If you read my post last week about USDA meat labeling, you may or may not have noticed a surprising comment left by the CEO of Nolan Ryan Beef. Now, I’m no meat industry expert. I’m just an wife and mom who cares about the quality of food on my family’s plates. And though I’m no expert, I appreciate the opportunity to dialogue with CEO Charlie Bradbury so that I can learn more about the industry. There were too many points to cover in a single blog comment reply, so I’ll offer my response into two posts. Here’s part one:

Grass finishing of beef is also not a wise or sustainable use of our resources.

~ Charlie Bradbury, CEO of Nolan Ryan Beef

Response: In my opinion the exact opposite is true. Corn-fed beef, which are usually “finished” at Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO’s) have been connected with severe environmental pollution. When each head of cattle has several acres on which to graze, their manure fertilizes the land. When cattle are packed into yards or lots, the soil is unable to process the “ecological load” that is placed on it.

Environmental Pollution

Citizens in South Central Michigan (where 12 feedlots are located) have begun documenting the damage feedlot pollution has caused to its community and its watersheds:

In 2004, Vreba-Hoff was sued by the State of Michigan after multiple and repeated manure discharges and violations. In 2005, the settlement of this suit required Vreba-Hoff to install a partial waste treatment system, separating manure liquids and solids. Solids must be composted, but the partially treated liquid is mixed with untreated, and contaminated, silage leachate and facility washwater. This contaminated liquid is then “irrigated” onto fields. This waste, as liquid as water now, has the potential to move quickly to drainage tiles and to streams. The settlement required no water monitoring downstream.

“Partial” treatment is the key — the liquid applied to fields is still contaminated with high levels of nutrients (Phosphorus, nitrates), which lowers Dissolved Oxygen in streams.  Lake Erie’s new “dead zone” has recently been linked to Phosphorus runoff from livestock waste.

Four lawsuits have been brought against this one company (Vreba-Hoff) in the State of Michigan in just five years. I’m not trying to isolate this company as any worse than its peers. Could it be that this is a typical CAFO operation that is simply being held accountable for the environmental costs of feedlot operations? The Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan seem to think so, saying “As family farmers and neighbors, we believe agriculture must take responsibility for its actions in rural communities. CAFOs have failed us. They have damaged our farming communities, degraded our natural resources, and polluted our watersheds.”

In referring to this photo of dead fish floating in contaminated water (along with other photos), they ask us to “look at what we see around here every day — waste-polluted water, silage leachate runoff, drainage tile discharges, the destruction of vegetation along streams, violations of manure management practices.”

Our waterways are vital to the health of future generations.  For that reason alone I don’t believe there is anything “sustainable” about CAFO, feedlot, or feedyard operations. On the other hand, I believe grass-fed beef on properly managed pastures is sustainable. Yes, there are challenges related to scalability ahead. But if we can re-engineer cows (and even salmon!) to eat corn, we can find ways to produce healthier, more environmentally-friendly beef on the scale the market needs. Americans do not need cheap labor or cheap real estate to make sustainable agriculture work; we need consumers willing to support local farmers and ranchers to make agriculture work.

As the keynote speaker at the Georgia Organics Conference, Michael Pollan said:

Well, since 1960 when I was a boy, spending on healthcare as a percentage of GDP has gone from 5 percent to nearly 18 percent today . . . It is no coincidence that in this period when our healthcare costs were going from 5 percent of our income to 18 percent, our spending on food was plummeting from 16 percent to now under 9 percent. Is there a connection as those two lines crossed? Of course there is. Could we reduce our healthcare spending by spending a little bit more on healthy, quality food? Without a doubt.

There is a saying around here. Pay the farmer now or pay the doctor later. I choose to pay the farmer now. I will pay MORE for organic, local, and grassfed products.

Grain feeding is what gives beef the flavor and tenderness most consumers prefer. . . We are good at growing high quality grain that can then be converted to high quality beef.

~ Charlie Bradbury, CEO of Nolan Ryan Beef

Response: I have three criteria for determining whether beef is “quality” or not: Flavor, Health Benefits and Environmental Impact. I have already voiced my ecologically-related concerns, so let’s turn to the other two:

Flavor

In a book I am currently reading, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” I ran across an astounding passage concerning tomatoes.

Most standard vegetable varieties sold in stores have been bred for uniform appearance, mechanized harvest, convenience of packaging (e.g. square tomatoes), and a tolerance for hard travel. None of these can be mistaken, in practice, for actual flavor.

In other words, companies in the produce industry have sought goals such as large-scale production and distribution over flavor. The same seems to be true in other industries, such as meat and dairy. Although I was raised on CAFO meat, I strongly prefer the rich flavor of grass-fed beef. I am told this is because of the high mineral content of the well-managed pastures where they graze. Although I can’t say I know this for certain to be true, I have also heard that grain-fed beef is more bland because the mineral content is less than with grass-fed. With respect to meat tenderness, it is my understanding that genetics are thought to play the largest role in how tender a cut of meat is.

