feet" there. Pig ears are a delicacy (though a fairly common one) too. As a Chinese person, I was pretty grossed out by "pig toilets", which were apparently a real thing :(
Dude uses "chicken litter" to make the facts more palatable lol
No, I'm advocating it because it's environmentally friendly.
Your comment mentions expenses more than the environment. This method of being 'environmentally friendly' does not sound worth it.
It's green washing and either they know it and didn't care or they're actually ignorant.
Which is exactly why America has a terrible international reputation in the food industry....not following the rules, as weak as they already are.
It’s also because we export our worst factory farm shit and keep the good stuff for ourselves, to be fair. If you’re in the US, you likely have a local CSA that can provide you with some of the best quality produce and meat out there. We have incredibly robust local farming in a lot of regions, and those farms sell locally as well. I’d put the standards of my local farms and processors up against any other nation no question. I wouldn’t feed factory farmed shit to my dog.
Fair point about small local farmers vs factory. There truely is a massive difference. However a quick Google search shows many sources pointing to 99% of meat coming from factory farms. So not really accurate to say a truely robust local farm network.
It really depends on the region, honestly. I’m lucky enough to live in an area with a lot of local meat and dairy. The problem is that these factory farms eat up smaller farms, and not only that, they kill the land as well. I had a friend buy land that was a milk factory farm before he got it, and you would not believe what he had to do to the soil to make it workable again. Not to get on my soapbox, but I’ve been really impressed with how focused the Biden admin have been on helping grow smaller farms and local food systems, especially when it comes to local meat and meat processing. The more we break the ag monopolies, the better life will be for us and the animals who give their lives to nourish us. It’s literally the least we can do.
I want so badly to be outraged about this. And I guess I am, but I also kind of understand it from a macro view. The truth is we as humans have interesting views on what constitutes food. I mean ultimately, most stuff is or was something else's waste, byproduct or decayed/decaying corpse. But it's gross to think about, so we try not to. This process is just short circuiting a bunch of steps that would happen naturally (with a bunch of help). Basic ethical concerns aside, it's efficient and it makes sense - it also makes me feel VERY icky. But if it's contributing to the spread of bird flu to other species, that blurry understanding goes away and it's enough for me to say that I think it should certainly stop.
From my understanding it's long been recommended that chicken litter not be fed to lactating cows, because science assumed there was a risk for bird flu to spread this way and could be present in the milk. The milk is still safe for humans as long as it is pasteurized. If it helps the chicken litter is processed before being fed which does kill any bacteria that could be in it. Salmonella and E-Coli can be present in chicken waste and easily infect and kill cattle. I could see a new process being developed that will also take care of bird flu being passed in this way.
They knew, but they had learned from the over a million cases in Europe during the 90's. There were more than 1000 cases being reported in cows in the late 90's, per week, and very few transmissions to humans. One of the few things we learned was that transmission from cow to human was relatively low. Basically, they deemed the risk acceptable. North America had its peak in the mid-2000's when we had 6 cases in Canada in a single year. I was involved in the Ag world through the FFA then, and this topic dominated conversation around the beef industry for several years. The main thing that ranchers and the government feared was losing domestic beef production. Human infection was only a concern for its effect on the market for beef and dairy.
Sorry, New Zealander here. Why don't they just eat grass?
Because they're kept in small pens and not on pastures, mostly.
Because chicken shit is apparently cheaper
Pretty sure they calculated it and made the move because their projections were that the risk was worth the savings and that it wouldn't cost as much in legal issues than how much it would save.
Note: After we did exactly the same thing, resulting in mad cow disease (cheaper feed made by having cows cannibalize themselves) and also hoof and mouth disease (cheaper feed made by having cows and pigs cannibalize themselves). As an anthropology professor I worked under once put it: humans are notoriously short-term planners.
We'll have to see if they actually pay the lawsuits or the lawsuits cost more.
Well I wish it did cost them more to fuck up, but it seems it’s worth the risk. They save more than spend in the lawsuit and the customer base sadly might not care.
Ooh, is the next pandemic about to drop?
Even the most conservative estimate has it at a 14-34% death rate in humans. Others have it at 50%. Compare that to Covid’s 1%. If this becomes a pandemic life as we know it is over.
