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Mad Cowboy Eating with Conscience Tour '98
by Alka Chandna
Editor, Vegan.Com
Howard F. Lyman, co-defendant with Oprah
Winfrey in the "veggie libel" case brought by Texas ranchers in Amarillo
this past year, is on a North American tour to promote his new book,
Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher who won't eat meat
(Scribner; June 3, 1998).
A former cattle rancher-turned-vegetarian and food safety activist, in
1996, Lyman revealed, to a national television audience, how the cattle
industry potentially exposed Americans to Mad Cow Disease by feeding cows
the rendered remains of slaughtered animals - including other cows. A
fourth generation dairy farmer and cattle rancher, Lyman became enamored
of the "bold new age of chemically enhanced agriculture" as a student in
agricultural college. Spurning the organic farming methods of his father
and grandfather, he became a convert to modern chemical farming
techniques: he fed his cows with hormones and antibiotics, and blanketed
his farm with pesticides and herbicides. Admitting that at the time he
"never met a chemical he didn't like, " Lyman says that he, like other
dairy and cattle farmers, poisoned his animals and polluted his farms.
In 1989, the discovery of a rare spinal tumor led Lyman to examine his
life. In MAD COWBOY, he tells the moving story of his own personal
transformation, and how he became a crusader for organic farming and more
conscious eating habits. Lyman describes the devastating effects that
modern feed lot operations are having - and will continue to have - on the
environment, and also outlines the profound health benefits that switching
to a vegetarian diet offers, including reducing the risk of cancer, heart
disease, stroke, and diabetes. After adopting a vegetarian diet, Lyman
himself lost 130 pounds and lowered his cholesterol by more than 150
points.
Written in the tradition of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Rachel
Carson's Silent Spring, MAD COWBOY is an honestly written, urgent wake-up
call to America, a heartfelt plea for all consumers to take a closer look
at the food they eat, and how it is grown.
ORDER
THE BOOK!
A powerful expose on food production in the United States,
Howard Lyman's Mad Cowboy : Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher who
won't eat Meat includes information that could change the way you eat
forever.
Cattle ranchers turned cows into cannibals. Until August 1997, cattle
were routinely fed the remains of other cows. The Department of
Agriculture and the FDA banned the practice, fearing the spread of bovine
spongiform encephalopathy, better known as Mad Cow Disease. But it remains
legal to feed cows "rendered" -- dead and ground up -- parts of certain
animals, including the blood of other cows, despite the fact that this
practice may allow deadly illnesses to enter the food chain. In 1995, five
million tons of processed slaughterhouse leftovers were sold for animal
feed.
In an effort to prevent disease, Lyman, like other ranchers, fed his
cows antibiotics even before they became ill. Soon, Lyman was on an
"antibiotic treadmill" constantly changing drugs as the cows became
resistant to them, and even using antibiotics after they were banned
because of the dangers they posed to human health.
Every day, Lyman sprayed his feedlot with insecticides which would
then fall into the cattle's food and water -- and eventually become part
of someone's dinner.
Ranchers relentlessly used growth hormones, particularly DES, which
they stockpiled when it was banned. To increase their profits, ranchers
also routinely fed growth hormones to cattle within two weeks of their
slaughter, despite a government ban on the practice.
Dairy ranchers continue to use recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to enhance milk production, despite the fact that this chemical --
which has been implicated in causing cancer and other diseases -- shows up
in milk.
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