Hello, Kristine.

You are very right-on about cattle, chickens and pigs (and lambs, and...) being fed a lot of grain...at fattening time on feedlots...yuk! My wife's family owns a meat packing plant and feedlots. They are awful places...the feedlots, I mean. And the conditions of chickens and pigs being kept in "factories" in pens no bigger than about three animals in size is despicable! We should have some respect for the food we eat and choose to put into our own bodies. I don't like the idea of eating an animal who suffered through its entire life, living in conditions that made it sick, mentally and physically. However, I grew up on a farm and still eat range fed animals...that are not fed grains. Grains are very bad for the animals (and us) who weren't designed to eat them...full of nasty phytates and lectins, etc...Not only are grains bad for all of us (humans and ruminants and dogs and cats by causing most of the autoimmune diseases[such as arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, lupus, MS, cancer, obesity, etc.] we and our animals get) but they are very bad for the native animals who are living in the fields where the crops are being raised. Actually, they don't live very long...they are disked, poisoned, shot, and otherwise "eliminated" because they are considered "pests." Ruminants, on the other hand, don't kill many animals in the fields where they eat and poop. And, contrary to popular belief, most ruminants in the world eat their grass on land that won't support anything but grass and sagebrush. If you don't believe me, take a drive through Nevada, or Montana, or Eastern Oregon, or Eastern California, or Arizona, or New Mexico, or Utah, Idaho, North and South Dakota...where most of the ruminants are raised... in the summer time and see what grows on those huge 100,000 acre ranches. Although, most of them are put on feedlots during the last two weeks of their lives and fed (yukkky poo poo) grains and kept in disgusting overpopulated captivity, they do not eat nearly enough grain to cause the utter destruction to most of the species that have been destroyed by the farming industry, worldwide, that is supported by HUMAN consumption. So, I was kidding, but only a little. I get really tired of being accused of supporting a lifestyle that is destroying our world by a lifestyle that is supporting the destruction our world through the destruction of most of the many species of plants and animals who have grown and lived in the areas overtaken by agriculture in the past 10,000 years. Not all vegans or vegetarians say this about my lifestyle, so I surely don't put all people of that persuasion in that category, but I have a lot of liberal friends who think that I'm the bad guy, and I get really tired of the hypocracy and dishonesty in the ranks of certain people.