Health Considerations

According to NO CAFO’s.ORG, “While cattle on pasture rarely get sick, those confined to feedlots and fed grain are prone to disease and most feedlot operators routinely feed antibiotics to prevent illness and to accelerate growth. This, in turn, increases the risk of antibiotic resistance in humans.”

Although I have not used antibiotics in well over a decade, I am aware that there may be certain times where their usage is appropriate. Unfortunately, I am concerned that when needed they won’t actually work due to ever-increasing antibiotic resistance.

But this is the least of my concerns. The first time I watched Food, Inc. I was heartbroken over the story of Barbara Kowalcyk, whose 2 year old son, Kevin, died from E.coli poisoning after eating a hamburger.

After eating a hamburger.

As the mother of a two year old, her pain is simply unfathomable to me. One day she’s on on vacation with her son, trying to take it all in because “they grow up too fast.” Just a few days later, she is placing his body in the ground. No more snuggles, late night requests for more water or even temper-tantrums. If I were her I’d give anything for a temper tantrum.

In my research, I have reached the personal conclusion that E. coli is almost a non-issue with grass-fed beef, whereas it has proven to be a grave concern in traditional fast food restaurants that serve grain-fed beef. From Eat Wild:

When you eat grass-fed meat, you may have a lower risk of becoming infected with dangerous E. coli bacteria.

Why is this? Work conducted at Cornell University by Russell and Diez-Gonzalez in the late 1990s showed that cattle that were fed hay had far fewer E. coli than when they were fed a standard feedlot diet based on grain. (Microbes Infect 2, No. 1 (2000): 45-53.)

In addition, the two researchers conducted a test tube study showing that E. coli from grass-fed cattle is more likely to be killed by the natural acidity of our digestive tract and therefore might be less likely to survive and make us ill.

The reason for the greater persistence of E. coli from grain-fed cattle, the researchers speculated, is that feeding grain to cattle makes their digestive tracts abnormally acidic. Over time, the E. coli in their systems become acclimated to this acid environment. When we ingest them, a high percentage will survive the acid shock of our digestive juices. By contrast, few E. coli from grass-fed cattle will survive because they have not become acid-resistant.

Whether or not grass-feeding reduces the number and acidity of E. coli in the digestive tract of cattle, there is another undisputed reason that eating grass-fed beef may be safer.  Cattle raised on pasture are cleaner at the time of slaughter.

E. coli contamination takes place in the slaughterhouse when manure from an animal comes in contact with meat. The less manure on an animal when it enters the slaughter house, the less likely the meat will become contaminated.

It is difficult to remove all the fecal contamination from feedlot cattle because they stand all day long in dirt and manure. In a recent article in the magazine Meat Marketing and Technology, the associate editor stated that pasture-raised animals were much easier to clean “because they come from small herds raised in relatively clean pastures.” Most U.S. cattle, he said, “are raised in far larger numbers in congested and typically less sanitary feed lots.”

But really, avoiding these concerns is only one of my objectives. My main objective is to provide the best nutrition possible for my family. My opinion is that grass-fed beef is nutritionally superior to grain-fed beef. Here are some facts from Eat Wild:

• Extra Omega-3s. Meat from grass-fed animals has two to four times more omega-3 fatty acids than meat from grain- fed animals. Omega-3s are called “good fats” because they play a vital role in every cell and system in your body.
• Fewer Calories. Because meat from grass-fed animals is lower in fat than meat from grain-fed animals, it is also lower in calories. (Fat has 9 calories per gram, compared with only 4 calories for protein and carbohydrates. The greater the fat content, the greater the number of calories.) As an example, a 6-ounce steak from a grass-finished steer can have 100 fewer calories than a 6-ounce steak from a grain-fed steer. If you eat a typical amount of beef (66.5 pounds a year), switching to lean grassfed beef will save you 17,733 calories a year—without requiring any willpower or change in your eating habits. If everything else in your diet remains constant, you’ll lose about six pounds a year.
• Excellent Source of CLA. Meat and dairy products from grass-fed ruminants are the richest known source of another type of good fat called “conjugated linoleic acid” or CLA. When ruminants are raised on fresh pasture alone, their products contain from three to five times more CLA than products from animals fed conventional diets.
• More Vitamin E. In addition to being higher in omega-3s and CLA, meat from grassfed animals is also higher in vitamin E. The graph below shows vitamin E levels in meat from: 1) feedlot cattle, 2) feedlot cattle given high doses of synthetic vitamin E (1,000 IU per day), and 3) cattle raised on fresh pasture with no added supplements. The meat from the pastured cattle is four times higher in vitamin E than the meat from the feedlot cattle and, interestingly, almost twice as high as the meat from the feedlot cattle given vitamin E supplements.

So that’s part one of two replies to the original comment left by Nolan Ryan Beef’s CEO. I appreciate that he took the time to comment on my site – after all, I’m just a mommy blogger. I’m not expecting him to return and continue the conversation, given his busy schedule, but I do welcome responses in what could become a very insightful conversation. See you tomorrow for Part Two.

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