Chewing The Cud

After a long absence due to the South Dakota State Fair, starting classes at SDSU, and switching jobs to work at the school meat lab, I'm BACK and Chewing the Cud (CTC) is ready for new improvements, exciting stories, and readers to take part in this industry we call agriculture!

Check out my new photo gallery to learn more about my family and life on the farm.

Listen to my recent radio shows!

Get ready for some tasty new recipes!

Read about HSUS and veganism.

Learn what YOU should do to protect agriculture!

STAY TUNED!

South Dakota State Fair Superintendent Dusty Anderson, Parkston, SD, joins me to discuss a BIG event at the fair. Supreme livestock, fitting kids, a poker game, and a sleek trailor...nope it doesn't get any better than this!

Ben Elliot, the face of Colorado's Best Beef Company, shares how his family's cattle operation took advantage of natural beef marketing opportunities.

Compassion Over Killing (COK) is gaining momentum in their "Go Veg...Exploring Your Food" camgains. The commercials aired on the popular teen channel, MTV and speaks about the treatment of livestock animals. Although I find the commercials far from accurate, I feel it is important to view this commercial to further understand my points.

With the propaganda feel of a 50s style “educational” film, COK’s newest 30-second commercial combines humor and truth to encourage viewers to explore their food and discover the reality of exactly what—and who—they’re eating. When the narrator asks Little Susie if she’s ever thought about where her food comes from, she innocently shakes her head no. She’s then taken on a behind-the-scenes tour inside the cruel world of factory farming, from the pigs in crates unable to turn around to the birds crammed inside wire cages to the veal calves barely even able to move. Susie drops her food in horror and viewers are directed to COK’s website, TryVeg.com, to order a free Vegetarian Starter Guide.

This sensationalized vision of animal agriculture, along with the innocence of a name like Compassion Over Killing, combined with a target audience of America's youth...these commercials easily point to disaster. Growing teens need milk and meat products for development, strength, and overall health. Quit the trends and throw out the trashy propaganda: animal agriculture will continue to nourish America.

This is a recount of my morning in Spanish class...

"Buenos dias!"my Spanish teacher greeted.
"Te gusta la comida?" (Do you like food?) Food, I like food.

Te gustan los chocolates? (Do you like chocolate?)
Oooh me encantan los chocolates! (I LOVE chocolate!)

"Te gusta la maize? Es numero producto en agricultura!" (Do you like corn? It's the number one product in agriculture!)
Yeah, I like corn. One kind feeds me, the other feeds my cattle!

"Te gusta la hamburgesa?" (Hamburgers)
I look around. Seems most people have their hands up. Who doesn't like hamburgers?

"Te gusta el bistec?" (Do you like steak?)
Oh boy, do I ever! Juicy, grilled to perfection steak! Count me in!

Todos los estudiantes? (Everyone likes steak?) No, not you Ashley? I whirl my head around. Who is this girl?

"No me gusta el bistec, Senora Lopez", replied Ashley, quite smugly, "No me gusta los carnes nunca, Nada!" (I don't like meat at all!)

Girls around her began to huddle and soon concluded that was the reason why she was so skinny. I didn't know what to do... I certainly couldn't turn around in my seat and ask her in class about it. I couldn't disrupt my Spanish lesson to discuss something so important as making a health decision like giving up meat! I wanted to scream out and ask, WHY ARE YOU A VEGETARIAN??? But I want an A in the class, so I kept listening intently.

Well, the semester is young, and I hope to talk to Ashley about it someday soon. It seems there is a common misconception that meat in a diet is bad for you. There are so many myths out there, fed to the consumers by animal rights activists, and they aren't giving the true story on the nutrients and health benefits of meat.

Check out these websites to learn more about how incorporating meat and dairy products in your diet can benefit YOU!

-MyPyramid
-Beef It's What's For Dinner
Pork-The Other White Meat
-American Lamb
-Milk-3 a day!

Gracias Amigos!

