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Nearly one million cattle take heavy toll on Arizona’s land, water

If you’re like me, when you go to the local grocery store, you find it fairly easy to slip into the mindset that imagines all those vacuum-sealed cuts of beef lined up in the climate-controlled meat aisle simply popped out of some magical stainless steel machine, a clean, efficient marvel of our technological age.

But as I know — and you know — nothing could be further from the truth.

The reality is, those packages of beef are the final product of a production chain that in its use of water, grain and other resources is one of the most environmentally damaging processes on our beleaguered planet.

Just here in Arizona, an astounding 970,000 steers and calves roam the open range (or, more likely, huddle together on giant feedlots).

I know, because today I called the Arizona Beef Council, and chatted with Anna Groseta, the Council’s spokeswoman. According to their website, Anna is a former Beef Ambassador (”The Voice of Women in the United States Beef Cattle Industry”), so I trust in her beef expertise.

The Beef Council gets a dollar for every head of cattle that goes to the ol’ slaughterhouse, so you would imagine they’d keep pretty good figures.

(Believe it or not, the dollar-a-head “check-off” fee is a federal law — part of the 1985 Farm Bill — called the Beef Promotion and Research Act, the purpose of which is “to support beef/veal promotion, research and information.” Go figure.)

And much to my surprise, that nearly one million head of cattle is absolutely peanuts in comparison to some of our neighboring states.

“We’re not even in the top ten,” Anna assures me.

Colorado has 2.3 million cattle.

Texas alone has a staggering 14 million.

(Just to go one step further — and vegetarians, brace yourselves — according to the USDA, give or take a few million, in 2008, all told, there were about 100 million cattle in the good old USA, from sea to shining sea. Let’s hope they never get the vote.)

But, getting back to Arizona, and our humble one million bovine residents, I ask: what is the cost — and the benefit — of all these heifers?

For starters, cattle ranching generates about $3.2 billion annually in the state.

That’s not chump change.

And hey now — let’s not forget our federal government’s latest farm bill, a five-year, $305 billion monstrosity. Some of that has got to be filtering down to our ranchers.

Also to be considered are the 11.5 million acres of public land open for grazing in the state, and the abundant water being guzzled by these thirsty creatures — an estimated 2,500 gallons of water for every one-pound steak.

In exchange, we, the people, get plentiful, flavorful beef.

And despite all those stories you hear about people stocking up on Spam because of the horrible economic crisis bearing down on us like a Category 5 hurricane, spokeswoman Anna assures me that folks are still chowing down.

“Calorie for calorie and dollar for dollar, beef is the protein of choice,” she says.

In fact, she tells me that beef scientists (yeah, I never imagined there was such a thing either) have recently discovered new cuts of beef!

One is called the “chuck roll,” and forgive me if I’m not running for my fork and knife.

“There have been new cuts to come out, like the chuck roll,” Anna says. “We call those value cuts – it’s a whole new era and it’s adding value to the carcass.”

Now, for those of you not just decided on a new life of vegetarianism, let me get to my main point (and I do have one!) which is that if it’s not already abundantly clear, our society’s meat fixation is totally out of control!

If you don’t believe me, here’s some facts from a U.N. report, with the appropriately ominous title: Livestock’s Long Shadow.

The total area occupied by grazing is equivalent to 26 percent of the ice-free terrestrial surface of the planet. In addition, the total area dedicated to feedcrop production amounts to 33 percent of total arable land. In all, livestock production accounts for 70 percent of all agricultural land and 30 percent of the land surface of the planet.

Turns out that 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock, too.

Okay, well, maybe some of you have heard all this stuff already. And for you vegetarians out there — keep on keeping on. For the rest of us, I wonder… what does it take to curb this addiction?

It’s a salient question — and one I will go into in depth in an upcoming post, which will include an exclusive interview with Howard Lyman, anti-beef activist, former cattleman and the original “Mad Cowboy”. Stay tuned.

John Collins Rudolf

(Photo of feedlot courtesy Vegetarian Image)

Foster care group in court over whistleblower suit

TUCSON — A former caseworker for a local nonprofit claims she was wrongfully terminated after sounding the alarm that child abuse may have occurred at one of the agency’s foster care homes.

Traci Costanzo is suing the Devereux Foundation in Pima County Superior Court for allegedly letting her go following discussions she had with state authorities that may have embarrassed the agency.

The Devereux Foundation is a 96-year-old nonprofit based in Pennsylvania that took in almost $350,000 in revenues last year, according to federal tax records.

In her seven-page complaint, Costanzo says she worked for the agency for almost nine years. During that time, she did not have any negative feedback from her supervisors.

