I asked around a bit in social media circles last week looking for a definition of Factory Farm as it pertains to cattle. I was curious given that I had just read Fast Food Nation and had Mr. Schlosser’s description pretty clearly imprinted on my mind.
An aerial view of my feed yard…
Here is a list that I gathered of the general specifications of a cattle factory farm:
The cattle live in dirt pens.
The cattle are fed by a tractor or some other type of machinery with the feed placed in feedbunks.
The cattle are fed corn or some derivative of corn in addition to forages.
There are more cattle per acre than in a pasture grazing situation.
The higher concentration of cattle produces an odor or smell.
The farm is classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation).
My feed yard fits each one of those specifications.
I am concerned that an ever growing number of people believe that any animal that lives on a Factory Farm is abused and has a terrible life. Additionally, many also believe that a Factory Farmer (someone who works on a factory farm) either has no integrity or is being unhappily forced into working there.
Dartmouth College graduation with my husband and my brother: just a week before becoming a “factory farmer”…
I certainly hope that I have not spent the last 16 years of my life sacrificing my integrity, abusing my animals, and teaching my children to hate our farm…
I feel a God-given need to offer good care to my animals.
I feel a relentless drive to raise safe and healthy beef which I feed to my family as well as to yours…
I feel a responsibility to care for the natural resources that make up our farm: to use them wisely so that our land can be both productive and beautiful…
I feel a passion to work for constant improvement so that my animals prosper and do their job of growing beef…
I feel a desire to share my hard work and values with my daughters so that they learn to appreciate their food and what it takes to grow it…
I believe that my life is one of beauty and devotion. Perhaps if those that coined the term Factory Farming really understood me, my family, and my farm I would instead be called a Faithful Farmer…
Eric Schlosser wrote Fast Food Nation in 2001, four years after Matt and I moved to Nebraska to go to work on the family farm. I had heard of Mr. Schlosser because of his participation in the filming of the movie Food, Inc. but I had never read his book until a couple of weeks ago.
Sometimes the only way you can take a really good look at yourself is through somebody else’s eyes.
I read Fast Food Nation because a group of high school students from Omaha asked me to. They read the book as part of a class requirement and were looking for another point of view. The book focuses on food production practices and cultural eating changes relative to the growth of fast food restaurant chains. Beef production, in particular packing plants and feed yards, appear as a center stage topic.
I felt a myriad of emotions as I read Schlosser’s words. While I agreed with his desire to promote good health through a balanced diet and physical fitness, the beef industry that he described in the book was not the one that I participate in.
When I look out my window, I see something very different from what the author describes. I see my feed yard as a place of integrity, where cattle are well cared for and enabled to make safe and healthy beef. My husband and I also work hard to be environmental stewards using a combination of crop farm and cattle farm to create a sustainable and productive cycle.
There is a quiet beauty on our farm that is priceless…
While touring the major beef packing plants intermittently during my 16 years as a cattle farmer, I also saw something very different from what the author describes. I toured Swift (JBS) in 1998, Cargill in 2001, National Beef in 2012, and Tyson just two weeks ago. I believe that these packing plants are well run.
In fact, they are all audited on animal welfare, sanitation and food safety practices to ensure quality and professionalism. Most of them have Temple Grandin’s proposed camera surveillance system to ensure constant compliance in addition to third party auditing on animal welfare standards. Additionally, all of them have USDA and FSIS (Food Safety Inspection Service) inspectors in the plants anytime that they are operational to protect for food safety assurance.
Safe and healthy beef is always my goal–it is what is on my dinner table…
As I think about the book, this quote from James Thurber keeps circulating through my head:
There are two kinds of light – the glow that illuminates and the glare that obscures.
It is my hope that my Feed Yard Foodie blog is the light that illuminates—showing each of you how I raise cattle and grow the beef that you purchase to feed your families.
It is my opinion that Fast Food Nation is a glare created by a predisposed elitist— obscuring the U.S. beef production system in order to fit a desired hypothesis. No where in the book can I find a cattle farm like mine or a balanced description of a packing plant. For a more extensive book commentary and links to additional literature, please click fast-food-nation-thoughts-for-the-blog-with-links1
I would like to thank the three classes of students (along with their teacher) from Omaha for reaching out to me and inspiring me to read another point of view relative to the industry that I have grown to love. Looking through someone else’s eyes is a great intellectual exercise and allows me continual personal growth and improvement.
Interestingly enough, the students from Omaha decided that Mr. Schlosser would like my feed yard. They likened it to the In and Out Burger restaurants that the author endorsed at the end of the book.
“Mama always prays for a nice, pretty, brown Christmas”. These were the words of my middle daughter when she was about 4 years old. She was solemnly telling a friend that her Mama did not like it to snow on Christmas.
