Happy California Cows?

Ummm. They don't look very happy to me.

While driving north on the Interstate 5 corridor, we passed a couple of areas that looked (and smelled) like feedlots. Excuse the 70 MPH photography!

Not a single blade of grass for these grazers. I don't know if they spend their lives here, birth to slaughter, or if they come here to fatten just before they mosey on over to the freezer. On the edges of the acres and acres of cows, there were what appeared to be sludge ponds, or maybe water reservoirs. They could have even been recently seeded rice paddies.

Then, after those, were verdant rice fields - all around the barren feedlots. The cows can probably see and smell them.

We've lived near dairies, have kept chickens, rabbits, goats for meat, and an uncle worked a dairy for years. I know what a barnyard smells like and don't find it offensive at all - but the air for miles around these lots smelled absolutely contaminated and corrupt. Polluted. Not even like feces, but like ammonia. We rolled up the cracked windows and recirculated the vent in the truck, but we'd already been hit by the smell and I don't think our efforts helped much.

Now don't get me wrong, I love my french dip sandwiches and rib eye steaks just as much as the next person. I understand it takes a certain amount of animals to supply the demands of this meat-eating populace. But if given a choice between the above-pictured cows and this one:

(Can you see him?) I'd much rather eat the one grazing as he was meant to. Which is why, when it's time to fill our little freezer, we buy a quarter grass-fed beef from a local farmer. Good stuff. Thank you Peter @ River Bar Farm!

If you're travelling Interstate 5 and catch a hint of ammonia in the air, QUICK! roll up your windows and recirculate the air in your car! The smell lingers for a ways.