Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat

This book is great. It has a lot of imformation in it that is hard to find in other books about similar topics. Howard has obviously gone through an intense process of completely rebuilding his life - and with what courage. His life is his message. This takes you behind the scenes and shows you what the meat industry doesn't want you to know. It's convincing to the older generation as well, many people can identify with Howard. This is eye opening. Won't be able to put this down, I read this in two sittings.

I thought I had read everything about the cattle industry but this book by an ex-cattle rancher was very eye opening. Rather than explain the gruesomeness of slaughter houses which is what I expected, this author wrote about the cows about when they were alive. I was horrified to find out what cows are actually fed. Although, because of mad cow they are no longer allowed to feed dead cows to cows, these animals are still being fed horse, pigs, chicken carcasses, euphanized dogs and cats, roadkill and - I still can't believe this - chicken and other animal manure. Also, there are no restrictions on the amount of pesticides used on grain grown for animals, so they are very liberally sprayed - and this all goes into our meat and our milk. It's quite horrifying. There is a lot of other info about how the cattle industry is destroying our environment, info about the bovine growth hormone (I actually started to cry when I heard about what that does to the dairy cows) - the strain of producing all that extra milk sucks all the calcium and fat off them and they become sterile, and a lot about the politics and the clout that Monsanto has with the FDA. It's scary. The state of Vermont was actually sued by Monstanto for wanting to label dairy that had BGH in it - and Monsanto WON. This book was very well written, easy to read, and believable because this man was actually in the business. We were already vegetarian but ate organic dairy. Now we're vegan.

My family has been farming in America for 150 years; I was born and raised on the family farm in Ky. I was taught at an early age to kill animals with a gun, for no reason. My grandfather had a large dairy farm and a massive pig operation for 50 years of his life; I partook in the torture and slaughter of animals for meat consumption. We then switched to grain farming, and I was involved with massive spraying of highly toxic chemicals on the food that YOU eat every day. My father was a Microbiologist, I witnessed the slaughter and torture of innocent animals for experiments, and their suffering was burned into my memory. I took a tour of a pig slaughter house one time, it was not a pretty sight, the animals were dismembered while alive with large hydraulic cutting tools, blood flowed like rivers inside that house of horrors. I watched our neighbor, a cattle rancher, clear one of the last remaining stands of virgin timber in the state of Kentucky; he did it to graze his cattle on. I have driven across the US and seen the massive feedlots, which Howard describes in his book. We have a rendering plant up the road, if you like hamburgers, that is not a place you want to go or smell.I became very sick one day while in the United States Navy; I was exposed to radiation while working around reactors. A lot of it also had to do with my diet; I was a fast food junkie, 6' tall and 125 pounds. I suffered for 14 years with major health complications; it eventually cost me my career and my wife and child. I was diagnosed with a lung disease, a digestive disease, loss of partial vision, Scoliosis of the spine, blood in my urinary track and an endless list of severe symptoms. One day, I got tired of being sick, and I knew I was dying. I went home and threw away everything in the kitchen, the bathroom, and the medicine cabinet and started from scratch. I have been on a chemical and animal free diet for 4 months now and all of my symptoms have vanished completely, years of needless suffering finally ended.I can relate to Mr. Lyman's book in a very BIG way, in a way that I pray most of you never have to. No human should suffer the way I did, and his book is the road map to recovery. I did not go on any special diet, all I did was what he described but I did it before I found his book, it just felt natural and the results came very quickly. I read a lot of books, but not one has had more of an impact on my life than this one, it makes more sense to me than the Holy Bible ever did, I can actually UNDERSTAND this one. Within the last three days I met a girl who's mother just died from a heart attack in her mid 40s, a friend was diagnosed with throat cancer, and my mother's best friend is back in the hospital. The BEST health coverage you can get for your family is to read, study, and learn from this book!! I live around the corner from a "hamburger joint"; I can only feel sorrow for all of the victims lined up in their $45,000.00 SUVs to buy a slow death at $1.25 per

Something needs to be made clear here. You need an open mind to read this book. I was a vegetarian when I read this, but ever since I have been a vegan. I think that might be what this book is most successful at- turning vegetarians into vegans. It's tough to give up meat, since most of us have had it daily for our entire lives, but if you care about animals, the Earth, and most of all, your own health, it's possible to live a healthy enjoyable life without it. This book is 200 pages full of reasons not to consume animal products. No meat eater has ever been able to give me more than three or four reasons why a person should eat meat, and it's usually only "it's got protein and iron" and "it tastes good". I haven't eaten meat in four years and my most recent bloodwork showed iron, calcium, and protein levels to be better than average, without the excess crap- my cholesterol is 130. As for tasting good, I've never had a vegetarian meal that left me unsatisfied, nor has vegetarian food ever made me sick. And ever since I became vegan, I haven't caught a cold. Anyway, this book has everything you need to know. It should be required reading, so people can know what's in their food.

I was a pretty hardcore carnivore - loved eating meat & seafood all the time.I picked this book up "on a whim" because I love reading many different viewpoints on various subjects. I thought this book might be interesting.Little did I know, this book would change my life!I have not eaten any meat or seafood since the day after I read this book about 10-months ago and would highly recommend it to anyone who can open their mind to the possibility that eating meat might *not* be the right thing to do.Read this book openly and allow yourself to really question your most closely held values about food & health.I used to hunt and have not touched a gun since. Might consider it only for target practice, but would NEVER hurt an animal again.