You know what the cattle guy was telling me? He's actually my firewood guy, drops me off nice clean long burning oak..but he raises stud cattle, doesn't slaughter them, just sells them to other ranches. But anyway I was asking him if he gives his cattle hormones and stuff, and he says no, uh uh. He raise them outside, they graze all day, like real cattle so they don't need the major antibiotic/hormone stuff. . But, he has to give them something he called 'triangle', just one shot they get, it's an antiviral something or other. he says that without that they'll get up to 600 lbs and just drop over dead, some sort of virus that a lot of the cattle have these days. Then he goes on to say that in the big cattle factory places they put this little pellet of hormone something or other in their ears and he says it pretty much drives them nuts and all they want to do is gorge themselves all day, and at that point they really don't care what they eat or anything much else... they just eat.

thought that was an interesting note to the obesity epidemic.