strategies for Organizing Persuasive Messages 17.5 401
and ignored what they said. And what ends up happening? Well, Joann
Smith retired from the USDA and goes and sits on the board of directors
for a company called Beef Products Inc., where she makes a cool
1.2 million dollars a year in that position. Now, what’s important to know
is that Beef Products Inc. is the largest producer of pink slime that is used
as this filler meat. So there’s a bit of a connection here. Hopefully, you
see that, too, that someone that allows pink slime to be added to all our
meat, then Beef Products Inc., is the largest supplier of it, their profits rise
greatly, and the person who made the decision on the government side of
things goes on to become a board member to make over a million dollars
a year from that company.
So now that we’ve talked about some by-products that you would
find in your ground beef, let’s talk about the unhealthy process used
to make ground beef. So, cows eat grass, and they’ve done this for
centuries, maybe millions of years. And, so why is it that we are feeding
them grain instead? It’s because, in order to produce enough meat as
quickly as possible, we wanted to fatten up these cows. And so the large
producers of ground beef decided that, hey, if we feed them grain, then
they’ll get fatter quicker, then we can slaughter them and get more meat
per cow. But according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a grain diet
for cows leads to more health problems.
Follow me on this. With more health problems for the cows, they
treat the cows by giving them more antibiotics, and after giving them more
antibiotics, that means more antibiotics are making their way from the cow
onto our plate once we eat the meat. Now, say we start getting sick and
we usually take antibiotics to fight off an infection as well; if we’ve already
received those antibiotics from out meat that we’re eating, they are going
to be less effective once we need those antibiotics to fight off, you know,
the sickness that we have and that we’re fighting against.
So, the grain, on top of that, is a pretty subjective term as well. As I
was doing this research, I found out a few interesting things that count as
grain. The grain that is fed to our cows, which we turn around and eat,
includes feathers, hair, and bone marrow that has been melted down from
other animals, as well as swine waste, or as laymen say, pig poop, and
also the carcasses of dead, dying, diseased, and disabled animals such
as deer and elk.
It gets even better. On top of that, have you ever thought about what
happens if, at a farm, maybe a rodent or a roach or a bird, were to get into
some of the food and spoil the food? Maybe they ate some of it, maybe
they pooped in it. What happens to that food? Does it get thrown out?
No, it gets melted down and gets sprayed and heat-treated, so that it kills
off the bacteria. And then this is also given to the cows, which then ends
up on our plate as well. So, in the long run, we’re really just one extra
step away from eating rodent and roach feces. It’s pretty incredible when
you think about the fact that most people haven’t thought about what is
making it to our plates.
Now that I’ve worked up your appetite, I want to talk a little bit about
grass-fed beef, as well as a possible solution to, hopefully, what you’re not
going to eat anymore, which would be the grain-fed beef. So, according
to the Journal of Nutrition, grass-fed beef contains no pink slime, and it
also contains less fat and less cholesterol than grain-fed beef. And this is
actually not just a recent study; this was a study that was done over the
Colter provides a fluent
transition to his next point by
briefly recapping his ideas and
then telling his listeners what he
will talk about next.In this section Colter uses facts,
statistics, and expert testimony
to draw his key conclusions. He
also uses alliteration to express
his information in a memorable
way.Colter uses effective description
and explanation to further
amplify the significance of the
problem he is trying to avoid.Colter contrasts the negative
aspects of the problem by
noting more positive results
by comparison. He wants you
to see the advantages of his
proposed solution: eat beef
from grass-fed cattle.
(continued)