7 December 2011

VERY CREATIVE

I spotted this billboard near my home and thought it very clever. We so often hear, 'you are what you eat', but not many of us ponder beyond that. So the diet of the animals we devour should concern us.

Corn, of course, as Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser have informed us is probably the curse of the American diet. Not when it is fed to chickens, but when it is converted into corn syrup and finds it way into cereals, soft drinks and almost every processed food in the USA.

Here in New Zealand feeding corn to chickens is probably quite smart. Birds naturally choose to eat seeds and grains if they get a choice. These 'free-range' birds devour lots of corn and the carotene often turns the birds quite yellow, just like the Mexican chickens I first saw about 20 years ago in the Oaxaca market. They, like these birds, were delicious! Certainly the discerning NZ cook pays a premium for Rangitikei corn fed chicken with its rich corny, almost buttery taste.

Feeding corn to our New Zealand grass raised beef is a different story however. Just why those animals are 'finished' for their last 90 or 180 days in a feedlot on a diet of corn defeats me. The thing New Zealand grows best is grass (the short green plant that grows in the paddocks, not the other illegal kind that's hidden away.) We have an enviable advantage over most other beef producing countries as our animals graze year round on lush grasses and are healthy and delicious. Cattle naturally choose to eat grass, not corn!

Full marks to Tegel for bringing our attention to the chicken's diet and let's all think hard about just what animals eat. Maybe the feed should be on the labelling, just as the country of origin for all our food should be too.