Grist informs me that factory COWS have to eat bad, bad shit now, worse than before :( --

The government-mandated spike in ethanol production has made corn a pricey luxury for feedlot operators. To cut costs, they're scrambling to substitute scarce corn for abundant distillers grains -- the mush that's left over from corn after the ethanol process.

For every bushel (56 pounds) of corn ethanol makers suck in, they spit out about 18 pounds of distillers grains. And as ethanol production has ramped up -- from 2.1 billion gallons in 2002 to an expected 9 billion gallons this year -- more and more distillers grains have ended up in cattle feed (and, to a lesser extant, in hog and poultry feed).

But like manure in a feedlot packed with corn-fed steers, problems associated with distillers grains as feed are piling up.

gristmill