Life span of a cattle

An excerpt from The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

"In my grandfather's time, cows were four or five years old at slaughter," Rich explained. "In the fifities, when my father was ranching, it was two or three years old. Now we get there at fourteen or sixteen months." Fast food, indeed. What gets a steer from 80 to 1,100 pounds in fourteen months is tremendous quantities of corn (not their natural diet, they grazed on grass), protein and fat supplements (used to from remains from slaughtered cows but is banned due to mad cow disease), and an arsenal of new drugs.

Isn't this crazy? Are humans trying to play God here? I know this is a way of feeding the whole population but do we want an unhealthy one? It doesn't bear to know how detrimental is it to our health to eat something "mutant" (I view a cow at 14-16 months the size of a full grown adult cow as a mutant. :P)

Do we have to stop eating beef? Personally, I would not eat beef now but it's a personal choice. Thus, I feel that it may be wise to find other source of beef - grass-fed beef that is less detrimental to our health.

A recent study in The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that the meat of grass-fed livestock not only had substantially less fat than grain-fed meat but the type of fats found in grass-fed meat were much healthier. Grass-fed meat has more omega 3 fatty acids and fewer omega 6, which is believed to promote heart disease. It also contains betacarotine and CLA, another ”good” fat.

Also, note that grass is cow's natural diet so you would not get too wrong there. Unless, the ranchers and breeders had also injected them with growth hormones.

Any thoughts on this?