A South Dakota News Station posted this blog entry. Read on, and I'll provide you with the facts at the end! Keloland.com Blogs Posted by: Doug Lund

“Vegetarian is an old Indian word meaning lousy hunter.” Red Green
Alright..alright..you vegetarians don’t get your rutabagas in a stew, it’s only a joke.
Here’s another joke that I read the other day and thought was pretty funny:

“Eating less meat could help slow global warming by reducing the number of livestock and thereby decreasing the number of methane flatulence from the animals.”

Farm animals, especially cattle, pass so much methane through belching and *arting-fay that they contribute more to the greenhouse effect than all the planes, trains and automobiles in the world COMBINED!

Well, I thought it was a joke but believe it or not, lots of so-called experts are saying these things and are dead serious. They’re citing research that finds gases from animals destined for dinner plates account for nearly a quarter of all emissions worldwide..and that methane is much worse for mother earth than even carbon monoxide. So, they figure, it’s time to let these dangerous (but delicious) highly volatile creatures die a natural death and become extinct so that we may live a few more years before global warming gets us all.

Holy *ap-cray!

You know, maybe it wasn’t a comet that killed all the dinosaurs millions of years ago after all.
Perhaps it was their own giant blasts of methane gas that poisoned the atmosphere and did them in; their decayed bodies eventually becoming the oil we now use to run our fossil-fuel burning SUV’s. I don’t want you angry at me for making light of the situation. But if you’re buying-in to all of these theories and are thiniking about or have already decided to save the planet by giving up meat for a diet of tofu and celery, just do a little research right here on the internet.

There’s a lot of propaganda out there on this subject that’s designed to get you frightened into agreeing with certain points of view about this world of ours. Much of it comes from the usual suspects with familiar environmental and animal cruelty agendas. They are not concerned about the good people who raise livestock for a living or for those of us who enjoy what they produce. They would have us believe that you can’t be a friend of the environment and be a meat eater too and that’s just a pile of *anure-may.

*ask someone who speaks pig-Latin to translate

Here are my thoughts on this issue:

Was global warming an issue when there was nothing but wide open spaces, grazing cattle, and covered wagons? No, but there seems to be a lot of it now that industrialization has brought factories, planes, trains, and lots of SUV's. Chalk it up to another inaccurate propaganda being thrown around by the animal rights activists. (Note: animal rights activists fight for complete liberation of the species while animal welfare groups, which are nonexistent in today's world,used to fight for better treatment of animals.)

If you want to learn more about how cattle help the environment and make a more GREEN planet, check out the following links.

Beef From Pasture to Plate
Beef Matters

I went to my Advertising Principles class today at SDSU, and my professor likes to use real life examples of effective advertising and means of communication. He started the class like this...

We have a blogger in this class, that I won't name because I don't want to embarrass her, that blogs at www.chewingthecud.org.

Oh crap, that's me!

She writes about an ad campaign launched by PETA and COK (Compassion Over Killing) that released anti-agriculture statements about where your meat comes from. Let's watch this commercial.

Am I going to get mobbed? I ask myself. No Amanda, this is what you live for. Stand up for animal agriculture. My heart is racing; I'm scared, but ready.

Students from every angle of the spectrum begin to chime in their thoughts:
-Farmers and ranchers wouldn't mistreat their animals, its their business and their livlihoods.
-I've been to farms, and they truly care about their animals.
-I tried vegetarianism, and I think these ads work for me.
-Nah, this is propaganda, PLAIN and SIMPLE.
-Those dairy ads, "3 a day- Lose Weight" had to be removed for nutritional claims, so why do these groups get to run smear campaigns?
-The professor chirps in with, I've even tried vegetarianism, but I'm a red meat eater through and through!

I guess when Trent Loos says we need to be thrown into uncomfortable situations to stand up for animal agriculture, THIS IS WHAT HE MEANS! Click below to read Trent's thoughts on this heated issue. And everyone, keep this discussion coming!

(Trent Loos is an agriculture activist fighting to protect the food production chain. Check out his website www.facesofag.com and tune in to his radio show called Loos Tales.)