Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat by Howard Lym

Description: Mad Cowboy by Howard Lyman Now in paperback, this impassioned, no-nonsense account of the dangerous and potentially fatal practices of the cattle and dairy industries is told by a man uniquely qualified to blow the whistle--a former cattle rancher who has become a high-profile advocate for vegetarianism. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Told by the man who kicked off the infamous lawsuit between Oprah and the cattlemen, Mad Cowboy is an impassioned account of the highly dangerous practices of the cattle and dairy industries.Howard Lymans testimony on The Oprah Winfrey Show revealed the deadly impact of the livestock industry on our well-being. It not only led to Oprahs declaration that shed never eat a burger again, it sent shock waves through a concerned and vulnerable public. A fourth-generation Montana rancher, Lyman investigated the use of chemicals in agriculture after developing a spinal tumor that nearly paralyzed him. Now a vegetarian, he blasts through the propaganda of beef and dairy interests--and the government agencies that protect them--to expose an animal-based diet as the primary cause of cancer, heart disease, and obesity in this country. He warns that the livestock industry is repeating the mistakes that led to Mad Cow disease in England while simultaneously causing serious damage to the environment. Persuasive, straightforward, and full of the down-home good humor and optimism of a son of the soil, Mad Cowboy is both an inspirational story of personal transformation and a convincing call to action for a plant-based diet--for the good of the planet and the health of us all. Author Biography Howard F. Lyman is president of the International Vegetarian Union. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia. Table of Contents Contents How to Tell the Truth and Get in Trouble The Simple Facts Improving on Nature From the Farm to the Capital Mad Cows and Bureaucrats Biotech Bullies Bovine Planet Skip the Miracles and Eat Well Going Home Endnotes Bibliography Index Review Studs Terkel Howard Lyman is fighting not only for our health but for our nations sanity as well. He challenges not only mad cows, but a mad system. Long Description Howard Lymans testimony onThe Oprah Winfrey Showrevealed the deadly impact of the livestock industry on our well-being. It not only led to Oprahs declaration that shed never eat a burger again, it sent shock waves through a concerned and vulnerable public.A fourth-generation Montana rancher, Lyman investigated the use of chemicals in agriculture after developing a spinal tumor that nearly paralyzed him. Now a vegetarian, he blasts through the propaganda of beef and dairy interests -- and the government agencies that protect them -- to expose an animal-based diet as the primary cause of cancer, heart disease, and obesity in this country. He warns that the livestock industry is repeating the mistakes that led to Mad Cow disease in England while simultaneously causing serious damage to the environment.Persuasive, straightforward, and full of the down-home good humor and optimism of a son of the soil,Mad Cowboyis both an inspirational story of personal transformation and a convincing call to action for a plant-based diet -- for the good of the planet and the health of us all. Review Quote Studs TerkelHoward Lyman is fighting not only for our health but for our nations sanity as well. He challenges not only mad cows, but a mad system. Excerpt from Book Chapter One: How to Tell the Truth and Get in Trouble I am a fourth-generation dairy farmer and cattle rancher. I grew up on a dairy farm in Montana, and I ran a feedlot operation there for twenty years. I know firsthand how cattle are raised and how meat is produced in this country. Today I am president of Earth Save International, an organization promoting organic farming and the vegitarian diet. Sure, I used to enjoy my steaks as much as the next guy. But if you knew what I know about what goes into them and what they can do to you, youd probably be a vegetarian like me. And, believe it or not, as a pure vegetarian now who consumes no animal products at all, I can tell you that these days I enjoy eating more than ever. If youre a meat-eater in America, you have a right to know that you have something in common with most of the cows youve eaten. Theyve eaten meat, too. When a cow is slaughtered, about half of it by weight is not eaten by humans: the intestines and their contents, the head, hooves, and horns, as well as bones and blood. These are dumped into giant grinders at rendering plants, as are the entire bodies of cows and other farm animals known to be diseased. Rendering is a $2.4-billion-a-year industry, processing forty billion pounds of dead animals a year. There is simply no such thing in America as an animal too ravaged by disease, too cancerous, or too putrid to be welcomed by the all-embracing arms of the renderer. Another staple of the renderers diet, in addition to farm animals, is euthanized pets -- the six or seven million dogs and cats that are killed in animal shelters every year. The city of Los Angeles alone, for example, sends some two hundred tons of euthanized cats and dogs to a rendering plant every month. Added to the blend are the euthanized catch of animal control agencies, and roadkill. (Roadkill is not collected daily, and in the summer, the better roadkill collection crews can generally smell it before they can see it.) When this gruesome mix is ground and steam-cooked, the lighter, fatty material floating to the top gets refined for use in such products as cosmetics, lubricants, soaps, candles, and waxes. The heavier protein material is dried and pulverized into a brown powder -- about a quarter of which consists of fecal material. The powder is used as an additive to almost all pet food as well as to livestock feed. Farmers call it "protein concentrates." In 1995, five million tons of processed slaughterhouse leftovers were sold for animal feed in the United States. I used to feed tons of the stuff to my own livestock. It never concerned me that I was feeding cattle to cattle. In August 1997, in response to growing concern about the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (or Mad Cow disease), the FDA issued a new regulation that bans the feeding of ruminant protein (protein from cud-chewing animals) to ruminants; therefore, to the extent that the regulation is actually enforced, cattle are no longer quite the cannibals that we had made them into. They are no longer eating solid parts of other cattle, or sheep, or goats. They still munch, however, on ground-up dead horses, dogs, cats, pigs, chickens, and turkeys, as well as blood and fecal material of their own species and that of chickens. About 75 percent of the ninety million beef cattle in America are routinely given feed that has been "enriched" with rendered animal parts. The use of animal excrement