They also let me and Fabian be part of the family for a couple days. We were the personal cooks. They give us a tour of the feedlot, we make bannock, corn succotash and tomato salad with rib-eye steak. Their feedlot manager sends us to a mobile slaughterhouse, we make meatball melts and rice. It was a really symbiotic relationship.
The first night we were there we cooked, then day two was visitation day at the feedlots. We actually got to see both stages of production, because the guys all work at different spots. Beaver Creek is where Dean and Matt work, and basically it is where the cows are raised up to a certain weight on pasture, then penned, tagged and sent to be finished up on corn. Just so everyone knows, this part is exactly like farming the down home way, the cows have tons of pasture and run around, basically left to themselves. The problematic part comes later. Dean and Matt build fences and cycle herds, but Dean drove us around to all the farms so we could see the scale of the operation. It's large and in charge. It was a beautiful day though, and we could see for miles. I rode in the back of the pickup and I swear I haven't been so relaxed, just lounging in the sun, for years. We didn't even get to see everything because you need a four wheel drive truck to access some of the fields. For the record the roads here are insane. Basically they all are numbered, apparently
in order but to me it seemed arbitrary. There are a million intersections, and certain roads wind, others stop in the middle of nowhere, and others still decide they don't want to be the same road and turn into another. It's pretty incredible, but we only got lost once. Anyways, we stopped in a field with Dean and hung out, had a really good chat about South African politics, and the future there. Before we knew it it was noon and about time we get to the feedlot to meet Dave and Wes. Brandon also works at the feedlot, but he rides horses to pen check, which means he's not stationary enough for us to hang with him. 
Whilst Fabian rode the feed truck with Sarah, a girl we met at the stampede, I helped Wes and Dave build a pen fence. The feedlot smell is staggering, but it's surprising how fast you become accustomed to it, and how long it takes to get off your clothes and boots. Basically the feedlot is what everyone outside of Alberta has issue with. 300 cows per pen, 30,000 cows on this particular feedlot. That is a whole lotta heifer. This is a large feedlot for the area, but there are more like it, some larger. In the states there are feedlots that make this one appear empty and outrageously spacious. Albertans know these feedlots exist, and the rest of Canadian meat eaters should know that unless you don't eat beef from the supermarket, you don't have a say about these places. That's the thing that Albertans (I think) have come to the endpoint of. If you eat this meat, you are approving what goes on. If you don't know what goes on, don't eat the meat, regardless of where it's from, beef or otherwise. Chances are, if you can't find out what farm your meat comes from, it's from animals raised like this. It's a strange thing to be there, where the majority of beef actually comes from. There is no animal cruelty, no massive overcrowding, and no psychopaths running around with electric prods. The people who work here are all really good people, hard working, and not dumb or blind. They are well-paid for their work, and they work accordingly. The cows are kept in pens, which basically amounts to a wooden square with a trough running along one side for food, and two fountains for water. They do stand around all day in their own manure, which gets deep. You'd think with all the genetic freakshow cow engineering they did, they would have engineered one to produce less manure. There are some places even the boys in cowboy boots were hesitant to walk around in.
The cows aren't happy, but they are also constantly in a daze, as their feed is loaded with drugs and hormones and they are barely a year old at this point. The drugs are there so the cows can process the grain they are being fed to fatten them up. It takes them only a few short months to go from around 600-700 pounds, to double that. The optimal 'kill weight' is 1400 pounds. Some are larger, some smaller. It's actually an incredible feat of science and engineering to do this, though reminiscent more of Frankenstein than the Human Genome Project. It's an ethical dilemma for me. The cows aren't suffering here. I'm not saying this is the case at all feedlots, or defending feedlots in general. This is apparently by far the cleanest and most streamlined lot in the area. They wouldn't take visitors if not. I don't have any pictures which are horrendous or brutal shots of cows being shot due to sickness, because there were none of these pictures to be taken. I have other issues with it, unnatural feed(corn and barley substituted for grass), and manipulation of nature(genetics and drugs), greenhouse gas emissions (cows are second only to automobiles) and environmental impact(where does all the shit go?), but animal cruelty is not one I can raise with this particular feedlot. I spent two days here, and only heard of one cow sickness. That's one cow among 30,000 getting sick in two days. That is better than the vast majority of human populations. I don't know what to say. As long as people keep eating beef in quantity, which they will, because they are stupid, this place has to exist. Would I replace it with something cleaner, more humane, and less demand-driven? Yes, would that make it cost prohibitive? Yes. Are there way worse ways, plainly visible even to visitors, that you could raise large amount of large cattle?
Definitely yes. It's a really difficult exploration of an industry that is there because of necessity and demand (all their cattle are already sold when they are being finished). It really comes down to educating people, not stopping these businesses. If people keep buying cheap ground meat, these places will exist forever, or at least until our species has it's last hurrah's. If people decide they want better quality, more ethically raised, less genetically corrupt beef, and opt out of buying this beef, then these places will be forced to reconsider their methods. Just the other day we were imagining a world in which everyone raised their own chickens, and the supermarkets actually ended up trying to compete with private growers on such a scale that they would have to pamper their chickens in order to get them sold. "Our chicken is more organic than yours" sort of deal. It's a nice vision, will it happen? Unlikely. I would love to see it though. So start raising chickens in your backyard already. It's legal in Vancouver, I even know some people who do it. For all you self righteous environmentalists and animal activists out there, that is the way forward. And yes, you'll have to kill them and eat them. If you can't figure that part out, stop talking about the environment, because you have no idea how it works. So yeah, eat local beef, from organic farms, or square it with your conscious, but please always know where it's from. I still put out my thanks to everybody who helped us get to this place, especially the South Africans, and Huey and the gang from the feedlot, including crazy ol' Larry. I really wish I'd taken this guys picture, he was totally off his rocker. Next post promises to be more lighthearted and full of dead cow, because the feedlot manager was a wicked kiwi who sent us to the local butcher and his mobile kill-plant. Coming up, the third and final of the most commonly kept livestock being slaughtered in front of me.
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