Wining cows create better cut of steak

Not the news

By: Elizabeth St. John

Posted: 2/21/07

The other day while I was driving, I saw a cow being hauled in a trailer. I pulled up next to the trailer at a stoplight.

Honestly, I had never been that close to a cow. So, I did what any self-respecting college student should do. I rolled down my window and mooed at it. And you know what? It understood. It looked right at me, as if I had just said "hello." And then it noticed that I was not a cow at all, but instead an annoying imposter, and it rolled its eyes and turned away. I tried to get its attention again, but it ignored me.

This is how I came to the conclusion that cows are rude animals and sometimes deserve to be eaten. (This column isn't running next to a PETA ad, is it?)

Really, though, I love steak. I could eat steak for dinner every single night and probably never get sick of it. Sometimes there's nothing better than a home-grilled, medium-rare rib eye. That is, unless the cow the steak came from was a top-notch pampered cow.

Japanese cow farmers have been pampering their cows for quite some time. They say the cows are happier and therefore produce better cuts of steak. Pu-leeze. The farmers play music to the cows and massage them daily. But here's the clincher: the cows get fed a bottle of beer each day.

What is this world coming to? No one plays music for me and feeds me beer every day. (I'm not going to complain about the massage because that's just not my cup of tea.) How come some dirty farm animal (who probably would ignore me, by the way) is getting this kind of treatment while I'm stuck loading my own CD player and finding my own beverages? Something is very wrong here.

To make this even worse, a new group of farmers in Australia are feeding their cattle wine-soaked grains and hay, according to a Sunday Telegraph article last month. Each cow is fed a liter of wine daily. And this isn't cheap wine, either. This stuff goes for more than $15 a bottle.

Apparently, the tasting notes on the bottle read that it has "complex blackcurrant and subtle menthol with fruit cake and vanilla bean flavors." Hold on a second. I only know one person who likes fruitcake. I mean, why would they even want to mix these flavors? The notes go on, "The aroma is laden with red currant, plum, chocolate and sweet herbaceous mint character with spicy biscuity oak to compliment the lifted perfume."

Herbaceous mint? Spicy biscuity oak? This is beginning to sound like my grandmother's apartment to me.

The farmers claim feeding the cows wine sweetens the meat, improves the color of the beef and prolongs its shelf life. And the wine-infused cow-steaks retail for about $93. I think I'll stick with my Wal-Mart steak and invest in some sugar and food coloring, thank you.

The farmers also seem concerned about the happiness of the cows, although they are just going to the slaughterhouse. John McLeod, the director of all this wine nonsense, is convinced that wine-fed cows are happier. "They genuinely seem to like it-their appetite has increased since we introduced the wine and it has a relaxing effect," he said. Well, yeah! The cows are getting tipsy! Of course they're relaxed and happy.

And the people who produce the wine that is being fed to the cows are just as happy as the cows are that their product is going into such a project. "We consider it a compliment to the quality of our wine," said Kate Dermody, marketing coordinator for the Chestnut Grove vineyard. "To have these cows drink our wine is quite literally putting the ultimate match of food and wine together." Gross.

I wonder what the outcome of the steaks would be like if the farmers used Boone's Farm. The cow farmers and the wine sellers are on to something really: money.

The farmers get the cows drunk and then they slaughter them. The cows are busy listening to music, enjoying a massage and having a drink, and then BAM! It's all over for the cows.

So, the next time you're listening to music and your date offers you a massage and a drink, beware…

Elizabeth St. John is a senior staff writer for The Arkansas Traveler. Her column appears every Monday.