75-04-B3
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Price of Beef
TranscriptIt may surprise you to learn that there's a lot more to a cow than meets the eye or gets on the dinner table. I'll be right back. I'm sure we all know that a beef animal isn't all steak. It has a variety of cuts some more tasty and desirable than others. But when I say a steer is not all steak-I have something else in mind. Actually that line is the title of an educational display by some young people in the 4H Club in Arizona. Perhaps you aren't aware of that growing attempt to shame us into not eating beef on the grounds that we're feeding several pounds of grain to cattle for each pound of beef we get back. now the argument goes that grain could be used to feed the worldwide famine victims. Well the exhibit sponsored by these farm youngsters over in Arizona can be summed up in the words of a man who deals in meat. He says, "There are four meat quarters in a beef animal. The fifth quarter is the byproduct." In a lot of ways that fifth quarter is done more than the other four to enrich and even to lengthen our lives. Before we take too seriously those sincere but ill-informed people who see cattle as taking food from the hungry let's take a look at that fifth quarter we don't see in the meat market. Without it your tires might blow up in a mile and a half. one tire company alone uses about 20 million pounds of stearic acid a year. Stearic acid a byproduct of the beef animal is what keeps your tires cool. During last summer's beef shortage this company had to cut back on production of tires. Here are some other things you won't see on a steakhouse menu, products from the bones, horns and hoofs, glue, gelatin (including the edible kind used in ice cream), case hardening steel, refining sugar, processed bone meal used as animal feed and fertilizer to grow more grain for the hungry. That's only the beginning. there's neats-foot oil, plaster retarder, foaming fire extinguisher, paper boxes, sizing, wallpaper, sandpaper and emery cloth. Would you believe cosmetics, camera film, band-aids, spray-on adhesives, vitamins, violin strings, crochet hooks, combs and toothbrush handles? In the field of pharmaceuticals we truly get into the life-saving field-with Heparin which keeps the blood from coagulating during an operation. It's also used in preventing blood clots. There are enzymes used to aid babies digestion, epinephrine for asthma and allergies, adrenal cortex used in treating Addison's disease and to overcome shock. The list of really exotic medicines is too long for this time slot but just as an example; we've known about diabetes since the 15th century. It took 400 years to find insulin and we found it in the pancreas of cattle. Today chemists feel they've only scratched the surface in developing useful things other than food from meat animals. As for that grain we're wasting-it is feed grain not eaten by humans and cattle only get that for about a hundred days. Beef and dairy cattle provide two-thirds of our protein and most of that comes from converting grass and brush on 40 percent of our land that would otherwise be waste because it couldn't be converted to raising crops. In the meantime our farmers are exporting 75 percent of our wheat and 57 percent of our rice to that hungry world. Let's pat bossie on the back with gratitude. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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