in feed is common as well, as livestock operators have found it to be an efficient way of disposing of a portion of the 1.6 million tons of livestock wastes generated annually by their industry. In Arkansas, for example, the average farm feeds over fifty tons of chicken litter to cattle every year. One Arkansas cattle farmer was quoted in U.S. News & World Report as having recently purchased 745 tons of litter collected from the floors of local chicken-raising operations. After mixing it with small amounts of soybean bran, he then feeds it to his eight hundred head of cattle, making them, in his words, "fat as butterballs." He explained, "If I didnt have chicken litter, Id have to sell half my herd. Other feeds are too expensive." If you are a meat-eater, understand that this is the food of your food. We dont know all there is to know about the extent to which the consumption of diseased or unhealthy animals causes disease in humans, but we do know that some diseases -- rabies, for example -- are transmitted from the host animal to humans. We know that the common food poisonings brought on by such organisms as the prevalent E. coli bacteria, which results from fecal contamination of food, causes the death of nine thousand Americans a year and that about 80 percent of food poisonings come from tainted meat. And now we can also be certain, from the tragedy that has already afflicted Britain, that Mad Cow disease can "jump species" and give rise to a new variant of the always fatal, brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. A funny thing can happen when you tell the truth in this country. You can get sued. In April of 1996, I was sitting on the stage of The Oprah Winfrey Show, looking into the shocked faces of a studio audience that was learning for the first time that we were turning cows into cannibals. "Right now," I explained, "were following exactly the same path that they followed in England -- ten years of dealing with [Mad Cow disease] as public relations rather than doing something substantial about it. A hundred thousand cows per year in the United States are fine one night, then [found] dead the following morning. The majority of those cows are...ground up and fed back to other cows. If only one of them has Mad Cow disease, it has the potential to affect thousands." Oprah herself was taken aback, and said quite simply, "Cows are herbivores. They shouldnt be eating other cows....It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger." Sitting next to me on the stage was a representative of the National Cattlemens Beef Association, Dr. Gary Weber, whose job it was to reassure the viewing public of the absolute safety of meat. I felt sorry for the guy; he had an extremely difficult hand to play. He couldnt deny my assertion that wed been feeding cows to cows, but belittling the fact didnt sit well with a gasping audience. During commercial breaks he privately agreed with me that we shouldnt be adding chopped-up cow to animal feed. In early June, a suit was nonetheless filed on behalf of a group of Texas cattlemen, naming not only me but Oprah and her production company, Harpo Productions, as joint culprits in Food Disparagement. The Texas cattlemen and the Texas Commissioner of Agriculture apparently believe that the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing freedom of expression, was not meant to be interpreted so broadly as to allow people to say unpleasant things about beef. Pointing to a drop in the cattle futures market, the plaintiffs charged me with making "slanderous" statements about cattle and beef that caused them to endure "shame, embarrassment, humiliation, and mental pain and anguish." Under Texass Food Disparagement law, the burden of proof rests, to a great extent, on the shoulders of the defendants. In January 1998, a jury was convened in Amarillo, Texas, to determine, among other things, whether my statements deviated from "reasonable and reliable scientific inquiry, fact, or data" -- a standard of proof that seems remarkably oblivious of the fact that disagreement has always existed within the scientific community itself on most matters of importance, and certainly exists now on the matter of Mad Cow disease. Controversy even erupted in nineteenth-century Hungary when Dr. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis suggested that medical students delivering babies should wash their hands first -- especially as many of them had come to the delivery room after dissecting corpses. The man was roundly attacked for this radical view, but at least he didnt have to face any Germ Disparagement laws. Thirteen states have Food Disparagement laws on the books. In Colorado, convicted food disparagers can even be sent to jail. These laws represent the most concerted attack on First Amendment freedoms in at least a generation, and effectively put consumer advocates on notice that anything they may have to say concerning the safety of any aspect of our food supply could bring a bankrupting lawsuit smashing down on their heads. Oprah and I have the distinction of being the first individuals sued under the Texas Food Disparagement Act. More than a year after we were sued, the second lawsuit premised on the law was filed -- by emu ranchers against the Honda Motor Company, whose television commercials they felt poked fun at emus. Emu prices had been plummeting for years, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the emu ranchers were secretly pleased to find an entity like Honda with deep pockets to blame it on. It seems that, in Texas at least, you cant be too careful what you say about cattle and emus. Within a few months after the Oprah show aired and caused a firestorm of controversy, the Food and Drug Administration announced pending regulations to eliminate the feeding of ruminants to ruminants. The specific content of the regulations was delayed until after the presidential elections of 1996, most likely to avoid offending the livestock industry. Finally, the August 1997 ban on feeding ruminants to ruminants, a necessary but insufficient measure to stave off the spread of Mad Cow disease to America, went into effect. Most of the media outlets in this country generate significant advertising revenues from the meat and dairy industries. After the Oprah show ai Details ISBN0684854465 Short Title MAD COWBOY Pages 224 Language English ISBN-10 0684854465 ISBN-13 9780684854465 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 613.262 Year 2001 Imprint Simon & Schuster Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States Subtitle Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Wont Eat Meat DOI 10.1604/9780684854465 NZ Release Date 2001-08-02 US Release Date 2001-08-02 UK Release Date 2001-08-02 Author Howard Lyman Publisher Simon & Schuster Publication Date 2001-08-02 Audience General AU Release Date 2001-10-14 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:8334523;

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