Chapter 6: On the Range
o How does the nutritional value of a McNugget compare with that of a hamburger?
Throughout history, chicken has been classified as the healthy choice when it comes to meat. Americans line up at the McDonald's drive through to purchase an 8-count mouth-watering Chicken Selects (c) meal. But what McDonald's has done is decieve us. Our Author states that like their french fries, McDonald's McNuggets were once cooked in beef tallow. Of course they were forced to switch to vegetable, and are now prepared with "Beef extract". Compared to the McDonald's hamburger, McNuggets have twice as much fat per-ounce. Is America handing one way tickets to obesity to all its younger generation? This is the question I have been constantly pondering while reading each chapter.
o How does the suicide rate for ranchers and farmers compare with the rate for U.S. citizens in general?
The suicide rate among ranchers and farmers in the US has now skyrocketed about three times higher than the national average though in Rural America the suicide rate has maintained a slow steady rate. Our author things that Farmers have a constant weight on their shoulder. They want to keep the family buisness within the family and when they do not succeed, Farmers feel as though they have failed their family. Suicide is they way out.
o What are the conditions or terms of business under which most poultry farmers operate?
Large chicken processors do not grow their birds on their own property. They supply growers with one-day-old chicks. Between their day of birth and the day they are executed, the chickens spend their lifetime on a grower's property. Processors provide feed, veteranry services, and tech and set up feeding schedules in order to ensure that the growers are growing the finest chickens. Aside from growing the chickens, the chicken growers provide the land on which the chickens live, the labor, and the poultry houses. The price for these necessities do not come cheap and growers often have to take out loans.
Growers have little power over the processors. Poultry contracts are short-term and growers who complain will find themselves with no chicken to tend to. It is hard to comprehend how the growers are putting in far more labor than the processors hardly get a say or a cut of what ever is produced.
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