Wednesday • April 25, 2012
The Tim Danahey Show on Castle Rock Radio Presents
Mike Callicrate • How Your Meat is Made and the Health Consequences (PG-13)
Wednesday, April 25th – “Pink Slime is the Tip of the Iceberg”
Pink slime in beef has been in the news and we are literally and figuratively sick of it. Ethical rancher Mike Callicrate of Ranch Foods Direct and Dr. Michael Gaeta (I call “America’s Wellness Doctor”) will both tell us about how beef is grown and processed and the health consequences in our lives. This show is not for the weak of heart.
Meeting of the Markets’ presentation held at the Isles Convention Hall in Lincoln, NE on May 17th 2012 with focus on market creation opportunities for farmers and ranchers that will create opportunities for consumers to access locally produced foods.
A major investigation into the school lunch industry is ongoing as companies that decide what food goes on your child’s plate may be cheating schools and taxpayers out of millions. Sharyl Attkisson investigates charges of a corporate rip-off.
Rick Hughes with District 11 in Colorado Springs provides an alternative to Sodexo’s bad food and it’s theft of school lunch money…
[MIKE] “This is hard stuff. This is the industrial model that we talk about that just does not work. To me, the abuse of these animals is a symptom of the industrial model which is also abusive to people. It’s abusive to the environment, it’s abusive to communities.”
[PAUL] “When you have animals who are treated as if they were machines themselves, locked up inside these industrial factories treated as they weren’t living, feeling, breathing animals, but just commodities on a product line, then you create a condition where people think that their suffering just doesn’t matter. People get desensitized toward that type of animal suffering and I think that is what enables, in a very serious way, the type of violence against animals that we see.”
[MIKE] “This is industrial agriculture demanding profit at all costs, profit over animals, profit over people, profit over the environment, and this is where we end up. This is really the end game of this absolute demand for profit at all costs. I am really sorry that agriculture has declined to this level.”
[MIKE] “This is a good example of what happens when you take the family off the farm and that family loses the farm and loses that ability to care for those animals that they deeply love and respect, and now we’ve put them in a factory. We’ve brought economic refugee labor in, and perhaps not economic refugee labor, but perhaps war refugee labor as we’ve utilized so extensively in industrial agriculture in this country. These are people who are themselves under so much pressure and essentially being exploited.
[MIKE] “I hope the public gets this and the reason for this. This is something that is completely wrong.
[MIKE] “We’ve got to change the system.”
[MIKE] “We’ve got to get back to family farm agriculture where people are taking care of livestock again. They own them and care about them.”
I have been asked why I joined the The HSUS Agriculture Council for Colorado … 95% of HSUS Supporters eat meat. They’re concerned about where their meat comes from.
They know that family farmers and ranchers who are on the land taking care of the livestock are the best stewards, the best care takers and can produce the best food they want to eat.
And, they just know that if they do not support those family farmers and ranchers they are not going to be there.
About the Colorado Agriculture Council of HSUS
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has announced the formation of a new advisory body in Colorado.
It’s called the The HSUS Agriculture Council for Colorado.
According to an HSUS news release, the council will work to pursue market opportunities for farmers and ranchers whose agricultural practices adhere to the group’s animal welfare standards. Leaders of the new group include Yuma veterinarian and cattleman Tom Parks and Mike Callicrate, a livestock producer and owner of Ranch Foods Direct retail center in Colorado Springs.
In 2008, Colorado’s legislature passed a measure to phase out the use of gestation crates for breeding sows and veal crates for the male offspring of dairy cows.
In 2011, HSUS organized a similar agriculture council in Nebraska in partnership with the Nebraska Farmers Union.
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“The money and political power of Wall Street has stolen America’s food system, bankrupted our farmers and ranchers, mined our soils, polluted our environment, wasted our precious water, and left us with expensive industrially produced food that makes us sick.” – Occupy Wall Street Food Day, December 2011
Industrial Agriculture and Urban Sprawl – A model of growth that’s made to fail.
Ranching Reboot Episode 4, Mike Callicrate “It’s time for a third revolution against monopolies”
Above: Ranching Reboot – Episode 4 – Mike Callicrate, owner of Ranch Foods Direct, sat down with us to talk about all manner of things from cattle markets, to public food spaces, the Bander, his feedlot and the pathway he built to market.
He shares valuable lessons learned from fighting against the commodity production system and how he’s built his own pathway to the consumer.
We talk about small community slaughter plants and public meat spaces and what that could look like going in to the future. We discuss environmental challenges, the food police and what it means when a Dollar General comes to town.
by John Munsell | Oct 11, 2011
Opinion Editor's Note: This is the first part in a series written by John Munsell of Miles City, MT, who explains how the small meat plant his family owned for 59 years ran afoul of USDA's meat inspection program. The events he writes about began a decade ago, but remain relevant today.
They say that confession is good for the soul. I've been involved in a series of ugly events since my plant in 2002 recalled 270 pounds of ground beef contaminated with E.coli O157:H7 and now want to admit the embarrassing truth for public review.
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