It is hard to believe that she used to be this little!
In Nebraska during the winter, there is a choice of two colors outdoors: brown and white. While the white can be very aesthetically pleasing, snow brings extra work. While the brown color is not as pretty, it makes chores a lot easier to do!
Six years later, she spends many sunrises with me helping to exercise calves at the feed yard…
During my years in New Hampshire at Dartmouth College, I loved the snow. As a native Floridian, it fascinated me. When I moved to Nebraska, my perception changed. Snow no longer represented simple beauty, it’s presence brought added work!
My winter “outfit”…
Being the boss lady, it is my responsibility to ensure that our cattle receive good care every single day. In particular, the feed yard is busy during the fall and winter months when animals are moved off of grass pastures as the natural growing season comes to an end. As the days get shorter and the temperatures get colder, good animal care takes more work. Providing fresh feed and water, along with good living conditions for the cattle, is a priority for me.
Our goal is exceptional care—every single day…
Last week I was asked by a reader to talk about “winter chores”. Here is a quick run-down on what my crew and I do each day during the winter as we don our coveralls and layers of clothes in order to care for our cattle.
Cattle huddled up and waiting for the feed truck on a cold winter morning…
Reading bunks and feeding cattle: My foreman (Doug) and I both read bunks about 6:00am every morning in order to determine how many pounds of feed each animal will receive on our farm that day. Feed trucks are running by 6:30 and breakfast is delivered by 9:00am. My daughters call our afternoon feeding linner (a cross between lunch and dinner), and it is delivered between 2:00pm and 4:00pm.
The Breakfast Wagon!
Exercising calves: I exercise and acclimate newly arrived cattle at the feed yard for the first 4-7 days in order to help them become accustomed to living in a new setting. I do this in the morning before the cattle receive breakfast—during the winter it is usually dark outside! The following video shows the beginning of an exercising session where I ask the cattle to leave the home pen and enter the alleyway. Processing/vaccinating newly arrived cattle: Newly arrived cattle are vaccinated, ear tagged, and sometimes given a growth promoting implant within the first few days of arrival at the feed yard. My crew and I do this in the middle of the day to try and take advantage of the “warmest hours”.
Jared, cleaning a pen using the tractor and box scraper…
Scraping pens: At our feed yard, Jared is in charge of cleaning or scraping pens in order to keep the home pens clean and provide good living conditions for the cattle. The manure that is scraped off of the surfaced is used for fertilizer on our farm ground. During the winter months, each pen is scraped 1X per month or more frequently depending on weather conditions. With 24 pens, that means that he is scraping a pen almost every day.
When it’s reasonably warm outside we use the horse to “ride pens”–when it is cold many times we walk through the cattle checking health instead…
Riding pens orchecking cattle: My cowboy or I check the health of all of our animals every day. Depending on how cold it is, we either ride a horse or walk through the cattle on foot to check individual cattle health. If an animal is sick, it will be pulled out of the home pen for further evaluation and most likely treated with an antibiotic. Somewhere between 2- 5% of our cattle require antibiotic treatment for an illness. We have a consulting veterinarian who helps us to ensure good cattle health and responsible antibiotic use.
These red angus steers are a few days from shipping to the packing plant. I look pretty small next to them!
Shipping cattle: We ship cattle to the packing plant approximately once every two weeks. My crew and I load the cattle onto semi-trucks to travel to the packing plant.
A semi-truck used to transport cattle…
Receiving cattle: We get new cattle into the feed yard periodically as other cattle are shipped to the packing plant. The new cattle come from neighboring ranches in Nebraska where they were born and spent the first 8-18 months of their lives. I am my own cattle buyer so I travel to the home ranch to help load the cattle onto stock trailers or semi-trucks to bring them to the feed yard.
Newly arrived cattle on “stock trailers”…
My crew and I (there are four of us total) each spend an average of 50-60 hours a week during the winter providing care to our animals. We all love what we do and strive for excellence every day.
Greatness is simply wanting something more than anyone else and working harder than anyone else to achieve that goal.
Greatness takes immense amounts of dedication and desire to be achieved.
My favorite 7th grader’s club basketball coach posted this last weekend. He wrote it several hours after my daughter completed her goal of shooting 10,000 baskets (the basket tally began in November). I do not know if he thought of AG when he wrote it, but I certainly thought of her as I read it.
My face mask has gotten additional use this winter…
My daughter is an Achiever —she comes by it honestly. Her personal drive mirrors my own and is fascinating for me to watch. This week, AG is basking in the glow of accomplishment knowing that she completed more basketball shots in the last couple of months than she ever dreamed she would.
You might be wondering—Is there another reward?
Apart from the confidence and skill gained by completing the baskets, my daughter is also enjoying the knowledge that her basketball coach will spend an afternoon running 5 X 1 mile repeats with her. You see, that was the deal.