In July 2007, Costanzo took a three-week vacation. When she returned, she visited one of the foster homes that the agency used.

“During that visit,” the complaint claims, “[Costanzo] learned that there were allegations of abuse perpetrated on two of the children in the Devereaux contract home. [Costanzo{ further learned that the [state] Child Protective Services was not informed as to the allegations of abuse that occured in the Devereux home.”

Costanzo claims she did her due diligence next by reporting the incident to her supervisor, who had been monitoring the home in her absence. She claims she repeatedly took her claims that Devereux mishandled the case to the top, asking the agency’s brass to file the report with CPS.

On Oct. 1, 2007, she was terminated effective immediately due to “reorganzation of the department,” the complaint states.

Now she is seeking punitive and compensatory damages from the Devereux Foundation. Tucson lawyer Charles R. Hamm is representing Costanzo.

Organic ethnic grocery store is all the multi-culti rage

CHANDLER — With its automatic doors, uniformed cashiers, and numbered aisles, Lee Lee’s may, at first glance, look like your average supermarket. But it doesn’t smell like it.

Walk into Lee Lee’s Oriental market on Dobson and Warner roads and you’ll instantly be hit with the overpowering, brackish smell of fresh fish.

Giant tanks along the back wall crawl with live crab and lobster. An open icebox nearby boasts everything from scallops to a jumbo octopus – whole.

The produce section, its bins piled high with fresh fruits and vegetables, carries the usual Gala apples and Bell peppers. But these American grocery store standbys are greatly outnumbered by ethnic foods and ingredients.

In fact, most customers pass the “mainstream” goods to examine the Chinese eggplant and Taiwanese pak choi further down the aisle. A few bins away, the sweet scent of Thai coconuts and winter melon offer shoppers a brief respite from the seafood section’s olfactory assault.

Lee Lee’s, which packs its aisles with ethnic foods and spices from China, Korea, Japan, Africa, India and more, is a place where most products have to be subtitled in English. Here, Cheetos look out of place amidst coffee-coated Koh-Kae peanuts, sunflower chips, and crunchy Japanese corn rolls.

Meng and Paulina Truong, who live in Chandler, are the founders and owners of Lee Lee’s. The market, which started out as a small shop on Southern Avenue, has become so popular they recently opened a second location in Peoria.

But the Truongs weren’t always so business-savvy. When they immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1980s, they barely had a high school education between them.

“It was really hard starting it,” Paulina Troung writes in an email. She’s still not fully comfortable interviewing in English. “We made a lot of mistakes at first. We didn’t know anything, really.”

While the Truongs may not have been confident with their business skills, they were at least confident in their idea. Paulina Truong says she and her husband recognized the scarcity of Asian markets in the Valley at the time, and knew opening the grocery store would not only help them, “but the whole Asian community, too.”

Chandler resident Yin Lin, who emigrated from China to the U.S. in 1986 and heard about Lee Lee’s from friends a few years later. Although the store was still fairly small, she remembers being shocked by how many Chinese products Lee Lee’s carried. She says the competing Chinese grocery at the time didn’t compare for selection and freshness.

Lin was also attracted to the way Meng Truong made an effort to make his customers feel heard. “I would always go up and say hi and give him suggestions about products I thought he should start carrying,” she says through a translator. “I’d say ‘I need this to make so-and-so Chinese dish, could you order it?’ And the next time I came in, he would have it there.” Nearly 20 years later, she still goes to Lee Lee’s for her weekly groceries.

Paulina Truong says requests like Lin’s fueled the store’s swift growth. “When more and more diverse customers came and asked us to start selling things, we had to expand,” she says.

But just because the Truongs widened their selection doesn’t mean they sacrificed the freshness their customers came to expect. Lin recalls Meng Truong telling her how he drove all the way to California every week to personally select the store’s produce. Meng says he still endeavors to bring his customers “only the freshest” goods.

And indeed, despite the smell, the line to have meat and seafood caught or cut stretches around the counter.

“Everything is fresh here. Period,” says Amla Dhamdarve, who has shopped for her family’s Indian groceries at Lee Lee’s since 2000. “That’s why I keep coming back.”

Jennifer Truong, the couple’s 19-year-old daughter, said that when she sees the faces of loyal customers like Amla or the frequent crowds of new buyers, she takes pride in her parents’ success. She knows firsthand that they didn’t come by it easily.

“When I was younger, I hardly ever saw them. I could never go on family vacations like all the other kids I knew,” she says. “But I just admire and appreciate them so much now. They started out with literally nothing and now they’re definitely something.”

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.