Grass-fed beef (e.g., Charolais) earns a price premium, especially since the mad-cow scare of the 1990s.

I can just picture a cow wandering through a naturally occurring cornfield chomping on ears.  Inexcusable incompetence.

Cows eating corn is one of the main causes of the e. coli outbreaks.  Cows eating grass and hay have a basic digestive system, anything that can live there is easily killed by our acidic stomach.  When cows are fed corn their digestive system becomes acidic, a perfect breeding ground for deadly pathogens.

It's a little disturbing coming from someone who's supposed to be an expert, but he's far from the only person whose ideas about cows are, um, not quite correct.  When I was about ten, a friend tried to tell me only black and white cows gave milk.  Having been around a few more animals than she had--no cows, but I'd had horses for years--I tried to explain to her that if a mammal didn't give milk, its babies would starve, and that brown cows are mammals just like black and white ones, but she was having none of it.  

Of course, in that case it was funny, because of course we were just kids, whereas in this case it's sufficiently horrifying that I can't really find it funny (well, especially given the chicken-manure business).

You make a good point, BioD, about the connection not only between cows and corn/ethanol, but also potentially between cows and grass/ethanol.

Raising cows on pasture is a beautiful thing [full disclosure: my grad work is in forage breeding and I once received a $300 award from the Alfalfa Improvement Association, no kidding]. You've got a deep-rooted, soil-stabilizing, perennial grass-legume mix, you've got the cows doing the fertilization, and you've got milk and meat that's lean and omega-3 rich.

Instead, we decided to slice this system apart into row crops and feedlots. As Wendell Berry said, "we took an old solution and neatly divided it into two problems."

Now, with cellulosic ethanol all the rage, we're talking about this great opportunity to diversify and perennialize the landscape, as if we had no idea  until now how this could be done.

The poor cows -- I guess chicken poop will have to do.

Karen: thanks for posting Ray's full email.

If topics like this interest you, I would suggest reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma". It is extremely enlightening.

Thank you, Karen Orr, for submitting all that information.  It is very illuminating.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

It is amusing to see so many serious arguments from people with little to no firsthand information.

How many of you have ever been to a cattle ranch or fed cattle or talked to people who raise cattle? Eaten farm raised cattle? I'm not bragging, but I have. I've also asked lots of questions of people who raise cattle, not giant cattle corporations, just family farmers with 120 acres and 30+ head.

Yes, cows are ruminants and they eat grass. rolls eyes

When you select a calf to fatten for slaughter, you put them in a feed lot (with at least one other calf so they compete and eat more) to restrict calorie burn. They eat and do little exercise and get fat and tender. Fat and tender = tasty.

Corn is fed to calves (males and females) to fatten them before slaughter. Why? Beef tastes bad without the fat marbleing which produces tasty juiciness when cooked. Grass-fed beef lacks this high fat content and is consequently rather tough and unappealing.

I'd like to correct a small error in the post
by synarchy.  We purchase and eat a quarter
of a grass-fed steer each year.  It's tender
and tastes great!  I'd agree that extra fat is
one way to make meat tender, but it is not the
only way.  Our Diamond F local beef is selected
for tenderness, and the steers are never fattened
on grain.  This makes them much better for the
environment, health, and local agriculture.  I
am pretty sure you can order the meat online,
just search for it.
              Cheers,
                    Susanna

Plant a carrot. Eat a carrot. Repeat as necessary.

Am I missing something, or are vegetables just simpler?

The best tasting animal flesh comes from active animals living their (evolved) normal lifestyles. The best tasting beef is wide-ranging beef on dry-ish grasslands -- cattle that have to move long distances to eat. This is why Argentinian and Australian beef tastes so much better than most other countries' beef, and, due to the extra nutrients in the meat (similar to game), why you feel so much fuller so much more quickly eating these countries' beef.

Corn makes cattle fat, fast. Size, not quality. It's useful for force-farmers for the same reason hormones and antibiotics are useful -- they get a much bigger animal much more quickly.