10,000 completed baskets = 5 X 1 mile repeats. The fact that her motivation for shooting 10,000 baskets was the ability to run 5 X 1 mile repeats with her coach says a lot about my daughter… I think that her coach is envisioning a nice leisurely pace—I can assure you that AG is planning to run fast enough to reach the finish line before he does!
The drive to want to be better today than you were yesterday is a great gift…
We all search for greatness in our lives and we all have different motivations that drive us to pursue that greatness. My genuine love for animals drives me to care with greatness on my cattle farm. This is my vocation and I strive to achieve it each and every day.
Good animal care is a daily requirement at a feed yard–the cattle’s health and the quality of your beef depends on it.
Caring with greatness takes dedication.
Caring with greatness takes discipline.
Caring with greatness takes empathy and attention to detail.
Caring with greatness ensures healthy animals.
I am proud to grow your beef while caring with greatness.
Just a couple of weeks ago, a social media friend forwarded me an email that she had received from a reader. The email was a cry for help from a fellow mom. It seems that her daughter, after repeatedly watching horrific videos of animal abuse on the internet, had refused to eat any animal products.
I do not have that added parenting challenge with my daughters because they help to raise the beef that we eat.
Concerned about both her daughter’s nutritional needs and the abusive videos, the mom was reaching out to online farmer bloggers in an attempt to find out the truth. When I sent a link to several videos of my farm to the mom, she responded “Why can’t I find these when I search on YouTube? These are the types of videos that we need to see!”
The short answer to that question is that search results on YouTube are ranked according to number of views. This means that the more views a video has, the more likely that it will show up when you search a topic. I have uploaded four “home-made” videos to YouTube over the last year—they have a total of only 1500 views.
This one is my favorite–it is my 10 year old cowgirl/chef exercising cattle at the feed yard to the tune of her favorite song “Fly Over States”.
I love this video because I am proud of my daughter and what a great cattle caregiver she is becoming.
I love this video because it shows the simplicity of good cattle handling.
I love this video because of the calf with the white spot on his head that kept asking Megan “do I have to” when she asked him to move. Megan frequently looks at me asking the same question…
Where did the trust go?
Twenty years ago, trust existed throughout the food production system. Farmers were viewed positively, and those outside of the farm believed that farmers had integrity. Today, that trust is gone. I believe that this loss of trust is one of the biggest travesties currently affecting our great country. Quite simply, it hurts my heart to know that many people do not trust that I care.
My brain recognizes that it is my duty to not only care, but also to document that care in an attempt to rebuild that trust. The daily care that I offer to my animals is now accompanied by record keeping and documentation that will verify that I not only care, but that I am competent in that care.
My other job—paper work!
Animal Care is the second pillar of the Progressive Beef program. It is one that I believe in with every fiber of my being. Outstanding animal care is a trademark of my feed yard. Progressive Beef has provided me with both a documentation trail, and also a third party independent audit to bring additional integrity to my promise of high quality animal care.
Rest assured that you can feel good about feeding my beef to your family—it came from healthy and humanely raised animals. You don’t have to just take my word for it!
I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.
The only place you find success before work is the dictionary.
May Smith
My favorite 13 year old has this quote up on the wall of her room. When I go into her room and read the saying, I smile knowing that I have mentored her well. This quote is likely the reason that she set the school’s Junior High Cross Country record this fall.
Learning to love the journey…
One of the most important life lessons that competitive swimming taught me was to be enthralled with the work that was necessary for success. While winning was awesome, I learned that true success was realized in the journey.
I transitioned from being a competitive athlete to a recreational athlete almost two decades ago, but I still believe in the value of the journey. Today it is a journey of safe food production rather than qualification for the elusive US Swimming Senior Nationals, but my goal is still to achieve excellence.
I still love the journey…
My role as mentor to my crew at the feed yard is vital to the goal of food safety. Healthy animals make healthy beef. Quality and consistent care leads to healthy animals. The journey is sometimes riddled with challenges, but attention to detail ensures success.
Tomorrow, I will spend the day with the Progressive Beef team getting one step closer to certification in the program. It will take many hours to:
Finalize the HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) plan for my feed mill where we store and load feed ingredients. This will ensure good, consistent feed quality and nutrition for my animals.
Finish editing the Standard Operating Procedures (there are many of them) to ensure attention to detail on all daily animal care tasks that are performed at the feed yard.
Begin the process of implementing the specific HACCP plan and SOP’s in our daily routine at the feed yard.
Inspire my crew to embrace their new record keeping responsibilities as well as continuing the dedicated animal care that is a trademark on my farm.
Discuss the strict auditing process that will occur twice a year to ensure certification under the Progressive Beef QSA program.
