A mere four giant meatpacking companies (Tyson subsidiary IBP, Cargill subsidiary Excel, Swift & Company, and National) now slaughter and market four of every five beef cattle born in this country

What gets a steer from 80 to 1100 pounds in fourteen months is tremendous quantities of corn, protein and fat supplements, and an arsenal of new drugs.

It was the same industrial logic- protein is protein- that made feeding rendered cow parts back to cows seem like a sensible thing to do, until scientists figured out that this practice was spreading BSE [mad cow disease].

Every day between now and his slaughter in six months, 534 [Pollan's steer] will convert 32 pounds of feed into four pounds of gain- new muscle, fat, and bone.

The ratio of feed to flesh in chicken, the most efficient animal by this measure, is two pounds of corn to one of meat, which is why chicken costs less than beef.