Only feeding grain with no roughage isn't a thing unless you are using an intake limiter which is very uncommon today (and those intake limiters aren't antibiotics, oils usually). There are plenty of cattle fed finishing diets without antibiotics. To add to that, there isn't some massive amount of antibiotics being fed regardless of what program they are on. And no finishing cattle are switched over to a grass based diet prior to slaughter.

Grain-based diets are also far more beneficial for the environment if you want to look at methane emissions as well. The amount of methane produced per unit of meat or milk is far less than in a purely grass based system.

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Posted by LegendInMyMind

Member since Apr 2019

55529 posts

Posted on 7/14/20 at 2:15 pm to AgGator

Cows have not evolved to eat a grain and corn diet. You will never convince a cow to eat corn and grain over grass if they are given the option. That diet will eventually kill them if we don't do unnatural things to keep the cow alive while it is being force fed an unnatural diet.

Sure, we like to grow them as big and fat as possible, and the cheapest and fastest way to do that is corn. Thanks to farm subsidies feedlots can buy that corn cheaper than it costs for farmers to grow it. The grain/corn diet only came into being when our farmers got ahold of chemical fertilizers and started producing huge surpluses of corn. We've to do something with it so, we pile thousands of cows into feedlots and force feed them grain/corn diets that they are not evolved to eat.

I will concede that I was wrong about the grass feeding prior to slaughter. However, the drugs given to cows must be managed closely, as some are not at all good for human consumption.

This post was edited on 7/14/20 at 2:26 pm

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