21.7 million pounds of beef have been recalled because of E. coli...so, my QUESTION IS?

Question

Topps Meat Co. on Saturday expanded a recall of ground beef from about 300,000 pounds to 21.7 million pounds, one of the largest meat recalls in U.S. history.

THE STORY:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/29/meat.recall/index.html

MY QUESTION (for the mathematicians out there):
How many cows does 21.7 million pounds of ground beef equate to?

Start here>>how many pounds of ground beef does ONE cow produce?

Give me the number of cows...
>>and how you derived at your answer<<

Answer 1

Per http://www.kansasbeef.org -
An 1,150 lb. steer doesn’t yield 1,150 lbs. of beef. On average, that yields a 714 lb carcass. Approximately 146 lbs. of fat and bone are trimmed offleaving about 568 lbs of retail beef.

You're talking ground beef, so you'd have to remove a percentage of steaks, ribs, etc... Based on the KansasBeef info, about 240 lbs (rounding down) of that is ground beef (or used as stewing meat)

so 21.7 million pounds recalled, divided by 240 lbs per cow (average) is about 90,417 cows.

Of course these numbers are all averages and such, but suffice it to say it was probably somewhere between 90,000 and 100,000 cows.

Answer 2

A cow/steer will dress out around 50% meat, or an average steer will weigh around 1000 pounds when marketed. One steer would yield 500 pounds of ground beef. 21.7 million lbs/ 500 lbs comes out to 43,400 steers.

Answer 3

The processed size of a steer is approx 1000 lbs of meat. (animal weighing 1250 lbs at slaughter)
So that is A LOT of animals that were slaughter in vain. Of corse, that is minus that whole cuts of meats.
Too bad people didn't do their jobs properly and let this happen! Not the market is screwed!

Answer 4

One cow produces approximatley 492 lbs of meat (http://ask.metafilter.com/27259/How-much-meat-is-there-on-a-cow)
21.7 million pounds of meat total/492 lbs of meat per cow=

44,106 cows

Answer 5

It is 642 pounds, per this reference link http://www.uky.edu/Ag/AnimalSciences/extension/pubpdfs/kybeefbook11.pdf

They did the arithmetic as part of their explanation of beef economics.

Answer 6

fOuR very BIG c0ws :\ durRrr