“Livestock Wastes Fresh Water & Corn That Could Feed Poor?”

This has been the cry of Fund for Animals, Friends of Animals, Animal Protection Institute, HSUS, PETA and others for years.  They imply world hunger would be ended if no animals were raised.

      But only a small percentage of grain is of #1 Grade—fit for human use.  Most corn for example has fungal damage, insect damage and animal or bird defilement.  We still see this in most corn cribs.  Low-grade corn can be fed to animals; some can be made into fuel or other products.  One thing is certain:  Not enough is fit for human consumption to stop world hunger.  In “hungry” places around the world, livestock is the only buffer against off seasons.  Crops are grown until unfavorable weather, and then the animals are butchered as needed until crops start growing again.

Corn weavils damage a large percent of each year's crop: Who'd want to eat it? (Livestock would!)

A similar argument is “It takes a football field of water 6 feet deep to raise just one steer.”  That’s just about an acre, and just about 5 sheep.  Two years of rain, say 36 inches, will make enough grass to raise those livestock in most rich grass regions.  The water falls on that acre whether the animals are there or not, so it’s a bit misleading to imply they are wasting water.  In fact, most grassland isn’t fit for growing other crops—too steep, too rocky, soil too shallow, etc.—but it can grow grass.  People can’t live on grass, but we can eat the sheep that graze it.  So in fact, sheep make it possible for poor nations to grow more food, not less.

      Moral:  Always look for the activist’s unproven assumption and then follow the money.

If Dr. de Waal’s monkeys resent being paid too little, they would also resent the unfairness of having to give up more of that pay than some other monkey to buy the same or similar item.

      “Price injustice” occurs at the supermarket when American sheep growers find it hard to match low foreign production costs.   Those foreigners can graze their sheep year-round in fenced, unmanned paddocks.  They only actually handle their sheep 3 to 4 times a year.  Most American growers must winter the sheep laboriously on costly hay, silage and/or feed.  Our grazing land costs more than foreign lands, too.  About the only expense left for us to cut is labor costs, so we get our nation’s leaders to let foreign workers come and work for a fraction of what we’d have to legally pay Americans.  Elected leaders find this very cheery:  Cheap food equals more votes.

      Meanwhile, in towns and cities across America, happy shoppers (who don’t know better, but think they do) look at the price of local vs. foreign lamb, and often buy based on that perceived “price injustice.”  In doing so, they’re forgetting that:

• Foreign lamb production relies heavily on tons of predator poisons and livestock sprays and dips that townsfolk banned American stockmen from using.  Those bans were started long enough ago that today they forget to buy the American lamb they used to lecture us would be better without the chemicals.
• Only American sheep can help keep America’s wild lands and margins greener, more beautiful, healthier and freer of the invasive, non-native plants already destroying some regions’ ability to nurture wildlife.  Buying local lamb is a cheaper, tastier way than the usual chemical methods of dealing with these problems.
• The slight extra cost of American lamb helps pay for the production of the American wool that clothes our brave soldiers—family members and friends—with durable, comfortable, non-flammable, low-stink, super-silent apparel. This wool provides vital hygienic and anti-microbial traits amid all that nasty Third-World squalor while also shielding from the enemies’ fire-breathing weapons.

If they hadn’t forgotten these things, then they might very well go out of their way to pay extra for superior, meatier, fresher local lamb.

      So we have to remind them.

      And the best place to do that is face to face, while they’re paying us at least $250 per head. They get superb meat, fresher and cheaper than they ever could get at a store, plus a real live grower’s guarantee that this lamb will taste just like last time.