From wheeler@super.org Wed Feb 24 17:47:57 1993
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 10:32:28 EDT
From: wheeler@super.org (Ferrell S. Wheeler)
To: tms@cs.umd.edu
Subject: BB Background



Background

  Beyond Beef Campaign
  1130 17th St., NW
  Suite 300
  Washington, D.C.  20036


  Most people know that beef consumption plays a major role in the
development of heart disease, strokes, and cancer.  But the
over-consumption of beef is also a major cause of human hunger and
poverty, deforestation, spreading deserts, water pollution, water
scarcity, global warming, species extinction, and animal suffering.

  We in the United States are a big part of the problem.  Americans
consume almost a quarter of all the beef produced in the world.  Every
24 hours 100,000 cattle are slaughtered in the United States; the
average American consumes the meat of seven 1,100-pound animals in his
or her lifetime.

HEALTH

  Each year, the death toll continues to mount for consumers of beef and
other red meats.  According to a report by the U.S. Surgeon General,
more than 70 percent of deaths in this country -- more thatn 1.5 million
annually -- are related to diet, particularly the overconsumption of
beef and other foods high in cholesterol and saturated fat.  Study after
study confirms that consumption of red meat is a primary factor in the
development of heart disease, strokes, and colon and breast cancer.  The
American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the National
Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Pediatrics all
recommend that people reduce their consumption of red meat and other
animal-derived foods, and eat more grain, fresh vegetables, and fruits
instead.

  Recently, the National Research Council of the National Academy of
Sciences (NAS) found that beef contains the highest concentration of
herbicides of any food sold in America.  The NAS also found that beef
ranks second only to tomatoes as the food posing the greatest cancer
risk due to pesticide contamination, and ranks third of all foods in
insecticide contamination.  Aside from smoking, there is probably no
greater personal health risk than eating too much beef and other meat.

GLOBAL HUNGER

  The beef addiction of the United States and other industrialized
nations has set off a global food crisis.  Today, hundreds of millions
of cattle are being fed precious grain so that American and European
consumers can enjoy the pleasures of "marbled" beef.  Meanwhile, nearly
one billion people suffer from hunger and malnutrition, and between 40
and 60 million people -- mostly children -- die each year from
starvation and related diseases.

  Currently, more than 70 percent of the U.S. grain harvest -- and more
than one third of the grain produced in the world -- is fed to cattle
and other livestock.  We could provide proper nourishment to more than a
billion people if we used the world's agricultural lands to grow food
for human consumption rather than feed for cattle and other livestock.

THE ENVIRONMENT

  Forests, particularly the rain forests of Central America and the
Amazon, are being burned and cleared to make way for cattle pasture.
Since 1960, more than 25 percent of the Central American forests have
been lost to beef production -- most of it for export to the United
States and Europe.  It has been estimated that for every quarter-pound
fast-food hamburger made from Central American beef, 55 square feet of
tropical forest -- including 165 pounds of unique species of plants and
animals -- is destroyed.

  Today, the world's 1.3 billion cattle are stripping vegetation and
compacting and eroding soil, thus creating deserts out of grasslands.
More than 60 percent of the world's rangelands have been damaged by
overgrazing during the past half century.  In the United States, cattle
have done more to alter the environment of the West than all the
highways, dams, strip mines, and power plants put together.

  Cattle production is a major cause of water pollution.  In the United
States, cattle produce nearly one billion tons of organic waste each
year.  It has been estimated that cattle and other livestock account for
a significant percentage of pollutants in the nation's rivers, lakes,
streams and aquifers.  Raising cattle also requires vast amounts of
water.  Nearly half the water consumed in the United States is used to
grow feed for cattle and other livestock -- while our precious stores of
fresh water dwindle at an alarming rate.

  The grain-fed cattle complex is now a significant factor in the
generation of three major gases -- carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous
oxide -- that are responsible for global warming.  The burning of the
world's forests for cattle pasture has released billions of tons of CO2
into the atmosphere.  The world's 1.3 billion cattle and other ruminant
livestock emit 60 million tons of methane through their digestive
systems directly into the atmosphere each year.  Moreover, to produce
feed crops for cattle requires the use of petro-chemical fertilizers
which emit vast amounts of nitrous oxide.  These gases are building up
in the atmosphere, blocking heat from escaping the planet, and could
cause a global climate change of cataclysmic proportions in the next
century.

