Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 4/24/01 Section: Opinion>>Columnists

Emily B. Zurich / Quoth the Raven [Click to enlarge]

It was the worst thing I’d ever smelled. Anyone who’s driven Interstate 5 going north past Coalinga knows exactly what I’m talking about.

This weekend, I returned from San Diego with a few other Spartan Daily editors.

There are flat, green fields for miles, abruptly interrupted by a patch of brown along the side of the road about two hours south of San Jose.

Immediately following the view, my face was smacked with an unmistakable smell: Cows and their waste material.

Dung. Feces. Poo. Excrement.

Most disturbing about the smell is that the lingering odor goes above and beyond any normal farm-type stench.

It reeked of death.

We weren’t able to breathe through our noses for about 20 minutes while we sped up to get past the smell.

I choked on the vapor as I remembered eating a hamburger at Carl’s Jr. earlier that day.

Some people told me I was overreacting — that the smell wasn’t that bad.

I agree, I’m sensitive about how things smell. In fact, I’ve been known to retch when something unsavory made its way to my nostrils.

But it’s not the odor that’s the worst part. The worst part is what was creating the odor.

Thousands of cows, packed onto a tiny patch of grass, with no room to move, intensified the stench, as well as my sensibilities.

The smell was so powerful that it persisted for miles surrounding the cows. My disgust drove me to do some research on the ranch.

After all, this is how our meat lives before it makes it onto our plates.

The place is called Harris Ranch. They call their beef “as pure and wholesome as nature intended.”

You can buy their beef at Safeway supermarkets and In-N-Out Burger restaurants in the San Jose area.

An article in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times reported that Harris Ranch “slaughters more than 700 head of cattle per day, producing about 200 million pounds of beef per year.”

I thought I would call Harris Ranch to find out if we were breathing in the end product of on-site slaughtering.

Kirk, the man who delicately answered my questions, informed me that the “processing” site was nearby, but the odor we experienced came from the feedlots.

Still, it bothered me that this was the way my hamburger was living — cramped up all day, shoulder-to-shoulder with other cows, no doubt knee-deep in droppings.

I bet cows often die like that, as a result of exhaustion or disease, and rot before being removed.

As if that didn’t seal my fate as a non-beef-eater, I found an article printed in the Washington Post about two weeks ago.

It outlined the disgusting conditions under which cattle are raised, fed and slaughtered.

It stated that often, cattle are alive while they are dismembered and skinned. I decided to give Harris Ranch the benefit of the doubt, regardless.

One point, though, made me pause.

“Fear and pain cause animals to produce hormones that damage meat and cost companies tens of millions of dollars each year in discarded product.”

Fear and pain — two emotions that have a much greater effect than simply experiencing a terrible stench.

I can only imagine the fear and pain that a cow must feel, being surrounded by filth and death.

I can only imagine how it feels when your only purpose in life is to eat, defecate, gain weight and face a painful demise, wherein you watch someone hack off your legs and slice your belly open before you die.

I enjoy the occasional steak or hamburger, just as I did the day we passed Harris Ranch.

But I can’t stomach the idea of eating something that lived in a pool of excrement while breathing in methane gas and vapor filled with bacteria.

I’m convinced that it’s time to avoid red meat from now on.

Bad smells used to make me giggle or laugh.

Now, they just make me cry.

Emily B. Zurich is the Spartan Daily Copy Editor. “Quoth the Raven” appears Tuesdays.

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