• Ranchers return to old-fashioned cattle drives to help environment

    By Meredith Birkett

    People sometimes talk about armchair travel. In my case, it was desk chair travel as I opened up a link photojournalist Ami Vitale sent me to her latest project -- documenting the ranching community near her new home in Montana. Suddenly I was in a world where nature takes priority over smart phones, where a person's identity is not formed predominantly by their tweets. Sure, it was some romanticism on my part, but the scenes of neighbors coming together to herd cattle in the beautiful valleys of Montana seem timeless and a world away.

    Ami Vitale

    Barb Pearson's horse takes her hat off as they relax during the annual spring cattle drive in the Centennial Valley. Pearson was helping out the Ruby Dell Ranch, where she's good friends with owners Jim and John Anderson.

    As Vitale got to know the ranchers, she found that some were returning to traditional cattle drives, forgoing trucking their cows in favor of moving them from horseback, and frequently changing their grazing location to try to minimize the cattle's impact on the land. One of the ranch managers, Bryan Uhrling of J Bar L, says it helps to think of cattle as "...mobile composting machines. Their hooves plant seeds, their urine moves moisture from watering sites to arid grounds, and their manure is a natural fertilizer. They are the perfect all-in-one farming machinery."

    I've long been an admirer of Vitale's work, from her early days in Kashmir, to more recent work on maternal health in Sierra Leone and on biologists trying to save rhinos from the brink of extinction. As Vitale shares below, today she is finding inspiration closer to home.

    Aspiring photographers often ask me where they might go to find the best stories. My answer is always the same - get to know your own backyard, what's close at hand, rather than traveling around the world just to capture images of something foreign or exotic.  My rationale is that if you can tell these stories of every day life and focus on what we have in common rather than the obvious differences, then you will succeed as a storyteller. 

    Ironically, I have rarely listened to my own advice and the past dozen years has seen me crisscross the globe playing witness to civil unrest, turmoil, and violence in over 80 countries.  I broke my pattern in 2010 when I moved to Montana and have tried to base myself in this beautiful but austere landscape. 

    The images I am now able to create tell the story about our deep connection to land, the importance we place in stewardship, and a vanishing way of life in the American West. The folks whom I have got to know are remarkable in their fortitude, work ethics, and the neighborliness they exhibit everyday.  It is not an easy story but one that requires patience and persistence to birth - and yet I believe it is as rewarding in the telling as the more sensational events I have had the opportunity to cover.

    Slideshow: These cowboys ride ‘in tune with nature’

    Some Montana cattle ranchers are returning to traditional grazing methods by mimicking how bison used to roam.

    Launch slideshow

    Other stories by Vitale:

     

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  • Taiwan lawmakers blockade parliament over US beef imports

    Wally Santana / AP

    Opposition party legislator Lee Chun-yi sleeps on a blockade of the legislature floor entrance in Taipei, Taiwan during a protest against the voting on a controversial beef import law on June 15, 2012.

    Opposition lawmakers have piled furniture at the entrance to Taiwan's parliament in a dispute over a controversial beef import law.

    The occupation of the chamber, which began on Monday, is aimed at preventing a vote which could pave the way for imports of US beef treated with ractopamine, an additive used in animal feed to promote lean meat. 

    -- The Associated Press and Agence France Presse contributed to this report

    Related content:

    Sam Yeh / AFP - Getty Images

    Legislators from the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) and opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) display placards during a demonstration at the parliament in Taipei on June 15, 2012.

     

  • Mandy Cheng / AFP - Getty Images

    Workers carry US beef laden with ractopamine, a controversial additive used to promote lean meat, at a furnace in downtown Taipei on Monday. More than six tonnes of such beef imported by a local company that contained the drug allowed in the US but banned in Taiwan was destroyed. The move came as Taiwanese government is mulling a plan to lift a ban on ractopamine-treated US beef to facilitate stalled trade talks with the US, a key trading partner and arms supplier of the politically isolated island.

    Taiwan destroys US meat laden with growth-boosting drug

    According to this story on msnbc.com about a trade dispute betwen the US and countries which ban the use of ractopamine:

    Although few Americans outside of the livestock industry have ever heard of ractopamine, the feed additive is controversial. Fed to an estimated 60 to 80 percent of pigs in the United States, it has resulted in more reports of sickened or dead pigs than any other livestock drug on the market, an investigation of Food and Drug Administration records shows.

    Growing concern over sick animals in the nation's food supply sparked a California law banning the sale and slaughter of livestock unable to walk, but that law was struck down by the Supreme Court Monday. Meat producers had sued to overturn California’s ban, arguing that the state could not supercede federal rules on meat production. The court agreed.

    Since the drug was introduced, more than 218,000 pigs taking ractopamine were reported to have suffered adverse effects, as of March 2011, according to a review of FDA records. The drug has triggered more adverse reports in pigs than any other animal drug on the market. Pigs suffered from hyperactivity, trembling, broken limbs, inability to walk and death, according to FDA reports released under a Freedom of Information Act request. The FDA, however, says such data do not establish that the drug caused these effects.