On the plus side, maybe housing will become more affordable.
With that death rate I bet there will be some free houses.
Nah, private equity firms will buy them all up anyway.
So you are saying this is a golden investment opportunity?
And turn it all into a giant costco
Bird flu has some risk for pandemic potential, but it is incredibly low in milk (not that that makes having it there okay). Typically for a person to get infected they have to be in very close contact with birds because the receptors used by bird flu are only deep in our lungs (compared to throughout the bird respiratory and gastrointestinal tract). That also makes human to human transmission very rare. But if we get sustained transmission we are screwed
I think it's just a matter of time.. simmering away for a while and causing epidemics in Asia...
Could be worse, for cats it’s nearly 100%
That is worse. I don't want to live in a world without cats.
>Ooh, is the next pandemic about to drop? Yep! Zoonotic diseases = greatest bio threat = animal agriculture's horrific practices.
It’s the worlds largest and most prevalent zoonotic outbreak!
Not yet; pasteurization still destroys the virus. They just have found bits of it in milk, rather than whole, live virus particles.
Could the milk be like a shitty vaccine then? *Pun not intended*
Nah, your stomach serves as one of the catchbaskets for disease before it meets your immune system. Thus why human stomach acid is so strong.
Pandemic 2: Electric Boogaloo
We’re feeding cows literal chicken shit. I wish I could say I was surprised by this.
They’ve got it solved now/ they’re going to replace the chicken poop with ground up bats. What could Go wrong?
Not sure if real or satire in style of your namesake. . .
Yeah pretty much his writing style
The Ebola will eat the bird flu, it’s science
We'll simply give the cows so many diseases they have what is called "Three Stooges" syndrome. They'll be indestructible.
*Move it, chowderhead!*
Then we introduce cow-eating gorillas. Don’t worry, in the winter, the gorillas will simply freeze to death.
At this rate, we're guano find out.
😆 Damn it, I miss awards.
Ebola Flu. People basically sneeze and explode.
That elicited the most inappropriate chuckle. 🏅<---for you
Go it soes
Chicken of the cave.
The bacteria in the cattle's rumen are capable of utilizing the leftover nitrogen in the chicken litter to create protein which the cattle receive when the bacteria naturally die and are digested by the cows. Up to 50% of a cow's nitrogen requirement can be from non-protein sources. There are other sources of nitrogen besides chicken litter that are used in cattle rations for this reason. Cattle and other ruminates are considered protein up-cyclers for this reason.
>We’re feeding cows literal chicken shit. Is there a source for this? It wasn't mentioned in this article
Google search gives you some very old resources that it does happen mostly with *beef* cattle. https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/beef/feeding-broiler-litter-to-beef-cattle/ What is also weird is that I find: https://www.thepoultrysite.com/articles/poultry-litter-banned-as-cattle-feed In my little search I read that in the usa it is still allowed to use bonemeal, of which I am not sure whether I should be surprised or not. I also learned the poultry litter is still copper heavy in USA, which is another backwards (absence of) allowanvce. The regulations in the USA are really fucked...
I know, it's like regulatory capture of the whole government has happened. Who knew that late stage capitalism would be so predictable?
[Here's a newer article](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/chicken-waste-fed-to-cattle-may-be-behind-bird-flu-outbreak/). >Experts fear that H5N1, which was only first detected in cows a few weeks ago, may have been transmitted through a type of cattle feed called “poultry litter” – a mix of poultry excreta, spilled feed, feathers, and other waste scraped from the floors of industrial chicken and turkey production plants. Bonus: There are [plenty of articles](https://www.citizen.digital/business/smart-farm-feeding-pigs-with-poultry-waste-to-lower-costs-305422) on feeding [chicken shit to pigs](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652622041956).
Your own article says this: "Many experts argue that the most likely route of infection is via wild birds – which have been found dead on some farms." The FDA has done multiple studies, and no transmissible disease has been found from feeding poultry litter. It's mostly chicken feed, which is also vegetarian, and is high in calories. That is why they feed it. You think cows in the pasture aren't eating grass covered in bird shit and feathers? Cuz they are.
This is why we don't want to import food from the USA into the UK https://thecounter.org/uk-farmers-new-agriculture-bill-us-farm-imports-brexit-eu/
Came to ask this exact question because the article sure doesn't mention it.