Corn is not fed to cattle because it's surplus. Corn is grown in the current quantities because it meets a demand.

Interestingly, corn has about the same effect on humans as eating the same weight of sugar. Sugar has the same effect on human palates as high-nutrition foods.  Tellingly, corn syrup (tastes like sugar) is now endemic in most "modern" commercial food preparations.

From a fuel perspective, even if ALL the corn production of ALL the Americas was devoted to fuel, it would not make much of a dent on even the USA's fuel needs.  Ethanol from corn is not a viable oil replacement.

And the pseudo-vegetarians' argument that cattle take up too much land relative to plants rests absolutely on a false assumption:  that humans can gain the same nutrition from the soil and the plants that herbivores can.  Only in very rich soils can vegetarianism come within a bull's roar (sorry) nutritionally of the effectiveness of inserting a third party pre-digestion step: herbivores. Cattle are typically run on "waste" land -- too poor quality soil for farming plants to be viable.

"Waste" land, as you put it, is almost all pretty fragile, so whatever beef you can raise by overgrazing it is almost certainly not worth the environmental impact.

Are becoming a drought stricken, chemical farming destroyed, potential dust bowl.  Even grazing in many areas is impossible without irrigation.

But natural prairie would rescue that land and soil.  And bison would produce more meat than cows ever did.

The wind energy produced, backed up by biogas used in fuel cells, could be a stable source of power that would not need any other storage or backup.  A hybrid energy source to replace fossil and nuclear power generation.  And also sequester cO2.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

I'm afraid your butcher was right: cows need vitamins and minerals.  Grass, as we all know, is that green plastic material covering the racks in the produce department: no nutrients there.  And cows are hunks of exposed fat and muscle naturally wrapped in cellophane.

In Australia just about all our beef is grass fed. ALL the dairy is too. We supplement dairy with manufactured food but they eat grass constantly and it's 95% of their diet.
For beef it's 100%.

Guess we just have plenty of land - it's cheaper to just let them feed themselves than to truck in anything to give to them.

We do 'grain fed' beef too, but that's more expensive and uncommon.

That guy sounds rather like one of my local meat guys.  Get this:  the guy works in a health food store, and yet he says he won't sell grass-fed beef because "the flavor's just not there".  Excuse me, but isn't this supposed to be a HEALTH food store?  Some people just shouldn't be in the business they're in.

How do you manage it?  Is there lots of rain in some parts of Australia?  All we ever hear about is the dry outback.  :-)

biodiversivist:

There will never be an additional 3 billion people if we don't manage to increase food production enough to feed them--people are made from food, after all. I suspect--and hope--we won't be able to increase food production enough for even another 1 billion people, but we'll see what happens.

The world is sacred, and I am part of it.

Dear Synarchy, I have not only been to a "cattle ranch", but I also live on one! Yes, a real live farmer/cowgirl. And, for your information, beef does not "need" to be "fattened up" prior to slaughter. We never(emphasis on NEVER) have fed or feed our cows grain/corn/silage. Why?Because cows, by nature, are designed to be grazers and eat grass, not grain. When cows are fed grain, they become ill. Operations that feed their cows grain must employ veterinarians to keep the cows from dying. Our cows do not get sick. (We feed them sea kelp and redmond salt for minerals.) We have a closed herd and do not buy or sell any live animals. The beef from our bulls is well marbeled and many of the 5 star restaurants in Chicago currently purchase beef from us for their restaurants. Also, we sell directly to consumers who are aware of the dangers of eating beef from conventionally raised cattle and wouldn't touch the grain fed beef that is for sale at most groceries. Neither would I.

Is it even worth trying to get the culture to accept quality as a measure of food desirability anymore?  I think only small, local and specialty markets like you serve can appreciate quality.

Local islands of really free markets that operate and compete on the basis of taste and health.  In a sea of monpolized corporate "free" markets.

Could a network of cooperative farm markets that spread this quaiklty based free trade into a wider scale, maintain it's inmtegrity?  Doubtfull, look what is happening with organic dairying.  Soon after a corporation markets the product, farmers are squeezed out and go broke.

