A Difficult Reality to Digest: The Effects of a Corn-Based Diet on the Digestive System of Cattle

A complex system of economic and political policies has led to the mass over production of corn in the United States. As a result of this overproduction, we now see corn in the majority of processed foods as well as animal feeds, in particular cattle feed. However, evolutionarily cattle are adapted to pasture diets not corn-based diets. Cattle have complex digestive systems, consisting of the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum, and the abomasums, which allow them to digest cellulose and hemicellulose found in grass blades. The addition of corn to the diet of a steer changes the chemistry of its digestive system and leads to serious illnesses, including bloat and acidosis. This illness, which is extremely painful for cattle, brings into question the ethics of feeding cattle a corn-based diet and the ethics of the policies surrounding corn production.