Received: by 10.68.242.97 with SMTP id wp1mr3775054pbc.0.1349574963478; Sat, 06 Oct 2012 18:56:03 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Path: g9ni30101pbh.1!nntp.google.com!news.glorb.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx04.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Allen W. McDonnell" Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if Subject: Re: AH Challenge, Chevon more popular than Beef in North America Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2012 21:55:02 -0400 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 135 Message-ID: References: <91f5128b-e16e-44b7-bfaf-d30ecd184c32@i14g2000yqe.googlegroups.com> <20121006152146.7cdcfc98.amia9018@mypacks.net> Injection-Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2012 01:56:02 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx04.eternal-september.org; posting-host="9c8d904821100967424ee78604e2b40e"; logging-data="26202"; mail-complaints-to="ab...@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/3+TkGHa2IYsUgxTTdEcfT" X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.6157 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5512 Cancel-Lock: sha1:57ab1Q3c21p8Gt3WCPKTcZRWMa0= X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal "Bob Melson" wrote in message news:20121006152146.7cdcfc98.amia9018@mypacks.net... > On Sat, 6 Oct 2012 13:30:53 -0700 (PDT) troll opined: > >>On Oct 5, 6:40 pm, "Allen W. McDonnell" wrote: >>> Goats are prolific and produce a tasty meat (Chevon) that is a >>> staple with 70% of the meat eating people on Planet Earth, however >>> for some reason it fell out of favor in the USA and Canada shortly >>> after European settlement. >> >>You seem to be getting into the habit of making >>unfounded assertions, and then trying to start >>threads with them. >> >>I am interested in the history of the types of >>food intake that early settlers to North >>America might have engaged in the 1600s >>and 1700s. >> >>Can you found the assertion that it may >>have been popular among the early settlers >>of that time period but then it fell out of >>favor then? >> >>Did the popularity of beef versus sheep >>or goats in North America only plummet >>in the 1800s? Did it only happen with >>large supermarket chains in the 20th >>century deciding they would only have >>some sections for some types of meat? >> >>Some places in the world do produce >>wool including Australia, and the >>consumption of smaller ruminants >>there I think is still substantial. >> >>Are you simply speculating and >>you do not have any evidence or >>knowledge of during what time >>period the shift might have taken >>place at all, at least in a comparative >>sense with respect to other parts >>of the world? >> >>Do you have a clear knowledge of the >>relative levels of meat consumption >>of the different classes in England >>or other parts of Europe in the 1400s >>or 1500s before or very early during >>the formation of colonies, settlements, >>or trading posts in other parts of >>the world? >> >> >> > The other problem is that the settlers brought their food preferences > and food prejudices with them from the mother country, so you have to > ask what led to the old countr{y|ies} consumption habits. What's been > suggested didn't happen in a vacuum, in other words. > > Moreover, as Bradipus pointed out, goats are a 4-legged environmental > catastrophe - they strip the bark and leaves from trees, destroy ground > cover, including roots and, in general, desolate whatever area they're > grazing in. If you've *ever* seen an area where goats have been grazed, > you'll understand what I'm saying. > > Suspicious Ol' Bob > Over grazing by goats is a serious problem, especially in marginal environments like west Texas or Sudan in Africa, but they are quite common in central and south America, the middle east, south eastern Europe, Indonesia and other places without causing massive devastation. The first goats imported by the English arrived on the Mayflower, or so I have read. As for when beef became so popular it was a combination of factors, first you needed the Rail Roads to extend as far as Kansas and to connect Kansas to Chicago and the eastern seaboard of the USA where there was a large market for meat. Secondly you had wild Spanish beef aka Texas Longhorn cattle running wild and in the early years pretty close to free for the taking, you got a government grant for a large acreage and hired men to direct the herds around on your rangeland, then drive them to the rail head in Kansas where they were shipped to slaughterhouses in Chicago and processed, then either canned, jerked, salted or frozen depending on preference and season for shipping to large eastern cities for sale to the consumers. Small eastern ranches were unable to compete in price so the successful ones went for higher quality beef. Over time this cut into the Texas market and they started breeding in European bulls to improve the perceived quality of their beef. Keep in mind this all took place over many years, not the instant gratification speed people expect in the 21st century. Early on those railroads through Kansas had to survive huge herds of Buffalo and sometimes encouraged passengers to shoot buffalo from the trains to drive them off, all of that meat was left to rot with few exceptions. As the Buffalo declined ranchers moved in and started raising cattle in Kansas and Nebraska where they were successful until Russian wheat was introduced which along with barbed wire made it possible for the 'sod busters' to use the homestead act to claim farms and protect them from the free range cattle. In the UK Sheep, Cattle and Goats all grazed the same land in the 1800's, but the USA turned to beef because of simple economics, you could grow beef cattle up to market weight pretty easily on free range land owned by the Federal Government which gave you a huge profit advantage over privately owned ranch land in the eastern states. The confluence of the Railroad and free range land created a beef ranch culture which has lasted over a hundred years in the USA and Canada. I learned about this in high school level history courses a long time ago, sorry if my lack of a dozen web links to what was once common knowledge makes this difficult for you to believe. Oh and by the way Bob I live not far from a goat ranch right now and have visited several of them over the course of my lifetime as a teen and as an adult. Properly managed as they were none of them were "environmental catastrophe - they strip the bark and leaves from trees, destroy ground cover, including roots and, in general, desolate whatever area they're grazing in. If you've *ever* seen an area where goats have been grazed, you'll understand what I'm saying." so you need to get out more and see what a properly run ranching operation looks like. Of course all the ranches I have been on were privately owned land so the owners had motivation to prevent over grazing. As for unfounded assertion some people on this group are more than willing to complain about suggested topics without ever adding anything useful to the discussion. If you don't think a topic is worthy of your attention then you should ignore it, I certainly do that with most of the threads on the Usenet. If it makes you wonder about gaps in your knowledge you have access to the internet so spend ten minutes researching what made you curious and see if it is an 'unfounded assertion'. Challenge a thread with facts, it will get you a lot further and spark a discussion.