Corn ethanol: from bad to worse
February 26th, 2008 by Jim JustTom Philpott at Gristmill has a great post on the link between the corn ethanol industry and the meat industry.
The government-mandated spike in ethanol production has resulted in a spike in cattle feed prices. Feedlot operators, to cut costs, are substituting distillers grains – the mush that’s left over from corn after the ethanol process – for corn.
Remember that cows evolved to eat grass, and corn destroys their livers while making their digestive tracts friendly to E. coli 0157, a strain harmless to cows but deadly to humans. It turns out that distillers grains makes cows even more susceptible to E. coli 0157 than whole corn while also causing neurological damage from sulfur poisoning.
Not to mention the phosphorus fertilizers required for corn production, which are concentrated in distillers grains and then end up in our rivers and oceans, killing fish.
And without a use for distillers grains, there’s no longer any argument that corn-based ethanol consumes more energy than it produces.
Corn ethanol subsidies and mandates: now there’s an energy policy we can be proud of.