Many people are unsettled by the poor handling of animals in factory farms and feedlots, they also wish to lower their ecological footprint, and at the same time eat healthier alternatives. This has promoted great interest in graas-fed, pasture-raised animals. In fact, sales of grassfed and organic beef are rising rapidly. As we began the new millenium, there were about 50 grassfed cattle operations left in the U.S. Now there are thousands.

 

Putting beef cattle in feedlots to be fattened on grain may actually be one of western civilisation's most selfish ideas. Cattle (like sheep, deer and other grazing animals) are endowed with the ability to convert grasses, which we humans cannot digest, into flesh that we are able to digest. They can do this because they possess a rumen, a 45 or so gallon fermentation tank in which bacteria convert cellulose into protein and fats. Cows in feedlots on the other hand are fed corn and other grains, food that is fit for human consumption, which the animals inefficiently convert into meat. 7 to 16 pounds of grain are converted to a single pound of beef, it may make money sense because meat sells at a far greater price than an equivalent mass of grain but it makes no sense from a food perspective. We actually get far less food value out than we put in. In fact the equation goes something like this - for every grainfed steak served at an upmarket restaurant about 25 people are denied elementary food requirements for survival. [Although this is a horrible perspective, it must be admitted that this social system has proved itself over many years to be the most effective at banishing poverty, providing healthy living and satisfying lifestyles]

 

Feedlots and other CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) are the result of government policies that favour large-scale feedlots to the detriment of family farms. From 1997 to 2005 taxpayer-subsidized grain prices saved feedlots and other CAFOs about $35 billion. Without this subsidy feedlots could not function economically and would shut down.

 

Cattle operations that raise animals exclusively on pasture land, however, derive no benefit from the subsidy.

 

Federal policies also give CAFOs billions of dollars to address their pollution problems, which arise because they confine so many animals, often tens of thousands, in a small area. Small farmers raising cattle on pasture do not have this problem in the first place. Grainfed beef dominates the U.S. meat industry because it is subsidised.

 

Seventy-five years ago, steers were slaughtered at the age of four- or five-years-old. Today’s steers, however, grow so fast on the grain they are fed that they can be butchered much younger, typically when they are only 14 or 16 months. A beef calf born at 80 pounds cannot be grown to 1,200 pounds in a little more than a year on grass. That kind of unnaturally fast weight gain takes enormous quantities of corn, soy-based protein supplements, antibiotics and other drugs, including growth hormones.

 

A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis. Unlike our own highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick.

 

It also has profound medical consequences for us, and this is true whether or not we eat their flesh. Feedlot beef as we know it today is fed antibiotics which is recognised to lead inexorably to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria which reduce the effectiveness of our antibiotics.

 

Grainfed cattle produce more stomach acid which favors the growth of deadly E. coli bacteria and is found in the intestines of almost all feedlot cattle in the U.S. Prior to the advent of feedlots, the microbes that resided in the intestines of cows were adapted to a neutral-pH environment and if they contaminated the meat they perished in the acid of the human stomach. There are now however, strains of pathogens found in feedlot animals in the U.S.A that can survive our stomach acids.

 

Cornfed cows do develop well-marbled flesh, but this is simply saturated fat that can’t be trimmed off. Grassfed meat, on the other hand, is lower both in overall fat and in artery-clogging saturated fat. A sirloin steak from a grainfed feedlot steer has more than double the total fat of a similar cut from a grassfed steer. Grassfed beef not only is lower in overall fat and in saturated fat, but it has the added advantage of providing more omega-3 fats. These crucial healthy fats are most plentiful in flaxseeds and fish, and are also found in walnuts, soybeans and in meat from animals that have grazed on omega-3 rich grass. In addition to being higher in healthy omega-3s, meat from pastured cattle is also up to four times higher in vitamin E than meat from feedlot cattle, and much higher in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a nutrient associated with lower cancer risk.

 

There is yet another advantage to pastured animals, they are not forced to live in confinement. Pastured livestock are not forced to endure the miseries of factory farming. Harris Ranch cattle are fattened in a 100,000 cattle feedlot in California’s Central Valley. And the feed is not organically grown. The only difference between Harris Ranch “premium natural” beef and the typical feedlot product is that the animals are raised without growth hormones or supplemental antibiotics added to their feed.

 

based upon the essay "The Truth About Grassfed Beef" Dec 19, 2012  by John Robbins, author of nine bestsellers that have collectively sold more than 3 million copies and been translated into 31 languages. He is founder of EarthSave and co-founder and president of The Food Revolution Network.