Boycott Factory Farms

I know not everyone on this site is a vegetarian for various reasons. If you are, it's easier to boycott the factory-farm industry. But if you are not, here are some ways to avoid contributing to the factory farm industry.

- Buy free-range meat. It's more expensive than factory-farm raised, and may taste a little different b/c these animals have not been genetically altererd nor have they been injected with drugs. Therefore, do not buy Tyson, Hillshire Farms or pretty much any other brand grocery stores carry. Not sure if your grocery store carries free-range meat? Ask!

-Choose only to eat meat once a week or once a month. That way, maybe you can afford free-range, and besides we consume too much meat as it is.

--Cut out all red meat from your diet. This includes beef, pork and veal. Americans far exceed nutritional red meat requirements. Bottom line- you don't need all of it! 35 million beef cattle are slaughtered annually in the US. Now think about this - land has to be cleared for these 35 million beef cattle to "live" and enough grain raised to feed the cattle. Clearing land, means cutting down trees and building an industrialized complex that emits poisonous gases into the air, and the grain to feed this cattle could feed hungry nations of people!! This, of course, in no way is making claims that the treatment of poultry is any better, it isn't.

-Do not eat at restaurants that purchase factory farm raised meat. This includes those who are vegetarians! When you eat a meatless dish at a restaurant, you've saved an animal, but you're paying money to a corporation to purchase more factory-farm meat! Don't know if a restaurant does? Ask! Write letters! Find out! I found out working at the Olive Garden that they bought their veal free-range, a rarity it the chain restaurant industry, but all other meat was purchased from factory farms. Most chain-restaurants are guaranteed contributors to factory farms, I heard a rumor awhile ago that Outback Steakhouse purchased their poultry free-range. Don't know if that is totally true or not, but if anyone does, please post that on here. I also found out that locally operated and owned restaurants around this city purchase their meat and even produce from private farms where the produce is organic and the meat is free-range. Some of these farms are in surrounding counties. This may be true in other cities.

The factory-farm industry has to be stopped. These animals have no freedom, and are treated horribly. I know that humans are not going to stop eating meat, but I just hope eventually everyone will stop contributing to the factory-farming industry, or at least just cut back on how much meat they consume. Anway, I was intending for this post to be neutral- as in not bashing vegetarians or meat eaters, or making one group sound better than the other. It is easier to avoid some of these problems if you are a vegetarian, but if you are not, you're not any better or worse. Unfortunatly, the effects of factory-farming on animals and the environment has an impact on us all.

 

Actually vegi's should boycott alot of the farms that raise there food too, its rapes the land. Free range meat can be cheaper that store meat if you buy from the source and the whole meat animal then go into shares with others if you cant use it all.

I buy 1/2 a moo cow, 2 piggies per year along with getting 50 pounds of smoked salmon and lots of wild game brought to me. Now I share alot becuase Im just one person and love to eat but yeah cant eat it all so I give lots away to peeps

 

that should have been than, lol, tired and my spelling has always lacked accuracy

 

As an environmentalist I respect what you're saying, but the having to clear land is completely fasle, I live on the open range in eastern Montana and one of the largest cattle producers in the region is sitting here in my living room here in the Lower Yellowstone River Valley.

There's wads and wads and wads of open range here, too arid and rocky and with soil too poor to support most agriculture, except irrigated wheat, barley and alfapha = bread, beer and the three combined is hi-grade cattle feed. These vast open grasslands in northeastern Montana provide the highest quality and variety of native range grasses in North America, this grass is the grass the cattle ranchers used to move their cattle north for the winter, the grasses even through the extreme winter provide the highest levels of cattle nutrition, there's billions of acres of open range out here. Cattle can eat what most other brousers wont, sage brush, rabbit brush, buffalo grass, these are grasslands, there's very few trees that can survive here, only down near the river some idiot brought in salt cedar and cottonwoods, which aren't native and are considered invasive as they've sucked away the natural water supply in the aquifer.

Some of the highest quality cattle in the world are raised in the soft northern pastures of Montana, the ranchers take really good care of their little doggies. My cowboy friend and his whole family will stay awake out keeping their calves warm in the harhest of calving season blizzards, they're very well cared for and loved. Their ranch handles more than 3 million cattle a year. They are some of the hardest workers, they are mostly born into ranching, and it's a hard life, with few rewards and few outs. Many of America ranchers are Native Americas and live on the rez. like on Ft. Peck.

The ecology out here needs free roaming large grazing animals, their hooves are good for the soil and they help spread plants and seeds, white people killed off all of the buffalo and fed all of the wild horses to their pets and Europeans, the deer and antelope, though plentiful, can't replace a heavy grazing species' job in the fragile range ecology. think about it.

No one would wish a cow to die from old age, old age is a horrible thing to die from for cattle, but you'd have to know cattle to know that. Their not like horses that can live long, they can't, they're hip bones will be exposed to air for a good while before a cow will die of "old age" which is a long and painful process for cattle, like no other animal. Not slaughtering them at the right age is considered crule, no one wants to wait too long, no one who cares for anything would wish that on a cow as a being.

They thought killing all of thw wolves off was a good idea until all of the other small grazers became overpopulated and sick, and the elk got unnaturally bold. Facts are very important.

Montana is the 3rd largest state landmass wise with the 2nd lowest human population, about 55% of the land is federal or state land with 60% of that being open range supporting a large portion of the nation's black and red angus herds. I'd like to see someone come out here and raise soy beans where they really raise the cattle.....

 

photo posting problem stand by...oh yeah and about the methane gas the cattle produce, there's some of us out here working to develope that as a source of renewable energy, a value added industry as they call it.

Acutally alternative energies are used more out on cattle ranches, wind and solar, because that's what we've got a lot of on the northern plains....besides the 80 million barrels of oil that were extracted from beneath this county last year.

 

We don't want to think, we want to know. Maybe come out to Fort Peck Rez. in far eastern Montana or Turtle Mountain, North Dakota to learn facts about the Native Americans and the reality of the ranching industry before encouraging boycotts based on thoughts not facts.

They have been raising "organic beef" for years here, but it's just not labeled that because they're range cattle you can't document every plant they may eat on the open range, impossible, and to be certified organic everything the cattle are fed EVERYTHING their entire lives must be documented and proven, who's got the resources to do that besides big corporate farms? it's all backwards from what you would THINK.

 

I never said boycott ranches. I said to boycott factory farms. A ranch as you are describing is not a factory-farm

 

im veggie too, but i've convinced my family to buy organic and free-range meat, eggs, and grass-fed, organic dairy, since they won't go veg. it's available in regular grocery stores here, it's not even like you have to make a special trip to a natural food store. i don't understand why the though of eating an animal FILLED with an unnatural ammount of growth hormones, plus antibiotics and pesticides doesn' bother the average person.

companies like perdue make me want to vomit. they routinely have chickens break their legs because theyve grown so fat so fast due to all the hormones they're pumping into them. and they literally throw them into the trucks to take them to slaughter, so by the time they are actually killed they have released a ridicoulous ammount of testosterne into their blood and muscle becuase they're so afraid.

everything about the industry pisses me off.

 

we already do (boycott factory farms)..people are so far removed from what they are eating its scary