> If you don't like the prospect of eating infected meat, which is the
> principle reason given for supporting Irradiation, then DON'T EAT IT. The
Its all about _local_ meat production on small-medium sized family farms
for _local_ sales: carefully controlled quality production; no middleman
(other than a coop of some sort, possibly), no storage, no long distance
shipping. Certified organic, non certified organic transitional or
conventional - customers live close enough to the producers to easily
ascertain for themselves the quality of the farmer's product through
direct contact or word of mouth. I see networks (food circles, fertile
crescent concept) of producers and marketing coops serving overlapping
regions providing quality meat from coast to coast. Its possible and
should happen even if a a new, alternative, nationwide (I'd include
Canada) network of regional marketing networks has to be built from the
ground up.
> human body was not designed to eat meat, even organic, free-range animal
> meats. And the crap they are using to feed animals these days--including
> sewage sludge--makes the problem much that worse, and would not be addressed
> by irradiation. Besides that, cattle farming is one of the greatest sources
> of global warming, both in terms of clear cut rainforests and the gases they
> emit.
The methane problem would cease to exist if all farms would recycle their
manure using a carefully planned system of direct land application or
composting for application on field or row crop. For factory farms with
excessive quantities of manure, composting it to produce a product
suitable for a variety of farming industries could become a reality with a
little R&D. In coastal NC where there are so many hog farms, composted
manure could be used to grow timber bamboo, hemp for paper and cloth,
cotton, paulownia, ...... even kudzu (ducking and running). In fact I'd
bet that crops like bamboo and river birch could utilize irrigation with
highly dilute manure slurry as part of a composting system to convert
raw manure to a safe and valuable fertilizer. Sluice the pig manure out
over acres of kudzu planted on gentle slope. Harvest the kudzu by baling
or grinding and pelletizing for animal feed or to add as biomass to more
manure to be composted. Collect the excess runoff at bottom of slope
behind swales or dams for further composting, later to be added as
bioactivator to piles of fresh manure to be composted.
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