County Fair’s Cattle Drive Is Something to Beef About

* Please come back to the present, organizers of the Orange County Fair. An old-fashioned cattle drive for the fun of it?

At a time when 1.28 billion cattle populate the Earth, threatening our global environment through pollution, deforestation, desertification and species extinction (where cattle graze, wildlife cannot live--either through loss of habitat or through extermination by governments as “nuisance animals”), we certainly cannot afford to continue to glamorize this unglamorous relic.

As the cattle are herded down the street, take out your calculators and count. While recognizing that we are not obligate carnivores, note that one of every two people you see will die of diet-related heart disease. Every pound of hamburger on the hoof counts for 16 pounds of grain that could have been used to feed the hungry and 2,500 gallons of water to drink in our desert state. The lists go on and on. The total numbers are devastating.

And after the crowds disperse, what will happen to the gentle creatures who are so often used as symbols of maternal love that we have affectionately named Elsie or Bessie? They will be shocked with electric cattle prods, beaten and kicked, and packed onto trucks for transport to slaughterhouses, where--terrorized--they will meet a primitive, painful and violent death, like 100,000 of them do every day in the United States.

Some relics are better off left in the past. Let’s change to a more Earth-friendly, people-friendly and compassionate agricultural system so that our children and the planet have a future. The Orange County Fair would have been a great place to start. Maybe next year?

JEANNIE GENECZKO

Rossmoor