Sunday, February 7, 2010

Chapter 6 On the Range

Chapter 6
Some problems currently facing cattle ranchers are the economic problems such as rising land prices, stagnant beef prices, oversupplies of cattle, increased shipments of live cattle from Canada and Mexico, development pressures, inheritance taxes, health scares about beef. Also, more than about half a million ranchers have quit in the last twenty years. "Trusts" set the prices offered for cattle. Prices spent on beef has fallen from 63 cents to 46.

The impact the consolidation of the meat packing industry has had on cattle ranchers are that they "flood the market with their ownn captive supplies, driving prices back down." The meat packing industry pretty much sets the prices for the cattle ranchers.

The impact of the Chicken McNugget is that it raised the poultry industry from "virtually powerless, trapped by debt and by onerous contracts" and chicken over all from "sold whole" and "carved at a dinner table to an easy-to-eat everyday finger food. "The impact of McNuggets was so huge that it changed the industry," the president of ConAgra Poultry said.

The nutrition facts of the McNuggets are thought to be healthier than hamburgers. And I won't lie, I thought the same thing. After reading, however, I learned that their fatty acid profile resembles beef more than poultry. They contain double as much fat per ounce as the hamburger, and are made from "small pieces of reconstituted chicken, composed mainly of white meat, that were held together by stablizers, breaded, friend, frozen, then reheated.

Way to go, Mr. Turner! You turned chicken from a healthy, sit-down-with-the-family food, into a fast-food revolution constructed in a lab.

During the 1980s farm crisis, people paid attention to the ever-so-high suicide rate among ranchers and farmers. In the United States, the suicide rate for these ranchers and farmers is a whopping three times higher than the national average. Hank was one of those poor agriculture workers. He was buried at his ranch.

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  1. Our Semester Project @ Los Angeles Trade Technical Community
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  2. Our Semester Project @ Los Angeles Trade Technical Community
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