Dear Sir,
Thank you for your recent bulletin of "Beef-Ban Positions Hardening." I've also been reading in the New York Times about the hesitations and resistance put up by Europeans to our hormone-treated beef. The whole problem worries me a lot because it's a question of the economic future of West Texas and lots of other places, not to mention the future of a way of life that we're all fond of, and even consider sacred. But we really need to consider all sides of the issue.

One of the things that really bothers me about the dispute is that I can see the Europeans' point of view. And I'm even involved, however modestly, in the industry here! If I can see the European point of view, then certainly so can U.S. consumers.

I've long thought that the beef industry (not the poor cattlemen and cowboys alone with their ear implants, but the feedlot conglomerates like Iowa Beef Processors) was

going to ruin the market for beef if they didn't make the market friendlier to non-hormone-treated beef products.

The more I talk to people the more I hear: 'Yes,' they say, 'I know there's supposed to be no bad effects from the hormones, but I don't like the idea anyway. I've stopped buying beef,' they say.

The texture is also not as good as it used to be. They blame the hormones for trashing the texture. Just the idea of the extra hormones bothers people. To put steers on steroids just seems unnatural. Folk are far less frightened by a block of tofu. Europeans were complaining that even in supposedly non-hormone-treated beef there were traces of hormones. I don't think it's just that they want to keep American beef out of the market, though they might also want to do that. It's an issue for the consumer and will be increasingly, I predict. People hear about frightening tumors forming in the backs of baseball players (like Andres Gallaraga) who for years have been pumping themselves up on hormones.

Clearly, in today's market it would be suicidal for a single stockman, say, to stop the hormones unilaterally. The steers treated seem one-third bigger than those that

aren't. The greed factor, the keep-afloat factor is a powerful incentive.

But I think there is a market for "natural" beef if such a product could be marketed in fine stores everywhere. My dream would be that there would only be that product available. Meanwhile, I'd certainly go to a market that guaranteed no hormones. I'd go out of my way to get such a product.

So would most folk, surely, if they had a choice. The product could even be more expensive than the regular product. I'd be delighted to pay extra. The regular product for cheap mass-produced hamburgers could even continue to exist alongside the upscale version as long as we had a choice.

Is there anything that can be done to convince the industry to back off the hormones, or has that battle already been fought and lost to the bottom line?

Dan Latimer
Auburn, Alabama
via e-mail

(Editor's note: Perhaps the hormone issue would sort itself out if enough producers recalled Baxter Black's observation some years ago: Bax noted with tongue only partly in cheek that if all the performance-enhancing claims of various products were tallied up — X-number of pounds from implant A, eartag B, antibiotic C, mineral supplement D, breed E and the like — ranchers would be weaning 1200-pound calves from first-calf heifers. There's a little truth and a lot of hype in almost everything, whether it be performance-enhancing products or trade-stifling embargoes, and the latter must be culled from the former. The trick is to let common sense make the gate cut.)