  Cattle and beef production is contributing significantly to the
dramatic loss of biodiversity, including species extinction, now
occurring across the globe.  In all major cattle producing countries,
wildlife habitat is being destroyed to create cattle pasture, as in the
rain forests of Central America, or the huge cattle population is
destroying habitat and using up food and water needed by wildlife.  In
the United States and Australia, cattle ranching has resulted in the
purposeful mass extermination of predator and "nuisance" species -- a
virtual war on wildlife.  In Africa, millions of wild animals have died
of thirst or starvation after finding their migratory paths blocked by
fences built to contain cattle.

ANIMAL SUFFERING

  Cattle are exposed to harsh living conditions, rough handling, and
often outright abuse and cruelty throughout their short lives.  Cattle
are routinely castrated, dehorned, and hot-iron branded without
anesthetics.  Cattle released on the open range must fend for
themselves for several months, often succumbing to weather extremes and
other dangers.  Animals transported to feedlots and slaughterhouses are
often shocked with electric prods, beaten, kicked, dragged and deprived
of food and water for long periods.  Overcrowded trucks cause broken
limbs; injured and sick animals are routinely dragged out of trucks and
onto the kill floor where slaughter techniques remain primitive and
brutal.

  The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences estimates 
that the sickness, injury, and premature death of cattle represents an
economic loss of $4.6 billion a year in the United States.




From wheeler@super.org Wed Feb 24 17:48:27 1993
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 10:32:46 EDT
From: wheeler@super.org (Ferrell S. Wheeler)
To: tms@cs.umd.edu
Subject: BB Farm Policy


FAMILY FARM POLICY

  Beyond Beef Campaign
  1130 17th St., NW
  Suite 300
  Washington, D.C.  20036
  Tel: 202-775-1132
  Fax: 202-775-0074


Beyond Beef Farm Policy

  By Howard Lyman, Executive Director, Beyond Beef campaign, former
     senior lobbyist for the National Farmers Union; and
     Mark Ritchie, Executive Director, Institute for Agriculture and
     Trade Policy

  To an intelligent being from another planet, U.S. food and
agricultural policies and programs would appear deranged.  Today, U.S.
taxpayers are helping to support an agricultural system that feeds
livestock before human beings, devastates peasant farmers, causes food
shortages and hunger for millions of people in developing countries, and
forces tens of thousands of small American farmers out of business.  The
current system also promotes the production and consumption of fatty and
chemical-laden animal-derived foods that are killing us, and is ruining
and poisoning the very soil and water we need to keep our agricultural
system running.

  Beyond Beef is promoting a fundamental restructuring of U.S. food and
agriculture policy in order to reverse these destructive trends.  We
need to make a transition from feed to food production by rewarding the
nation's small farmers with higher prices for growing food for people
instead of feed for livestock.  Those who wish to continue producing
grain-fed beef should have to pay the true market value of the grain.

  The world can no longer afford the social and environmental costs of
producing grain-fed, or even grass-fed, beef at current levels.  Reducing
the production and consumptio of beef by at least 50 percent will help
free agricultural land to grow food for human consumption rather than
feed for livestock.  Fewer cattle will also lessen the environmental
toll on the world's remaining forests and grasslands.  Encouraging
consumers who continue to consume some beef to demand beef from cattle
that are humanely raised under sustainable standards will help encourage
a new commercial market for organic beef -- a market niche that can be
filled by the family farm.

  Only the small family farmer can produce beef and other farm products
humanely and sustainably.  The Beyond Beef program is working to restore
the position of the family farm in American life.

  In the United States today, three voracious multi-national
corporations hold a near total monopoly on beef production.  Their
priority is cheap livestock feed.  U.S. government policies support
these corporations by keeping market prices below the cost of
production; American taxpayers are subsidizing the production of beef.

