If you are trying to decide between big farms and small farms, you need to factor in some details that don’t really fit in a food cycle graph.
At the feed yard, your factory calf and 80,000 of his buddies spend the majority of each day crammed in pens where they eat, sleep, and shit. The farm calf is left to wander and graze as he will.
The uniform administration of antibiotics by Cactus Feeders ultimately strengthens the shit-born bacteria besieging factory-calf’s immune system, whereas Dick and Torrey only give medication to li’l farmy if and when he’s actually sick.
The distance covered by the factory path reflects the range of factory-calf’s possible distribution, so that if there’s anything wrong with the industrial frankenbeef before shipping, not only is there no way to trace it back to cow zero, but you’re also left guessing how many other people in how many other places are eating things made from the same issue-meat (hence those million-pound recalls every so often); meanwhile, if you get sick from your burger at the White Dog, all you have to do is call up the chef and crisis averted. It may mean doing a little extra work and being a bit nerdy about where you eat, but in the end keeping it close to home is a pretty fucking good idea.
LEROY GUMPTION
