Pasture vs. Feedlot. Do You Know What You're Eating?

If you enjoy beef and purchase your beef at the local grocery store or big box discounter, then I have some bad news for you. Even though that meat looks pretty good and taste all right, it all comes from a feedlot... likely in the midwest somewhere.

I've toured feedlots and frankly, they're not that bad. Sure the animals are closely confined and many haven't seen a fresh blade of grass in quite some time... but there's plenty of sunshine and some rain and loads of grain to eat.  And that's my problem with feedlots... grain.

Grains are a wonderful food group but cattle weren't meant to eat them. You see, a beef animal has a digestive system precisely engineered to eat grass. You start feeding them things other than grass and things start going a bit wrong.

It wasn't until the 1950's that some smart farmers got tired of the whole cowboy thing (moving animals from one grazing area to another). They figured they could simply corral their animals up and bring the feed to them. By then, science had gotten into the business and told the former cowboys that if you feed your critters grain instead of grass or hay, they'll fatten up a lot faster. They mumbled something about how the sweet starches of grains and especially corn would turn their animals into big piggy banks quickly. Seeing dollar signs dancing, the former cowboys figured that a beef animal that fattens quickly means more bucks for the collection plate.

Science is pretty smart but they didn't completely anticipate one of the disadvantages of crowding noisy messy curious steers so tightly together. Disease.

Like a day care with dozens of snot faced babies passing their infections around, cattle pretty much do the same thing. They sneeze all over each other among other things never worrying about proper hygiene. The result is that they pass their infections from one to another to another.  To combat these never ending infections, science came up with a way to keep the critters healthy enough to reach slaughter weight by giving them all low level doses of antibiotics. Remember, that is what we're buying at the local grocery store. Beef from animals essentially kept alive by drugs.

In contrast, pasture raised beef cattle simply eat grass (or hay) their entire lives. This is what they were designed or evolved to over many many years. How do we know? A cursory understanding of the bovine rumen system explains it well. Multiple stomachs are necessary because the tough cell structure of grass makes it difficult to digest. Cattle are unique in their ability to thrive when eating a diet composed almost entirely of grass.

When a beef animal is allowed to eat grass from a pasture, some really good things happen. The animal itself thrives because it is getting the food it was designed to eat and it converts that food to muscle and fat that is higher in minerals, vitamins, CLA's (conjugated linoleic acid) and Omega 3 fatty acids, and lower in cholesterol and fat.

Finally, what goes around comes around. Remember where feedlots get the feed to feed their animals? Thats right. The feed is railed or trucked in from locations that grow it. Chances are this feed was grown on ground that requires synthetic fertilizers to maintain profitable yield. That is where pastures with cattle grazing has a significant advantage.

Only about 10 percent of the grass or hay beef cattle eats is put to use in the muscle and other tissue of that animal. The other 90 percent is ejected in the form of cow pies. Those cow pies are organically active and will soon become even more so.  As soon as they hit the ground, worms and a host of microorganisms soon move in and begin to decompose that cow pie. What's left is compost that grasses really thrive in.  So much so that a well managed pasture requires no fertilizer.

Is pasture raised beef the future? We think so in part because it's the way it was meant to be. Fortunately you have a choice.