  The small family farmer is in a box.  He must produce more product at
a return below the cost of production in an attempt to spread his fixed
cost over more volume.  This dilemma makes the family farmer easy prey
for the huge agribusiness monopolies that dictate the rules of the game.
Unable to get enough income, the family farmer is forced to abandon beef
production altogether in favor of maximum yield production of
monoculture feed grain.  Even then, he's not receiving a high enough
price for the feed to cover his costs.  Moreover, attempts to increase
yields requires the use of more and more chemical fertilizers that, in
the end, are self-defeating because they increase costs and lower yelds
in the long run -- they are also polluting the environment.

  Grain sold in the world market for a price that is below the cost of
production is also devastating third world farmers.  Unlike their
American counterparts, however, they are not receiving taxpayer
subsidies to supplement their income.  They must either stop farming,
try to get a job in the city, or expand agricultural production into
environmentally sensitive areas such as the rain forest.

  Efforts by progressive farm organizations to establish fair prices for
corn, wheat, and other crops have been consistently blocked by the
giant agribusiness corporations that feed cattle in huge feedlots.  The
owners of these "beef factories" want to pay the lowest possible price
for feed, and they don't care how many small and medium-sized family
farmers go out of business or which rain forest gets destoyed.  Their
only concern is maximum short-term profit.

  If consumers unite with family farmers to break the monopoly power of
agribusiness, it can lead the way to both financial security for family
farmers and the elimination of ecologically unsound beef production.

  Farmers and consumers also need to work together to defeat new
government proposals which would open the U.S. market to greatly
expanded amounts of imported beef.  Most of this imported beef is
produced on rain forest land in Latin America, making it extremely low
priced.  Not only would the expansion of beef imports accelerate rain
forest destruction, it would drive down even further the price paid to
family farmers, pushing many tens of thousands out of business and
leaving the market solely in the hands of the huge conglomerates.

  For the moment, corporate control over the livestock industry means
that farmers and consumers will have to establish a number of
alternative marketing routes in order to meet the demand for organically
raised beef.  We need to follow the lead of other countries, where
consumer and farmer groups have agreed on specific standards for price,
quality, and ecological considerations, and then established a special
label for meats complying with these standards.

  The Beyond Beef campaign will challenge the unwarranted power amassed
by America's agribusiness corporations and the cattle and beef industry
giants...and promote a new commercial market for organically raised beef
helping to restore a viable market share for the nation's family
farmers.




From wheeler@super.org Wed Feb 24 17:49:12 1993
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 10:32:28 EDT
From: wheeler@super.org (Ferrell S. Wheeler)
To: tms@cs.umd.edu
Subject: BB Background



Background

  Beyond Beef Campaign
  1130 17th St., NW
  Suite 300
  Washington, D.C.  20036


  Most people know that beef consumption plays a major role in the
development of heart disease, strokes, and cancer.  But the
over-consumption of beef is also a major cause of human hunger and
poverty, deforestation, spreading deserts, water pollution, water
scarcity, global warming, species extinction, and animal suffering.

  We in the United States are a big part of the problem.  Americans
consume almost a quarter of all the beef produced in the world.  Every
24 hours 100,000 cattle are slaughtered in the United States; the
average American consumes the meat of seven 1,100-pound animals in his
or her lifetime.

HEALTH

  Each year, the death toll continues to mount for consumers of beef and
other red meats.  According to a report by the U.S. Surgeon General,
more than 70 percent of deaths in this country -- more thatn 1.5 million
annually -- are related to diet, particularly the overconsumption of
beef and other foods high in cholesterol and saturated fat.  Study after
study confirms that consumption of red meat is a primary factor in the
development of heart disease, strokes, and colon and breast cancer.  The
American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the National
Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Pediatrics all
recommend that people reduce their consumption of red meat and other
animal-derived foods, and eat more grain, fresh vegetables, and fruits
instead.

  Recently, the National Research Council of the National Academy of
Sciences (NAS) found that beef contains the highest concentration of
herbicides of any food sold in America.  The NAS also found that beef
ranks second only to tomatoes as the food posing the greatest cancer
risk due to pesticide contamination, and ranks third of all foods in
insecticide contamination.  Aside from smoking, there is probably no
greater personal health risk than eating too much beef and other meat.