Thanks for your comment, hope you keep weighing in on these issues.  Do you have any experience with wind, solar, and biogas energy production to boost farm income?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

II have a degree is environmental science and animal science so when I first heard of corn ethanol I immediately did my research. I recently went to a seminar about corn ethanol. I went in not liking the idea of corn ethanol and came out with the same feelings.

All I know is I'm paying $4.30 for a gallon of milk and I used to get it for a $1.99. And it's because of corn ethanol. Same goes for eggs, butter, etc.

Corn ethanol is a temporary solution that's costing us. We should put our money into a permanent solution.

Biodiesel is the answer. Convert diesel cars to be able to use biodiesel. Buy the equipment necessary to do the conversion and go to your local McDonald's and take their buckets of grease off their hands. They have to pay to get rid of it anyway so if you'll take it for free, they are glad to hand it over. There you go. There are costs in the beginning, but it pays off, and you're saving the environment. I currently drive a prius that some French guy that came to the states practically gave to me because he realized he had no use for it in New York City (ya think?). I never would have been able to afford one otherwise. But as soon as I get the money I plan on getting an old pick-up diesel truck and converting it.

As for the cows...Out west they have droughts and whatnot, it's difficult to keep cattle just on grass, because they do need to save it for their harsh winters. So their diets need to be supplemented with corn, and soymeal and whatnot. Also because it is a business and prime meat is best before these animals are two, it makes sense to fatten them up. It costs money to keep these animals much past that. These farmers need to make money somehow. Not to say I support what they do. I personally don't consume beef. In other countries they do rely on grass and it works (New Zealand). But they also don't have the weird appetites that Americans have. Americans like their fat and corn gets them that nice marbled beef. If we would stop these need for fat and eat healthier, then we wouldn't feet our cows corn.

All in all, corn ethanol is a bad idea. You are misinformed if you think it's the answer.

I apologize for all the spelling errors; I didn't paste the corrected one I typed up. I don't know how to delete it and re-post it though. Ooops, sorry.

When I was in a large animals occupation program we fed our cows alfalfa and a grain mixture resembling granola. We did not feed our cows corn or grass. I've talked to some of my friends from Central Valley in California, and it's pretty well confirmed that grass does not have the nutritional value to sustain a cow. I think the meat producers that are claiming grass fed are more likely talking about pastured cows, cows that are allowed to run around in a field and eat whatever they want. Generally these cows eat a mixture of clover, grasses, alfalfa, and other edible plants, giving them wide variety of diet. They tend to be healthier and live longer lives than corn fed cows kept indoors, but corn fed cattle are bigger and produce more milk. Also there's a chance that your cow will get mad cow disease if it is pastured in an area where another mad cow died, so don't eat British beef, or Canadian.

Sadly most Americans, and people in general are not interested in wether or not the animal is healthy.  It's all about the taste.  Natural   animals fed on natures buffet usually tastes stronger, like venison.  Most people prefer bland tastes anyway.  If only people were more focused on the health of both the animal and themselves then perhaps we could return to natural grazing which would help balance things.

For the solution to gas prices and driving associated pollution, look down. Your own two feet. Walk to where you need to go. If you can't walk, take transit. If you can't walk or take transit, MOVE to somewhere that has a walkable environment and a good transit system! If there's nowhere walkable with good transit in your region to move to then tell your government and development community to build those places and that transit. Yes of course this can't happen overnight. But few good solutions can. Not not everybody can walk or take transit (or bike), but a lot of people can and would if we build cities dense enough to make it efficient.

Also note that pollution associated with driving doesn't go away just because we go gasoline-fee. Sources also include water run off from roads and parking, heat island effects, the energy input into batteries or other fuels (with the except of bio waste diesel, which still puts off carbon). Roads and parking also cost a lot of money, much of which is passed on to taxpayers and consumers regardless of whether or how much they drive. not to mention walking is good for you and encourages you to interact with other humans instead of just your radio.

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