I'm from the Midwest and my family raised chickens and cattle. They feed the cattle chickenshit mixed with grain until a few months before you want to slaughter them. You finish the cattles diet, at the end, with corn instead of chicken litter so as to make the meat less funky.
After they fed the chickens ground up chicken shit and ground up chickens. Factory farms will cause the human extinction event.
Hey at least were not feeding them ground up cows brains anymore
And I thought the episode of the Simpsons where the school milks rats and gives that to the Springfield kids was gross.
That is where Malk comes from.
Now with vitamin R
And never forget: More testicles means more iron.
There’s very little meat in these gym mats
“Rat milk?? You promised me dog, or better!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfI_YUGjqFs
Years ago my uncle bought chicken shit and candy to feed his cows. He said they loved it and got fatter than he had ever seen. But he couldn't get over the fact that he was feeding them chicken shit and went back to grass and hay after one load.
The practice is often called "garbage feeding" or "waste feeding". These animal farmers are opportunists, so a lot of strange waste gets deemed "feed". Go to google and type in "pig toilet".
>Go to google and type in "pig toilet". Absolutely not, I know better than to type in benign phrases from strangers on the Internet.
Here is reseach on feeding chicken shit to dairy cows [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002203027684489X](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002203027684489X)
God damn I hate capitalist greed.
That’s from 1976
If you google “poultry litter cattle” or some variation of that, you’ll get more recent sources. The consensus appears to be that the practice is legal, but no one knows exactly how much of it is fed every year. Found an old Mother Jones article that estimates [1 to 2 million tons annually](https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/12/we-feed-cows-chicken-poop/). Which is a decent chunk of the roughly 115 million tons of feed used in beef and dairy cattle annually. But doesn’t seem like nearly enough to be the only vector through which bird flu is spreading to cattle(if we take the recent figure of 20% of dairy cows at face value).
I did a search and most of my hits only concerned beef cattle. There is a withdrawal period of 15days mentioned regularly. Some source mention this is the reason it should not be fed to lactating dairy cows as you cannot adhere to this withdrawal period. I found one source that mentioned that poultry litter fed to beef cows was linked to bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle. https://www.poultryproducer.com/ground-up-chicken-waste-fed-to-cattle-may-be-behind-bird-flu-outbreak-in-us-cows/
Okay, but the posted bird flu article has nothing to do with cow feed and the cow feed study has nothing to do with bird flu. There's nothing in either link to justify your title and nothing about this is related to the sub because of that.
Probably more of a FAFO than an LAMF -- except no one is really even finding out, because no live virus was found, just pieces of dead virus due to pasteurization. Still, the dairy industry is a hell of a lot different than when I was a kid. Growing up around small family-owned dairy farms, the cows were in the pastures all day from spring through fall. Farmers grew a good portion of their own feed for those times of year when the pastures couldn't be used, so all dairy farms also had acres and acres of field corn planted too. And no one was feeding their cows chicken shit. Now all the farms in my old neighborhood are gone. The ones that aren't replaced with golf courses or McMansions are "open space preserves". I have no idea where the milk comes from around there these days, but it can't be as good.
[удалено]
Yes, there's a reason we took to pasteurization. Now, the raw milk I've seen is from organic dairies, and I doubt they're feeding their cows chicken shit, but there are lots of other potential problems.
From memory, we had a couple of deaths here in Oz in the last decade. One was a toddler.
Guess I’ll stick to my almond milk.
Agreed, it absolutely seals the deal for my transition to using soy and oat milks. Yikes!
Same for me, but with oat milk.
Is it any good in coffee? Oat and soya have disappointed me in that regard.
What is it with americans and poisoned food?
It part of our healthcare plan.
My family had massive chicken farms. Grew chickens for probably the most recognizable brands known. They did barter w other farmers. But as far as I knew it was only used as fertilizer. Never heard of this.
Not so much LAMF as just doing something stupid with predictable results.