GLOBAL HUNGER

  The beef addiction of the United States and other industrialized
nations has set off a global food crisis.  Today, hundreds of millions
of cattle are being fed precious grain so that American and European
consumers can enjoy the pleasures of "marbled" beef.  Meanwhile, nearly
one billion people suffer from hunger and malnutrition, and between 40
and 60 million people -- mostly children -- die each year from
starvation and related diseases.

  Currently, more than 70 percent of the U.S. grain harvest -- and more
than one third of the grain produced in the world -- is fed to cattle
and other livestock.  We could provide proper nourishment to more than a
billion people if we used the world's agricultural lands to grow food
for human consumption rather than feed for cattle and other livestock.

THE ENVIRONMENT

  Forests, particularly the rain forests of Central America and the
Amazon, are being burned and cleared to make way for cattle pasture.
Since 1960, more than 25 percent of the Central American forests have
been lost to beef production -- most of it for export to the United
States and Europe.  It has been estimated that for every quarter-pound
fast-food hamburger made from Central American beef, 55 square feet of
tropical forest -- including 165 pounds of unique species of plants and
animals -- is destroyed.

  Today, the world's 1.3 billion cattle are stripping vegetation and
compacting and eroding soil, thus creating deserts out of grasslands.
More than 60 percent of the world's rangelands have been damaged by
overgrazing during the past half century.  In the United States, cattle
have done more to alter the environment of the West than all the
highways, dams, strip mines, and power plants put together.

  Cattle production is a major cause of water pollution.  In the United
States, cattle produce nearly one billion tons of organic waste each
year.  It has been estimated that cattle and other livestock account for
a significant percentage of pollutants in the nation's rivers, lakes,
streams and aquifers.  Raising cattle also requires vast amounts of
water.  Nearly half the water consumed in the United States is used to
grow feed for cattle and other livestock -- while our precious stores of
fresh water dwindle at an alarming rate.

  The grain-fed cattle complex is now a significant factor in the
generation of three major gases -- carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous
oxide -- that are responsible for global warming.  The burning of the
world's forests for cattle pasture has released billions of tons of CO2
into the atmosphere.  The world's 1.3 billion cattle and other ruminant
livestock emit 60 million tons of methane through their digestive
systems directly into the atmosphere each year.  Moreover, to produce
feed crops for cattle requires the use of petro-chemical fertilizers
which emit vast amounts of nitrous oxide.  These gases are building up
in the atmosphere, blocking heat from escaping the planet, and could
cause a global climate change of cataclysmic proportions in the next
century.

  Cattle and beef production is contributing significantly to the
dramatic loss of biodiversity, including species extinction, now
occurring across the globe.  In all major cattle producing countries,
wildlife habitat is being destroyed to create cattle pasture, as in the
rain forests of Central America, or the huge cattle population is
destroying habitat and using up food and water needed by wildlife.  In
the United States and Australia, cattle ranching has resulted in the
purposeful mass extermination of predator and "nuisance" species -- a
virtual war on wildlife.  In Africa, millions of wild animals have died
of thirst or starvation after finding their migratory paths blocked by
fences built to contain cattle.

ANIMAL SUFFERING

  Cattle are exposed to harsh living conditions, rough handling, and
often outright abuse and cruelty throughout their short lives.  Cattle
are routinely castrated, dehorned, and hot-iron branded without
anesthetics.  Cattle released on the open range must fend for
themselves for several months, often succumbing to weather extremes and
other dangers.  Animals transported to feedlots and slaughterhouses are
often shocked with electric prods, beaten, kicked, dragged and deprived
of food and water for long periods.  Overcrowded trucks cause broken
limbs; injured and sick animals are routinely dragged out of trucks and
onto the kill floor where slaughter techniques remain primitive and
brutal.

  The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences estimates 
that the sickness, injury, and premature death of cattle represents an
economic loss of $4.6 billion a year in the United States.




