"cows" news and stories

It looks like some folks in British Columbia are aiming to give purveyors of Kobe beef a run for their money. If they have their way, wine-fed Okanagan beef may soon be turning up next to Japan's prime bovine on the menu of high-end steakhouses.

That's right, "wine-fed" cattle -- as in, each cow gets a liter of Okanagan Valley red wine mixed into its feed every day for the last 90 days before it is processed. Yes, it seems strange at first, but when you stop to think about it, red wine and beef are one of the most classic pairings imaginable. What seems even stranger, then, is why didn't someone think of this sooner?

According to the Vancouver Sun (Vancouver is about four hours west of the Okanagan Valley), the genius credit here goes to Janice Ravndahl, a local meat purveyor from the town of Kelowna who also happens to come from five generations of Canadian cattle ranchers.

These days, we do what we can to rely on local products, but what about bringing the farm right to your back yard?

UK's Sunday Times has published an article on the wonders of mini-cows. That's right -- moo machines that don't need a big farm to thrive. The size of a cuddly German Shepherd, these cows will give you 16 pints of milk a day, chew up that pesky, ever-growing grass, and then become tender, omega3 fats-rich meat at the age of two. It's certainly a way to save costs and get an ever-present supply of milk. Those who have dipped into mini-cow delights will artificially inseminate to produce a new calf per year and get the most for their money.

Now, this sounds great, but I don't think selling people on the temperament of the mini-things is a way to get cows for milk and meals -- "Bessie is not only a 2-year animal friend, but a tasty piece of meat!" Then again, I'm tainted by a childhood experience where I befriended my family's cow before it got slaughtered for meat, and I not only lost a friend, but we couldn't eat her -- the cow had a disease that tainted the meat.

But back to the mini-cows -- is this something you'd add to your backyard?

A viral campaign produced by website Sustainable Table, The Meatrix is a cartoon that reveals "the lie we tell ourselves about where our food comes from." It started up a few years ago, and has since been translated into 30 languages and boasts new features.

Not familiar? Though cleverly animated and peppered with humorous anecdotes, The Meatrix films are definitely not a joke, and probably not suitable for kids. There are three installments, the first being an introduction to what Sustainable Table calls "the dark side of the meat industry," and the second and third, The Meatrix II: The Revolting, and The Meatrix II 1/2, which explores new avenues into the dairy and meat-packing industries.

Our pig protagonist, Leo, chooses the red pill, and follows Mootheus, a trench coat-wearing cow, who reveals the grim reality about most of America's meat and dairy products. As they walk around the farm and Mootheus explains how animals are packed into tight-knit quarters and injected with RBGH and fed the carcasses of their relatives, the juxtaposition of the simplistic, brightly-colored cartoons against the shocking statistics helps to drive the point home.

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Meatpaper is the self-proclaimed "journal of meat culture," and judging from what's up at their site, they're correct.

The site is filled with several articles on the "arts and ideas about meat," including pieces about the dry-aging room at New York's Master Purveyors, pig slaughter in Italy, why Filipinos eat Spam, and getting over the guilt of eating meat. There are also links to various food blogs.

The site itself says that they "like metaphors more than marinating tips," which I take as an indication that they're going to be talking about the world of food and not recipes and kitchen advice. They're taking subscriptions now, so you might want to check it out.

Now that meat and milk from cloned animals has been approved for sale and consumption by the FDA, all kinds of issues have been raised about these animals, from whether or not they can be considered organic to whether people will actually want to eat them. Those who support cloning say that cloned animals will be more disease resistant and that the products derived from them will be more consistent and of higher quality. The largest dairy producer in the US, the Dean Foods Co., has announced that they will be avoiding all of these issues because they will not sell milk from animals that are clones or have been cloned. A representative said that they "see no consumer benefit from this technology" and that surveys done on their behalf show that most US customers are simply "not interested in buying milk or milk products that come from cloned animals."

Dean Foods is the first major company to come out against using milk from cloned cows, joining smaller companies like Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and Organic Valley.

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