Can humans eat livestock feed

Answer 1

Humans cannot eat livestock feed at all. Livestock feed, especially for cattle, is unsuitable for human consumption and adds no nutritional value to humans if a human were, in fact, to eat it. Feeds have been created and formulated to suit a ruminant, not a monogastric (certainly not a monogastric that does not have a functioning cecum, unlike the horse or the pig) to take advantage of the biochemistry of the microbes within the rumen that help a cow give more milk or a beef steer put on more muscle prior to slaughter.

The false claim that it would feed more people if livestock feed were fed to humans instead does not take into account the little processing that is done to such feeds in comparison with what must be done to "meet the grade" for human food standards. A cow can easily and much more efficiently digest and utilize an entire wheat or corn plant, for instance, because they are built to be roughage digesters. We humans, on the other hand, are only interested in the portion of the grain or corn kernel that gives us the starch component of our foodstuffs. That means that we are only interested in around 10 percent portion of the entire wheat or corn plant. That's a big difference compared to the 50 to 60 percent of the plant that a cow would be interested in: this comprises of not just the grain portion, but the leaves and the upper part stems as well. With that 10 percent of the plant, that grain that is harvested "for human use only," we have to throw away another five to eight percent--being the hull, bran and germ of the wheat grain, and the large cob which the kernels are attached too--away before it can be processed further into something which we will readily eat. So, all in all, we humans are really only interested in only a part of the wheat grain, and not the entire seed like a cow would be. When you feed a cow a pound of wheat, the only processing that may be done to it is grinding or rolling to break the hull. That's it. Additionally, the entire two thirds of a cereal grain plant (or 7/8's of a corn plant) can be harvested, chopped and ensiled to make silage, no further processing required.

This brings us to another issue that is often overlooked: By-products. When a company or industry is processing grains, lentils, oilseeds or pulses into a useable product for human consumption, there is always a part of the seeds or grains that must be discarded as waste or garbage, as mentioned above. All of this "garbage" can't be fed to humans because we humans won't eat it, either because it doesn't have the aesthetics-factor, the good-tasting factor, nor the tenderness, relatively-easy-to-chew factor. So where does it go? It could go to the landfill, or the compost heap, but so much of it is produced on a daily basis that both the landfill and the compost heap will be overwhelmed. The best solution for such by-products is to give them to the very organisms that can utilize them and produce products which we always vote for with our money at the grocery store: that's right, the livestock. Livestock, including dairy cows and beef cattle, can easily and often eagerly consume these by-products (as part of their ration, of course) to produce milk and meat, respectively.

"Waste" products have never nor will ever be produced for the purpose of feeding livestock. They amount to nothing to the industry which generates such waste, and are often treated as such: simply more garbage to throw away. The crops from which they originate have originally been grown "solely for human consumption," however the by-products which are left over go to feed livestock. Thus, there is no such thing as a crop grown solely for human consumption, nor solely for livestock feed, nor is there such a thing as a crop being grown or used to be fed as "waste" feed to livestock. To drive the point home further, everyone one of us, no matter what fad diet, culture or religion we follow that may or may not force us to consider to not consume any animal products, contributes to and encourages the livestock industry as a whole, no matter what we choose to eat.

Answer 2

Yes it can. Much of what's left over from harvesting corn for human food is fed to livestock as a by-product in the form of corn cobs, corn-gluten feed, etc.