Grass Fed Animals: Responsible For Healthier Meat

New evidence is coming to light that feeding animals with a natural pasture grazing diet is healthier for the environment, the animals, the farm families, and consumers. Information on disease, nutrition, and environmental health is encouraging many small-scale farmers to return to the natural grazing routine that was relied on long before man’s intervention with chemicals and foreign matter.

The diet of most feedlot animals is filled with ingredients that they are simply not able to digest properly, causing health problems, and requiring even more chemicals and antibiotics to deal with the problems caused by this foreign diet. When we eat these animals, we ingest many of these same deleterious substances.

New research has shown us that there are at least four major health benefits to feeding livestock a pasture diet, as opposed to feed-ing them grain. Recent studies have shown:

Increased CLA:

“Conjugated Linoleic Acid” is one of the necessary fats for our diet. CLA has been shown to help to fight cancer, while also helping to convert fat into lean mass in humans.

Additionally, it contains an enzyme that breaks down fat already in the cells, freeing it to be used as energy. There is five times more CLA in the milk fat of grass-fed, or pastured cows, than in grain fed cows.

Increased Omega-3:

The leaves of plants and grasses are high in Omega-3 fatty acids, giving grass-fed animals an opportunity to store it in their systems. Omega-3s are linked with a lower rate of both breast and colon cancer.

Omega-3s are the most important fats found in the human brain (which is mostly composed of fat), and lower the risk of several mental disorders. Also, this healthy fat has been found to reduce heart attacks.

Grain-fed animals gradually lose their supply of Omega-3s, and instead accumulate higher than normal amounts of Omega-6 fatty acids, which compete with Omega-3s and have been linked with obesity, cancer, diabetes, as well as immune and personality disorders.

Increased Beta-carotene:

Grass-fed animals are richer in Beta-carotene, which is the precursor to vitamin A, and a potent antioxidant. Beta-carotene has been linked with a lower risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Beta-carotene is specifically excluded from the diet of most beef cows, as it turns the fat yellow, and is considered undesirable. In most countries, our ‘USDA Choice’ beef looks unnatural and unhealthy.

Less fat/calories:

When cattle are allowed to remain on pasture, their meat has about the same amount of fat as a skinless chicken breast. And when red meat is this lean, it actually lowers cholesterol levels.

A 6-oz. steak from grass-fed steer has almost 100 fewer calories than that of a grain-fed steer. The typical meat eater’s diet would save 17,733 calories per year by doing nothing more than changing to animals fed a grass diet.

The meat of chickens, too, if fed their natural diet of grass and foraged greens, can have up to 20 times more Omega-3’s, while commercially grown chickens can have up to 20 times more of the Omega-6 fatty acids.

A recent USDA study showed that ‘free range’ chickens on a natural grass diet had 20% less total fat, 30% less saturated fat, and 28% fewer calories. The meat can contain up to 50% more vitamin A, while being so lean it could be classified by the USDA as fat free. Chicken eggs also show these benefits, but are still being tested.

Responsible Ranching

It takes about eight pounds of grain to yield one pound of beef. A typical feedlot steer will have consumed 2,700 pounds of grain by the time it’s ready for market. It takes 5,200 gallons of water to produce that same pound of beef, compared to 25 gallons for a pound of wheat.

Not only could these resources be used to feed the hungry, but 80% of all herbicides used in this country go to animal feedcrops such as corn and soybeans. The transportation costs equal about one gallon of gas per one pound of feedlot beef, bringing environmental costs even higher.

The needs of a growing population as well as scientific discoveries have provided us with cows that can produce 17,000 pounds of milk per lactation. In the 1940’s, a good milk cow could produce 4,500 gallons. Hens today can produce 300 eggs per year (before being ground up and fed to other hens).

A good layer in the past would have given you 200. This increase in pro-duction has also brought about an increase in antibiotic resistant salmonella (due mainly to the 20 million pounds of antibiotics fed to our livestock each year), and an increase in growth hormones in our milk supply.

The EPA has found that 90-95% of all pesticide residues are found in meat and dairy products. In fact, more disease can be traced to the dairy industry than any other!

For more information, see Why Grassfed is Best! by Jo Robinson on the Co-op bookshelves.

To purchase grass-fed animal products, stop by the Co-op Meat Department and look for the New Mexico Organic Livestock Cooperative label.