Beyond Beef And Rifkin's Other Book example essay topic

Jeremy Rifkin's book, Beyond Beef, is an indictment against the cattle culture that has come to shape our world. America's obsession with beef has led to increased hunger, disease and environmental destruction. Rifkin, without a doubt, is anti beef and with painstaking verisimilitude attempts to shed light on the horrific conditions which are brought about by the entire industry. Furthermore, his book is somewhat of a continuity of Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, the first attempt made at exposing the exploitations of the meat slaughtering industry.

Ironically and rather unfortunately, the present situation is that while the poor nations of the world are starving their own populations to produce and export beef, the rich, who are able to afford beef, are dying from diseases. Rifkin has several chapters dedicated to the host of illnesses those beef eating individuals are susceptible to. The titles include, "Sacrifice to Slaughter", 'Cows Devour People, "and 'Marbled Specks of Death. ' One point he makes is that because of the widespread use of antibiotics among the cattle industry, the "human population is increasingly vulnerable to more virulent strains of disease-causing bacteria" (12). Rifkin further attests that beef, but ranks second as the food posing the greatest cancer risk.

The reason is simple: beef is the most dangerous food for herbicide contamination and ranks third in insecticide contamination. Eighty percent of all herbicides in the United States are sprayed on corn and soybeans which are used primarily as feed for cattle and other livestock. When consumed by the animals, the pesticides accumulate in their bodies. The pesticides are then passed along to the consumer in the finished cuts of beef. Large feedlots have other sources of potential chemical contamination in beef including use of "industrial sewage and oils in feedlot mixtures and aerial spraying of insecticides on feedlot cattle" (13). Furthermore, Rifkin indicts the human civilization and sheds light into the barbarous actions of men in the early development of the cattle culture.

One of the most effective is in the chapter, 'The Great Bovine Switch,' an expose of the atrocities committed by the United States Army and cattlemen. Rifkin states that the cattle culture was responsible for the demise of many Indians, When we get rid of all the Indians and buffalo, the cattle... Will fill this country... These men [the buffalo hunters] have done... more to settle the vexed Indian question than the entire regular army has done in the last thirty years. They are destroying the Indians' commissary; and it is a well-known fact that an army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great disadvantage... (73 & 78) The cattlemen and Army are clearly racists and the slaughter of millions of buffalo in the years 1871-1874, led to massive starvation and genocide among the Indians.

In addition, Rifkin exposes the disturbing points about beef culture and the American beef processing industry. He entitles this chapter "The Automated Jungle", with a pun on the word "jungle", for Upton Sinclair's novel. Most, if not all Americans assume that the meat they purchase is "inspected" and safe to eat. However, Rifkin begs to differ. The USDA and several of the giant meat packers are now using a new inspection system called the Streamlined Inspection System (SIS), which virtually eliminates the role of the federal meat inspector in the examination of beef destined for interstate and foreign (Canadian) markets. With this system, less than 1% of the carcasses are examined by federal inspectors, whereas they used to examine every animal that came down the line.

Rifkin claims that in the interest of speeding up production, cutting costs, and improving profit margins, the American beef industry and the USDA have seriously undermined the safety and health of the nation's slaughterhouses. In addition, the implementation of the new SIS system has led to many losses of jobs for meat inspectors. Rifkin does not attempt to offer an alternative way to produce beef. His message is clear: eat organic beef or better yet, do not eat any form of it whatsoever. However, by and large, cattle themselves are not destructive, but the way in which they are reared and the scale to which they are reared is destructive.

For example, cattle as a subsidiary component of a grain or potato farm can contribute to the sustainability of farming through: the utilization of waste feeds and crops residues, and facilitates the growing of soil improving forages and cover crops. The problem is that this is currently the exception rather than the rule. Much of the beef produced in the world is from relatively an unproductive range land, downed rainforest, or from irrigated crops used for feedlot cattle. Overgrazing is a problem worldwide and it is estimated that the 1.28 billion cattle population consumes enough grain to feed hundreds of millions of people. Clearly there is a great need for fewer resource consumptive beef production systems to be developed. In this regard, beef is like the automobile; some people will never be able to do without it, so you may as well reduce the damage as much as possible while looking for better alternatives.

Rifkin adheres to a blunt and factual style of writing throughout the book. His style is very much similar to muckrakers, e. g., Upton Sinclair. However, toward the end of the book, Rifkin switches to a more philosophical style of writing. The facts argued his case rather eloquently and the philosophical twist merely reinforced what was accounted earlier.

The reality of the matter and the point that is reiterated throughout the book is that the world is overpopulated with cattle and people. A reduction of the beef consumed will only alleviate the problem minimally and temporarily. America's gluttonous habits of beef consumption are only some symptoms of a greater problem: resource gluttony and population growth by humans. Rifkin contends that Homo Sapiens is the problem and they are using the cattle as scapegoats. Jeremy Rifkin begins the novel with a shocking and unsettling set of facts and interweaves anthropology, history, sociology, economics and ecology in a brilliant and devastating examination of the cattle culture that has come to devastate our world.

The fascinating story he tells goes back to the beginning of civilization, when the belief in the mystical power of cattle and magical properties of beef was first born. He charts the age-old conflict between those who raised cattle and those who farmed the land- a conflict that drastically affected the course of Western history and culture. Rifkin cuts through the myth of the cowboy to clarify the international intrigue, political giveaways, and sheer advice that transformed the great American frontier into a huge cattle breeding ground. Then, taking us from sprawling Chicago stockyards to the automated factory feedlots of the Iowa plains, he presents the most disturbing indictment of the beef industry since Upton Sinclair shocked the American public with the Jungle eighty-five years ago. Finally, he gives us a superb overview of the triumph of the beef mystique in America and the world- a triumph marked by the golden arches of McDonald's in cities as distant from each other as New York, Tokyo, and Moscow. Beyond Beef clearly exposes the costly ramifications of the cattle culture.

The world is not just paying for it financially, but rather they are paying for it at the stake of their own health. Rifkin depicts the world in which the poorer individuals have been starved to support the beef addicted, wealthy nations. In Europe, the United States and Japan, this addiction has resulted in millions of deaths from heart attacks, cancer and diabetes- "the diseases of affluence". The book also describes the grim ecological effects of the cattle culture: destruction of rain forests, desertification of fertile plains and the climate is threatened by global warming. The messages set forth in Beyond Beef, and Rifkin's other book, Fast Food Nation, have forever changed my views on the consumption of beef. I have not sworn off beef forever, but I have limited it drastically.

This persuasive and passionate book is similar to Laurie Garrett's book The Coming Plague- an urgent warning to everyone who cares about the fate of the Earth and its inhabitants.