Steak - Mark Schatzker [133]
“Quantity and quality are two opposing goals,” Grandin pronounced, neatly diagnosing the central problem of today’s meat industry. It didn’t matter how quantity was cranked up—hormones, genetics, drugs—there was always a price to be paid in quality.
One of Grandin’s major concerns of late is a drug called beta-agonists used in feedlots to make cattle gain muscle mass. The cost is tenderness. There are, presently, no controls on beta-agonist doses, and Grandin has walked into feedlots and found cows jacked up on them sitting down on the ground and panting like dogs. Beta-agonists make cattle sore-footed. “They act like they’re walking on hot metal,” Grandin says. And lately she has seen cattle dying in strange and unheard-of ways. “I went to a plant and saw a perfect black heifer that was just dead. That never used to happen. She had no snotty nose, she wasn’t bloated, no broken leg. Such a pretty little heifer.” Even moderate doses of beta-agonists can make cattle jittery, as if they’ve had too much coffee to drink.
If happiness is the opposite of stress, what makes cattle happy?
It comes down to core emotional systems, Grandin says. In all mammals, including humans, there is a primitive part of the brain called the subcortex that is home to basic emotional and life-support systems. “The emotions are down deep,” Grandin said. “They’re the motivators. An animal will run from a tiger because it’s afraid of it. It’ll seek out grass because grass is good.” The subcortex is roughly the same size in the brain of a cow as it is in the brain of a pig, and a human subcortex isn’t much larger. “The main difference between us and animals,” Grandin explained, “is that we have this big great computer sitting on top, which greatly increases the complexity of how the emotions are expressed.” But our basic feelings are the same basic feelings as a cow’s, and include emotions like fear, separation anxiety, rage, sexual lust, and nurturing. The subcortex is also home to pleasure and reward. If a human brain is scanned while that human eats something delicious, the subcortex lights up and sends signals, like forked lighting, up into the cortex. Anatomically speaking, it is the home of satisfaction and joy.
Like humans, cows enjoy eating tasty foods such as sweet grass, apples, or grain. What they don’t like, Grandin said, is to have fear, rage, or separation anxiety turned on.
We decided to head out to the countryside to observe basic emotions in action. As we drove, Grandin repeated much of what she’d said in the boardroom, often word for word, which is a common trait among people with autism. She talked again about how bad pork has gotten and then, seemingly from out of nowhere, mentioned romaine lettuce. “It used to be green,” she said. “Now it’s like iceberg lettuce. I think they’re breeding for rapid growth.” (All of which has disturbing implications for lovers of Caesar salad.)
Fifteen minutes out of Fort Collins, we pulled into Horton Feedlot and were met by the very same reek that invaded my nostrils in West Texas and that corn-feeding pen in Argentina. It was tiny by modern standards, housing around ten thousand cattle. Half of them stood at the feed bunk, dipping their heads down to load up on flaked corn feed.
“Are these cattle happy?” I asked.
Her response surprised me: “They don’t look unhappy to me.” None of the cows looked