I’ve been thinking about this since I heard of “buttergate”—you can read a bit about it here if you hadn’t heard of it before.

What livestock is fed impacts the nutritional quality of animal-based foods. Buttergate points to how it can also change the physical quality and the ecological consequences of the product. (It also just bothers me, generally, that animals wouldn’t be provided with the foods of their natural diets, but I suppose that is another topic…).

Consumers have very little information regarding how livestock animals are treated, including what the animals are fed. Ingredient lists are required on most food products. Should we not also know the “ingredients” that go into the meat and other animal products we consume?

Topics: food, animals, consumer, policy, regulations, FDA