On Hormones, Baseball and Our Meat and Dairy

With the baseball playoffs gaining steam, I figured I'd repost this blog from a couple years ago. Unfortunately, not much has changed either in sports (see: Lance Armstrong) or in our food supply (see: 95 percent of the beef and dairy sold in this country).

PLEASE MR. COW, COME CLEAN; MARK McGWIRE DID!
(January 13, 2010)

So Mark McGwire finally admitted to using steroids. (Nixon resigns! Lindbergh lands in Paris!)

Now only if our cows would come clean about their continued steroid (hormone) use. However, unlike McGwire, the estimated 90 percent of American cattle which are shot up with drugs don’t voluntarily take hormones.

Yet they do, and just like McGwire (and Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa) they get really big, really fast. They also produce a lot more milk than they would without hormones. And the sooner they get to slaughter size (months ahead of their natural growth cycle), the quicker they can be processed into supermarket-ready cuts of beef.

Ka-ching!

Unfortunately, the public is getting duped, just like we were in the great home run race of 1998. Many doctors and scientists believe that the hormones are leading to early onset puberty in girls (eight years old in some cases), endocrine disruption, certain cancers and environmental issues (androgynous fish).

Mr. Cow, will you please come clean? If you do, I promise to vote for you for the Animal Hall of Fame.