Word: feedlots
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Meanwhile, in the trading pits of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, there were further signs of trouble. The Merc is a forward market that allows cattlemen and feedlot owners to hedge the price they will get for their products and offset some of the normal business risks. The traders provide the liquidity for that risk. But mad cow is anything but normal. James Brooks, floor-operations manager for the nation's largest cattle-futures trader, R.J. O'Brien, says the atmosphere is tense. "People are stressed out. Tempers are short. Nerves are shot," says Brooks. "We're seeing small fights break...
Before the scare, the American cattle industry had been doing well. That was true at nearly every level in the complex chain that starts at the bottom rung with the cantankerous collection of cow-calf ranchers, who sell to feedlot operators, who in turn sell to giant corporate packers like Cargill Meat Sector. After several tough years, profits suddenly exploded this fall as the wholesale price of beef soared to a record high of $120 per 100 lbs.--a 50% increase in one year...
Less fortunate are the feedlot owners who paid record prices to buy cattle this fall but now will probably have to sell them to processors for far less than planned. There is not much feedlots can do to cut their costs; it takes a long time--120 to 200 days--to plump a cow for slaughter. "It's not like Ford, where you tell the workers to go home for a couple of days," says Robb. "You can't turn off cows." When the crisis erupted just before Christmas, cattle in Amarillo, Texas, were trading...
These animals grazed in pasture and never set hoof in a feedlot. Typically produced by small farms and snapped up by upscale restaurants, this meat is hard to find in the grocery store...
...Stone Age ancestors certainly did not live in a feedlot. They had to kill and butcher their meat-on-the-hoof during marathon hunts that lasted for days, sometimes weeks. They had to ramble for miles cross-country to gather wild fruits, grains and nuts and to dig underground tubers. If they wanted to eat something sweet, they had to locate a beehive, smoke out the bees and retrieve the honey, often by climbing up a tree or chopping it down...