Breeding the Perfect Bull
Nauseated. That is what comes to my mind after reading the Smithsonian’s April 2010 article “Breeding the Perfect Bull“.
There once was a bull, it starts. A bull who was not defined by his winning personality but by his scrotal circumference and off-the charts marbling score. I can’t make this stuff up.
The bull was not born into this world because his mother happened to like his father’s equally stunning scrotal circumference and marbling, but because a human man created him. In fact, what we know of the mother is not that she was a cow, but that she was a uterus and that the father was not a bull but semen (we learn the father’s name, nothing of the mother). “The cowboy who designed him, who chose the semen, selected the dam, prepared and inseminated the uterus, named him Revelation.”
Ah, Revelation! Biblical and divine – an epic bovine! Catchy.
Revelation’s sperm, not the bull himself, combined with an unknown number of cow eggs and produced a lot of winning babies. And by winning, I mean the carcasses of Revelation’s children were absolutely divine. No doubt an off-planet-deity took great interest in the semen of this particular bull.
Then tragedy struck – Revelation became injured (actually “it” became injured, how convenient). The human man was upset, ““No,” Donnell said. “Please God, no.” Your average bull, one whose scrotum did not pass muster, would have been dragged off to slaughter and no omniscient deity would have been invoked. But not Revelation! No, Donnell only had 100 doses of Revelation’s semen left. This was clearly a tragedy of epic proportions. The human man and family spend thousands of dollars on trying to fix what is clearly a devastating injury. The bull spends a year and a half in and out of veterinary hospitals, hundreds of miles from the farm. You begin to think that maybe, just maybe, the Donnell family cares about Revelation beyond his testes. I mean, this is what Donnell himself has to say, ““It was like a close friend dying of cancer,” he says today. “You’re almost relieved when it’s over. Almost.” And just like you would with a close friend dying of cancer, when it becomes obvious that medical intervention will not cure the cancer, you load your close friend up, drive him to the packinghouse, shoot him in the head with a gun, cut his throat and sell his flesh. You may even be like Donnell and opine that you wish your close friend’s head could have been saved for a wall mount. “he wishes he could have saved Revelation’s head like a deer’s and mounted it.” It is like practically the same thing! No one would find that creepy or anything! (Just to be clear, I find either scenario creepy).
Now, perhaps most stories would end there. But not this one. This one spans 8 pages. It goes on practically forever, especially if you like cows. And I do. Revelation’s spirit, I mean sperm, lives on! He may have been carved up and served to humans for a momentary gustatory pleasure, but Donnell has his semen. Oh yeah, and a frozen part of the bull’s ear. Again with the creep-factor.
Donnell ponders what to do with the sperm and the ear and considers cloning. But he has concerns, ““There’s the question of playing God,”
Yes, the “God” question.
Let me answer it for Donnell with some excerpts from the article:
“To achieve uniformity, and to maintain quality control, Donnell likes all his cows to be on the same estrus cycle.”
“a lot of them wear seeders—vaginal plugs carrying progesterone“
“one of the cowboys puts on an arm-length plastic glove and inserts an artificial insemination syringe loaded with 20 million sperm cells.”
“She will be overstimulated for maximum egg production and inseminated with choice sperm.”
Maybe Donnell was just being rhetorical.
Why can’t we be better than this? Instead of appreciating their uniqueness (or even their sameness), we strip them of their personhood, exploit and oppress them. We call them “its” and measure them by calves dropped, testicular diameter, marbling quality, eggs produced. They, the real they, their individual likes and dislikes, are lost, ignored, reduced and separated. That is a tragedy.
If you can stomach it, read the story. Share your thoughts. Tell me I’m not crazy!
Stephanie Ernst
Marji
Kelly G.
Deb
Mary Martin
Nope! Not crazy at all!!! I find this part – the reproductive manipulations to “food animals” all so vulgar as well. Isn’t it really creepy though – That they choose to call this “husbandry”?
