Best alternative.... Grow your own food!!!
This article brings to mind the argumnt I hear about decreasing the size and reach of government and regulation and letting private industries and the Market regulate themselves. I feel like that can only "work" if information is as honest and transparent as possible, and it really feels like private industries and research really skirt transparency as much as they can. But also, the other way around can't work either if we arn't paying attention to who it is in government that we trust to regulate as well. AHHHHHHHHHH IM OVERWHELMED
As Beef Cattle Become Behemoths, Who Are Animal Scientists Serving?
By Melody Petersen
"Scores of animal scientists employed by public universities have helped
pharmaceutical companies persuade farmers and ranchers to use antibiotics, hormones, and drugs like Zilmax to make their cattle grow bigger ever faster."
"It's been a profitable venture for the drug companies, as well as for the
professors and their universities. Agriculture schools increasingly depend on the industry for research grants, a sizable portion of which cover overhead and administrative costs. And many professors now add to their personal bank accounts by working for the companies as consultants and speakers. More than two-thirds of animal scientists reported in a 2005 survey that they had received money from industry in the previous five years."
"Administrators have set few limits on how much corporate money agricultural professors can accept. Faculty work with industry is governed by confidentiality rules that veil it from public view."
"In certain ways, the close relationship between animal scientists and pharmaceutical companies has never served the public well. Few animal scientists have been interested in looking at what harm the livestock drugs may be causing to the cattle, the environment, or the people eating the meat. They've left most of that work to scientists outside of agriculture, consumer groups, and others who take interest."
"As the cattle trucked to the packing plants have grown into bulky, lumbering giants, the quality of the beef has plummeted. Meat from the most pharmaceutically enhanced cattle—especially those given Zilmax—can be so tough that some packing plants are refusing to buy cattle fed the drug. Some cattlemen and beef-industry executives have also begun to speak out. They warn that continued use of the drug may make ranchers' herds difficult to sell, and end up hurting the image of American beef."
"At the universities, there are certain things you just can't say, because many functions are sponsored by the major agricultural business corporations," he says. "You don't talk against them."
"One feed company was mixing Elanco's drug with whey, milk, and barley and selling it to ranchers under the name Explosion, evoking the effect it was said to have on the beasts. The drugs come from a class of chemicals developed to treat asthma in humans. Scientists later found that they also turned fat into muscle in livestock. Both drugs are controversial. Dozens of nations, including China and the countries of the European Union, have banned their use because of concerns that residues in the meat could harm humans."
"Lawrenc says he doesn't view his speeches or articles as work done to promote Zilmax. "I do not tell beef producers to use or not use Zilmax. I report the data." He adds that it isn't necessary for him to tell ranchers that some packing plants won't accept cattle fed Zilmax, because that wasn't part of "our data collection."
"Editors at the Journal of Animal Science do not require authors to publicly disclose their ties to companies, even when an article discusses the product of a company from which they have received fees. The journal is the main scientific publication of the American Society of Animal Science, which has received financial support from Intervet and other pharmaceutical companies. The lack of a disclosure policy stands in contrast to policies at many other scientific publications. For example, The New England Journal of Medicine requires authors to detail their ties to companies in a lengthy statement, which is available on the journal's Web site. The medical journal also won't allow scientists to write review articles like the one Johnson wrote with the Intervet scientist if they have "significant financial associations" with a company selling a product under review."
"While products that make the cattle grow bigger increase the price that ranchers can get for their herds, the ranchers fear that the added expense of the drugs, as well as the cost of the extra feed that bigger cattle require, will leave them with no additional profit, or even with a loss."
"University administrators have increasingly pushed faculty to work with
industry and develop products since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, in 1980. The law allows researchers receiving federal grants to patent and profit from their discoveries, creating the possibility of lucrative new revenue streams for the universities. At the same time, money from other sources has continued to dry up, making the universities more dependent on industry's cash.
It was just about that time, in the early 1980s, that the amount of
agricultural research financed by industry surpassed that paid for by the government. In most years since then, government financing has lagged behind that provided by companies. From 1979 to 2006, industry spending on agricultural research increased fourfold.
The law caused furious debates at many universities. Many professors said they worried that their academic freedom would be limited by the companies supporting their research. Some learned from experience that their trepidation was justified. Allen Williams, the former professor of animal science, says that in the late 1990s, a company stopped him from presenting his research on its pregnancy test for dairy cows. The company had given him a grant to test the product and was trying to win government approval to sell it, but Williams's study suggested that the test didn't work. He says he was preparing to present the results at a conference when his department head told him to pull the abstract. He had argued that he should be able to present his findings because he worked at a public university financed by taxpayers. His argument went nowhere.
"They killed the publications," Williams says. "Because the company is supplying the research dollars, they own the research and dictate whether it can get published or not."
"Krimsky says the public should be concerned about the influence of drug companies inside schools of agriculture. The land-grant universities were created with a mission to help farmers, he says. "They were later convinced that helping drug companies help farmers was also part of their mission.""
"At Texas Tech, Johnson has been looking at this question: When a drug like Zilmax takes flavorful bits of fat out of the meat, might another pharmaceutical put that marbling back in? He received a $33,000 grant from Intervet to study how marbling in meat can be enhanced with chemicals. Papers by Lawrence, of West Texas A&M, have described how meat from Zilmax cattle can be tenderized by
jamming carcasses with needles or jolting them with high-voltage electricity.
In a 2004 paper, Lawrence looked at whether strip loins could be enhanced by pumping them with a solution of calcium lactate and rosemary extract. He has supervised a student who is studying how "lipid-injection technology" might improve the palatability of low-quality meat." AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
"One problem, says Allen Williams, is that the studies the companies pay universities to perform are short-term trials needed to get products approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But to determine whether it is safe to eat pharmaceutically treated beef over a human lifetime, he explains, studies would have to last for years.
"Nobody is doing those studies," he says. "We don't know the long-term side effects of these drugs, and I don't want my grandchildren to find them out."