Innocent observation in passing gets him in a beef with a few readers, but his stock is soaring among the cow set

In writing recently of our automobile trip north over Interstate 5, I mentioned passing what seemed to us an appalling cattle feedlot on the east side of the road near the Coalinga turnoff.

I described it as “an enormous fenced enclosure in which tens of thousands of cattle stood idle in their own dung under the burning sun. It was the Harris Ranch feedlot. (Which I learned later.) The cows were being grain-fed for market. They looked quite miserable and hopeless. Some of them stood in the path of a great revolving nozzle that sprayed out a stream of cooling water. But most just stood there, looking despondent and betrayed, as if knowing that their purpose was to be slaughtered and eaten. . . . The stench was sweet, pungent and unpleasant.”

I remarked to my wife, as we drove on, “Well, now you know where hamburgers come from.”

Of course I had no idea of punishing or dismantling the cattle industry. It is bigger than any of us, and, as I implied, most of us like a hamburger now and then, not to mention the stylish 70-year-old women I know who can put down a New York steak like a wolf.

I am reminded of the time I was sent to cover a press conference at which Gov. Goodwin J. Knight announced that he was placing California oil refineries under a three-day moratorium to find out whether they were contributing heavily to smog.

“Governor,” I asked him, “if the refineries are found guilty, will you shut down the oil industry permanently?”

He didn’t even answer. He just reached out and pinched my cheek between thumb and forefinger.

It is almost that naive to suggest that because it is unpleasant for the cows, the cattle industry should be shut down.

In fact, the many virtues of the cattle industry have been pointed out to me by Forrest Bassford, executive director of the Livestock Publications Council, Encinitas.

“Come now!” he writes, much like Gov. Knight pinching my cheek, “isn’t that ‘appalling’ sight a welcome break in a monotonous drive?

“A magnificent California and national economic asset?

“One of the world’s largest, most efficient producers of healthful, nutritious and delicious beef?

“A multimillion-dollar buyer of San Joaquin Valley hay, grains and otherwise waste farm products?

“A factory putting market-ready finish on multi-thousand steers and heifers produced on Western grasslands? Lands which otherwise could contribute little to the nation’s economy?

“An essential part of the livestock industry, which is the largest segment of U.S. food and fiber production, which, with its attendant services, is the country’s largest industry?

“An industry supplying the widest ever variety of fresh, quality, wholesome food for (your) table at bargain prices? Seldom has it been as cheap, anywhere, in percentage of average disposable income.

“Appalling? Oh, what a beautiful sight!”

Of course when you look at it that way, in terms, finally, of our own tables and disposable income, it seems almost a dream.

If those cows only knew what a role they are playing in the nation’s economy, how many pocketbooks they are filling, I’m sure they would consider their pen Valhalla itself.

I just hadn’t thought it through.

Elmer B. House, president of House & Haskell Farms Inc., writes in much the same vein:

“You mention the horrible sight of cattle being fed for meat. . . . The cattle are happy and are under no or very little stress. If they were, they wouldn’t gain weight. . . .

“The dust of feed yards is caused by cattle playing in the evening. . . .

“I will agree that cattle don’t have much future. But they are not tortured. The horns are cut off to prevent injury to each other in the pens or corrals, and the males are castrated because they gain weight better and fight less. This hurts but has been done for hundreds of years. Castration is deemed wonderful for pets. . . .”

It hadn’t occurred to me that in their incarceration those poor cows had even been denied the solace of sex. But, of course, it wouldn’t do to have virile bulls fighting in the enclosure. That might get a lot of cows on edge and ruin a lot of Big Macs.

I am touched by Mr. House’s explanation of the dust, which any traveler is happy to see and smell the last of. One thinks of it less unkindly when he knows that it is raised by thousands of contented cows at play in the evening, like innocent children on a Sunday school picnic.

I am not so touched by Mr. Bassford’s notion that the feedlot is “a welcome break in a monotonous drive.”

As I said, that valley is far from barren, and in fact has an arid beauty. “One passes vast fields of green; oil wells on low brown hills; miles of yellow grass. . . .”

You don’t have to be a vegetarian or an anti-vivisectionist to be appalled by the sight of those doomed cows standing idly about in their vast pen, far from the meadow, far from any tree.

I want to say a kind word, though, for Karen Bloemker of Harris Ranch, who not only answered my questions about it, by telephone, but sent me a nice brochure noting that Harris is the largest beef processing and feeding operation in California, and that it also operates the Harris Ranch Restaurant off Interstate 5 near Coalinga.

“If you’re ever by our way again,” she said, “please stop in and ask for me.”

I promise we will. I might even have a hamburger.