At the dairy “championships” – These people (mostly men) just about “court” the cows… They literally walk them through a “bridal arch”… Use spotlights, music… flowers — It’s hideous!
There’s quite a market in “bull semen” – In fact, in all the trade restrictions with other countries… They never put embargos on it — Guess that’s the “spread thy seed” mentality of the animal users…
Great post Marji – Thanks!
No Marji you are not crazy. The human brain is an incredible yet unfortunate machine that produces unbelievable whacky thoughts and ideas about the world. The idea that God or some invisible human type being in the sky is concerned about the animals you are breeding and so forth…. shows the depths of insanity that our neighbors will sink to.
Are they for real? Yes, unfortunately they are.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/readings/forcing.html
There are people who believe the most insane ideas without any evidence whatsoever. A sign or signal that something is wrong with your mind is when your life is ruled by actions that have no basis in reality. This is what religious beliefs can do to someone.
And unfortunately the insanity of humans only leave a trail of misery and pain for the non human animals who should never have been born in the first place.
I have ready many articles, books, etc about the beef industry but the Smithsonian article is the one that did it for me. I am through with beef for life. I have read things in the past that affected me and I would stop eating beef for awhile or reduce how much I ate but I can say with certainty that I will never consume any part of a cow again. I believe that how we treat animals is a good measure of our character and the treatment of cattle by these “men” speaks volumes about theirs.
I don’t think your crazy I see your points, but what would be wrong with a bull being slaughtered if it were not economically viable for a farmer? They breed livestock for a living, so it was economically viable for them to have the stud bull cared for. The bull is an asset and they have to protect their investment. There are millions of bulls and if they were not slaughtered or “oppressed” as food they would become a nuisance/food for bears wolves etc. Except for the brief pain from slaughter they don’t feel any oppression. People who talk about animal oppression seem to have forgotten that none of us would be around without agriculture especially the use of animals for plows/transportation. Our culture and society arose out of real human need and as a fellow English speaker you should consider yourself lucky to live in this great society, born free. If someone oppressed you, you would know. If you’re like me you have never or rarely had to go hungry for more than a few hours because of our huge food surpluses. Bulls sit in fields and eat grass they don’t know about death or the horror of slaughter. I do believe in free range and organic farming, not all the disgusting factory food like the chickens in the terrible “chicken holocaust” chicken farms living in 1×1 foot cages in their own filth, pigs and cows in similar conditions, injected with antibiotics/hormones etc. That is unhealthy for everyone and depressing because of the gross ailments the animals suffer but done correctly animal farming can benefit everyone including the herd.
Hi Stumpy, You’re right that we have been using nonhumans for a very, very long time. But that doesn’t mean that it is any longer required to do such… There are currently thousands of viable options that don’t require animals at all. And while I can see why you’d think that we owe all of our progress to using animals in the past – You’re assuming that there might not have been a better way. Who really is to say that we reached the apex of our civilization because of our use of animals? None can really know how much further we would have advanced had we been ingenious enough to plot another course… True?
But in the here and now, you fear that the millions of bulls, if not killed for humans, would be prey for bears and wolves. Well, if they were not “prey” for humans, they would not be bred at all! If we just stopped utilizing their bodies as products – there would be no bull-sperm sales, no artificial insemination of cows, no assembly line of birth, slaughter and consumption. Bears and wolves are not the threat – it is humans… It is a meat-based culture. There is no “benefit” to a “herd” to be born, to live in captivity, to be physically mutilated, tagged, then prodded after only a short lifespan to a knock box. It doesn’t benefit not the first bull or entire herd… And if the truth be known — It doesn’t benefit a civilized and progressive culture either.
You are correct too when you say most of us have never gone hungry – I live on a plant based diet. I’m not wealthy… Or “unique” in any way regarding what it takes to sustain my life. Eating animals is, in our modern world, totally unnecessary and absolutely unjust for the animals trapped in this profit-driven, apathetic system. There really is no “correct way” to do a wrong thing.