beyond beef :: essays research papers

      Jeremy Rifkins book, Beyond Beef, is an indictwork forcet against the cattle culture that has come to shape our world. the Statess obsession with beef has led to increased hunger, disease and environmental destruction. Rifkin, without a doubt, is anti beef and with painstaking verisimilitude attempts to shed light on the horrific conditions which are brought about by the entire industry. Furthermore, his book is evenhandedly of a continuity of Upton Sinclairs novel The Jungle, the first attempt do at exposing the exploitations of the meat slaughtering industry.      Ironically and rather unfortunately, the present situation is that temporary hookup the poor nations of the world are starving their own populations to produce and export beef, the rich, who are able to afford beef, are dying from diseases. Rifkin has several chapters apply to the host of illnesses those beef eating individuals are susceptible to. The titles include, Sa crifice to Slaughter, " cows Devour People, and "Marbled Specks of Death." One point he makes is that beca function of the widespread use of antibiotics among the cattle industry, the human population is increasingly vulnerable to mor virulent strains of disease-causing bacteria (12). Rifkin further attests that beef, but ranks second as the sustenance posing the sterling(prenominal) cancer risk. The reason is simple beef is the most dangerous food for herbicide contamination and ranks third in insecticide contamination. Eighty pct of all herbicides in the fall in States are sprayed on corn and soybeans which are used primarily as feed for cattle and other livestock. When consumed by the animals, the pesticides accumulate in their bodies. The pesticides are then passed along to the consumer in the entire cuts of beef. Large feedlots assume other sources of potential chemical contamination in beef including use of industrial sewage and oils in feedlot mixtures and ae rial sprayer of insecticides on feedlot cattle (13).      Furthermore, Rifkin indicts the human civilization and sheds light into the barbarous actions of men in the early development of the cattle culture. One of the most utile is in the chapter, "The Great Bovine Switch," an expose of the atrocities committed by the United States Army and cattlemen. Rifkin states that the cattle culture was responsible for the demise of many Indians,           When we hasten rid of all the Indians and buffalo, the cattle...          Will fill this country...These men the buffalo hunters have          done...more to settle the vexed Indian question than the entire          regular forces has done in the last thirty years.