Street roots., July 21, 2017, Page 4, Image 4

Street Roots • July 21 -27, 201 1
Special Report
Page 4
The true cost of cattle
The elephant in the room is Oregon’s 1.3 million cows
BY E M IL Y GREEN I S T A F F W R IT E R
regon’s bovine businesses are booming.
Cattle, dairy and hay for livestock feed have topped
Oregon’s list of highest grossing agricultural
commodities for six years running, taking three of the top four
slots each year. For two out of the past three years, live cattle
for beef was Oregon’s No. 1 commodity in agriculture, the
state’s second largest industry.
This translates to a whopping 1.3 million cattle spread across
the state among farms, ranches, feedlots and dairies, large and
small.
In Western Oregon, where the pasture is lush, it takes two
acres to feed a single cow. East of the Cascades, where there
isn’t much to nibble on, it takes vastly greater space, often on
public lands and in direct competition with other wildlife that
depend on scarce desert resources to survive.
Oregon is currently faced with uncertainty about its
groundwater reserves and is falling far short of meeting its
greenhouse gas reduction goals. At the same time, climate
change is forcing the state into an era of more frequent droughts
and a changing landscape. Is it wise to continue to pour limited
resources into nourishing more than a million cattle?
Street Roots examined public records; visited beef and dairy
producers; and spoke with industry leaders, environmental
lawyers and activists, state and federal regulators, biologists and
other experts, all in an effort to answer this question and take a
peek behind what one ecologist calls “the bovine curtain.”
While health impacts of consumption and animal welfare
issues are equally important and controversial aspects of the
beef and dairy industries, in this issue we aim to explore what
the industries looks like in our state, and how they might be
affecting Oregon’s economic and ecologic future.
O
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Special Report: Pages 4-5,7-11
P H O TO BY A R K A D Y B R O W N
Oregon
cattle, but
Midwest
beef
P H O T O BY A R K A D Y B R O W N
Rosa, the association’s director. “They
he first thing to understand about
Oregon’s beef industry is that it’s quite
typically have other sources of income or
small in comparison to its live cattle and calf are retired.
industry.
“Now, on the east side of the state, it’s a
"I like to tell people that the part of the
completely different scenario,” Rosa said.
beef industry that they imagine, the wide
“These are the folks that make their full­
open spaces, the cows
time living raising beef, and many of them
roaming free - those
do it in a large way.”
elements are what we
These cows typically graze on pasture or
have in Oregon. The
on public lands with their mothers until
other part that turns
they are about 500 pounds. Then they’re
livestock into beef is
sold to a feedlot where they are fattened up
typically done in other
on grain, or in some cases grass-finished.
regions of our
“The mother cows spend their lifetime in
country,” said Theresa
Oregon,” Yoshioka said. “It’s what we call
Yoshioka, a trade
the weeners or yearlings, the offspring, that
manager at Oregon’s
are sold to other regions.”
Department of
While Oregon has 130 feedlots, many are
Agriculture.
quite small in comparison to the giant
The Oregon Cattlemen’s Association
operations in the Midwest, where many
estimates there are between 10,000 and
Oregon cattle are sent for fattening up and
12,000 cattle ranchers operating throughout
slaughter.
Oregon’s 36 counties.
For regional natural meat brands,
“Many ranchers on the west side of the
however, the cattle are raised and
state are raising just a handful of animals to
slaughtered in the Pacific Northwest, but
feed their family and friends,” said Jerome
it’s a smaller share of the market.
T
Cattle ranchers are paid what an animal
is worth when it’s sold to a feedlot or
slaughterhouse, not for the value of the
end product, such as steak or
hamburger, that’s sold to
consumers.
Today, 80 percent of the
slaughter and meatpacking
portion of the industry is
controlled by just four
cattle and calves
multibillion-dollar corporations.
in Oregon
With few slaughterhouses and
meatpackers located in Oregon, it
hurts ranchers’ bottom line.
“Their product has to go farther to
get processed, and that adds cost. And not
only that, but the farther those cattle have
to go to get slaughtered - if they were 15
minutes away or 15 hours away - makes a
big difference on the amount of shrink that
occurs in those animals, and the cost to get
it there,” Rosa said.
Another challenge to the industry is its
labor shortage. Fewer young people want to
1.3 MILLION
C o n t in o e d
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