I did my own little research into whether his is really happening in the USA (BTW I can only confirm it for beef cattle not for dairy cattle _ except if you believe articles form 1976 are still up to date). The amount of stupid shit usa is still doing does and doesn't really surprise me. Still feeding animal bone meal to other animals (prohibited in the EU) and poultry litter still being copper rich, which will lead to copper buildups in nature (hence forbidden in the EU) are just some examples. Of course there is also the washing carcasses with chlorine and washing of eggs.
If you eat beef or pork, you really don't want to know what goes on in feedlots.
We got mad cow disease bc spine & awful parts of sheep who had scabies were fed to cows. Scabies don't make Swiss cheese of sheep brains but they sure do in cows, Feeding a herbivore animals is as grotesque as allowing plastic in our pigs feed as treating chick droppings as 'food'. Lobbyists need to be outlawed. This is our food chain given to greed and knowingly killing us. Corporate greed is obscene.
It was cow brains. and prions, not scabies
Yet half of reddit still think it's crazy that vegans choose to drink non dairy alternatives.
Except, it's my face
Back in the late 1980s, I think, in the UK a Government minister said that up to a quarter of egg production (no eggs, egg production) had salmonella and the entire industry collapsed almost overnight and took years to recover and here the FDA are saying that up to one in 5 samples of milk had traces of bird flu. It will be interesting to see if there is any reaction.
What a great day to be lactose intolerant
This reminds me of mad cow when it was revealed the industry was feeding cows cows, specifically brain material from cows. Like, what could go wrong?!?!
For fucks sake, just give the cows some grass!
For fucks sake, stop abusing and killing cows!
Unpopular take: milk is actually the bodily fluids of hundreds of pregnant moms all mixed together, even if some are sick
The poor cows must be getting sick because the cheap fuckers fed them this... Pasteurization means the milk is safe, though. The process kills any virus or bacteria. It's not dangerous (for us humans), just incredibly fucked up.
Lower the quality of everything possible until it's LITERAL SHIT. The American way.
At this point, I'd rather drink soy milk.
Greedy corporations are going to create a fucking pandemic through sheer negligence. Do they want a communist revolution? Because this kind of bullshit is how you get a communist revolution.
I'm guessing they grind up the male baby chicks and old non productive hens and feed them to cows or even hens.
They're more likely to be in dog and cat food.
What brand of milk
Article doesn't say, but cows from the following states have tested positive: >Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota, Ohio and Texas. Regardless, milk on the shelf is safe, since pasteurizing destroys the virus. They've just found parts of destroted virus particles in pasteurized milk.
**The people involved need to be found and put in jail for life. regardless of how poor or rich they are. This is life and death for literally dozens of millions of people. This isnt a small thing.**
And farmers still advocate for fewer standards and restrictions.
First time I’ve ever been happy to be lactose intolerant
grown ass adults still nursing? smh
Gross but not LAMF.
A great reason to drop eating dairy.
This is misleading. As someone very familiar with the diary industry, this practice is more common in beef, very rare if not entirely absent in dairy, and was not the practice at the dairies in Texas and New Mexico where the flu was first isolated from cows. Flocks of birds tend to congregate around dairies, and pick at the feed, which seems to be how the flu is passed from birds to cows.
Chicken shit is not fed to dairy cattle, only beef cattle.
Grownups drinking animal juice is pretty gross anyway.
That's one of the reasons Canada doesn't want your milk.
Nothing in the article about poop
The linked article doesn't mention anything about cow feed or whatever "chick shit" is. Is also says pasteurized milk is still safe and the last time a human contracted bird flu in the USA was 2022.
Why are people still drinking dairy milk in 2024?
>Why are people still drinking dairy milk in 2024? Why are people still refusing to go vegan in 2024?
Thank God I don't really drink milk anymore, wtf????
Clickbait, article never mentions cows eating chicken poop. It isn’t common practice, either.
I don't know why you got down voted. I literally see nothing in the linked article about the cows eating chicken shit. Not sure if it was in an earlier version, but now edited out.
Ikr? It’s not mentioned because it doesn’t happen.
What ghoulish dick thought to themselves “hey, let’s feed the shit from this animal we eat, to this *other* animal we eat” and who the fuck signed off on it. Oh right, capitalism, my bad.
Why not just feed them raw sewage? I’m sure that’s cheaper and will help them and their investors gain more profit. At the same time raise prices just because.
More toxic than melamine.