Looking for the beauty as you travel the journey makes life rewarding…
It is likely that all of us will return home Friday night tired from a long day. It is my hope that we will also take home with us a lingering excitement toward this new stage in our journey of high quality beef production!
I will never forget the day that I met Nancy Donley. My favorite 10 year old and I had lunch with her after touring BPI’s lean finely textured beef facility last spring. It is impossible to spend more than a few minutes with Nancy without being compelled to attain excellence in food safety measures.
Every child’s life is precious…
Nancy’s only son, Alex, was killed by Ecoli 0157:H7 in 1993. Following his death, she became actively involved in volunteer efforts to improve food safety. Nancy has voluntarily served as the President for STOP Foodborne Illness for more than 10 years, and currently also serves on the USDA’s National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection.
I truly cannot explain the emotion that I felt when I met Nancy. It shook me to my very core. As I look back on it, I view it as an incredible experience which prepared me for what was to come six months later.
I can tell you that I will never forget the passion and strength that Nancy exudes.
I can tell you that after meeting Nancy, I had a renewed motivation to proactively search for pre-harvest food safety measures to employ at my cattle feed yard.
It was Nancy and Alex that I thought of the day that the Progressive Beef team sat in my office and told me about a new E Coli 1057 vaccine that can be administered pre-harvest in order to significantly reduce Ecoli pathogens in the intestines of cattle. As I learned more about the new vaccine technology, I knew that it was something that I was going to implement at my feed yard.
It is my passion to responsibly grow beef. It is my passion to provide safe and healthy nourishment to my family and to yours. It is my passion to do the right thing.
Combining this pre-harvest food safety measure with all of the post-harvest measures that my packing plant partner utilizes will effectively increase the safety of the beef that I grow.
I am her Mama–I want to nourish and protect her…
I began using the E. Coli vaccine in December and we are currently transitioning toward administering it to all newly placed cattle at the feed yard. By this summer, every animal on my farm will have received the vaccine.
The cost of the vaccine is $2.50 per dose and must be used in a multiple dose vaccination program. The cost of not using the vaccine is evident in Nancy Donley’s eyes as she talks about the little boy that she lost so many years ago.
This vaccine helps me to make a real contribution to food safety.
Every time that I administer the vaccine, I think of Alex and I thank God for my own daughters who bring such joy and vibrancy to my life. They, like Nancy, are a constant source of inspiration to me as I search for better ways to raise safe and healthy beef.
When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life or the life of another. – Helen Keller
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
Aristotle, a great Greek philosopher, coined those powerful words more than 2000 years ago. Achieving excellence in our lives becomes a reality when we take pride in our actions and focus on doing all of the little things with greatness. While striving for excellence starts as a goal, it materializes through dedication, planning, and auditing.
My favorite 13 year old is a big Aristotle fan…
In many ways I am both a perfectionist and a workaholic. My mom teases me that it is a good thing that I live on a farm where my girls can go with me to work—otherwise they might never see me. While this is an exaggeration, my life very simply revolves around my family and my farm.
All of my years of athletic training combined with my naturally inclined Type A personality have created a passionate working machine. When you add into the mix the dreamer that lives somewhere deep in my heart, you get a unique and driven individual.
For better or for worse, I have very high standards that I live my life by. Because my cattle feed yard is an integral part of my life, it is a natural progression for me to hold it to high standards as well. When I look for companies and programs to associate my feed yard with, I look for those that share my same commitment to excellence and integrity.
I mentioned in Tuesday’s post that I was currently going through the certification process for a QSA (Quality Systems Assessment) program called Progressive Beef. The Progressive Beef program is based on three pillars: food safety, animal care, and sustainability.
Both the mom and the cattle feed yard manager in me love those pillars. How could I not? I spend my life raising animals that will be harvested to feed my children and children all over the world. A focus on these three areas is absolutely critical to achieving the high standards of excellence which Aristotle compels me to accomplish.
They are never far from my thoughts as I make decisions at my cattle feed yard—you and your families are also in my thoughts…
Since many customers report that they would like to see their grocery store carry a beef product that uses a verified program, I am hopeful that many of you will share my excitement as I earn the right to participate in Progressive Beef. I am also hopeful that you will engage in the conversation as I continue to explain the components and auditing process of the program.
I feel compelled to end by sharing some beautiful words from Mother Theresa:
You and I have been created for greater things. We have not been created to just pass through this life without aim.
A native of urban Palm Beach County, Florida; I was an Ivy League educated athlete fueled by beef for many years before I understood “where my beef came from.” Now, I am a mother of three and live with my husband in Nebraska where we run a cattle feedyard and farming operation. Feed Yard Foodie is a site where people can come to read about the real story of beef, written by someone who actually gets their hands dirty.
