What % of U.coms. Beef Cattle Are Grass Fed?
Grass-fed Angus cattle roam the pasture at Wholesome Living Subcontract in Winchester, Ky. It'south an appealing scene, merely is grass-fed beef the all-time choice for the consumer, the animal and the planet? (Luke Sharett/Bloomberg)
Grass-fed beef is the meat of the moment. The image of cattle dotting green hillsides is an appealing counterpoint to the thought of herds corralled in crowded, grass-gratuitous feedlots. Advocates claim a trifecta of advantages: Grass-fed beefiness is meliorate for you lot, for the animal and for the planet.
Is information technology?
[Vegetarian or omnivore: Which nutrition is amend for the environment?]
First, permit'south establish what we're talking near. All U.S. beef cattle are started on grass, and then "grass-fed" actually means "grass-finished," or fed grass their whole lives. The USDA specifies that, to qualify equally "grass-fed," the animal has to eat "grass and fodder" exclusively (after weaning) and must have "continuous access to pasture during the growing flavor." Information technology does non specify how much feed has to be from that pasture; hay and other harvested forage is allowed. (In that location are besides third-political party certification programs with varying criteria.)
Now, on to the questions.
Is grass-fed beef improve for you?
It usually has higher concentrations of some nutrients: antioxidants, some vitamins, a kind of fat called conjugated linoleic acrid (CLA) and the long-chain omega-iii fats more often than not found in fish. It also has less fatty overall.
Most health claims focus on the omega-iii fats, which are generally regarded every bit healthful. The other nutrients are less relevant, says Alice H. Lichtenstein, a professor at Tufts Academy's Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy: Either their amounts are too small to be significant or evidence of their value is equivocal. (Read the research on CLA, for example, and y'all find that a lot of "further inquiry is warranted" and "findings are inconsistent.")
As to the omega-3s, we need to look at amounts. Omega-3 levels in grass-fed beefiness mostly are most 50 percent higher than in regular beef. Simply considering the levels in regular beefiness are and then low, that's non much of an reward. Concentrations can vary widely, just according to the USDA, a 100-gram serving (a little nether four ounces) of grass-fed top sirloin contains 65 milligrams of omega-3 fats, loin has 40 and rib-eye has 37. So even that 65-milligram amount is only nigh 22 milligrams more than that for regular beef and notwithstanding far below levels in low-fat fishes such as tilapia (134 milligrams) and haddock (136). The omega-3 powerhouse male monarch salmon has i,270 milligrams. (The same logic applies to milk from grass-fed cows. It's higher in long-chain omega-3 fats than milk from grain-fed cows, but a cup still has only eighteen milligrams.) Recommendations on how much of these fats we need vary; near are in the range of 300 to 1,000 milligrams per day.
"Grass-fed beefiness is fine" says Lichtenstein, "but it's not a good source of omega-3 fats." Although it certainly has a ameliorate fat contour than standard beef, she says she's concerned that a reputation for healthfulness volition make people believe that it'southward improve for them than information technology is, which volition lead to overconsumption.
The bottom line is that grass-fed beef is probably ameliorate for you, but only a niggling. Don't hang your hat on information technology. If you like it (and not anybody does), past all means, eat it.
A grass-fed yearling bull. Experts differ over whether grass feeding is ameliorate than feedlots. (Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)
Is grass-fed beef amend for the beast?
■ The answer is a resounding "it depends."
I'm drawn to the idea of cattle grazing freely in fields. I've seen the pictures of the green hillsides, and I've seen the pictures of the dingy feedlots. I asked Temple Grandin, one of our foremost experts on animal welfare, whose work informs livestock systems across the land, whether grazing cattle are happier than feedlot cattle.
The first affair she said was, "grain is like cake and ice cream to cows," and I tin can't assistance thinking that eating something they discover delicious contributes to the animals' happiness. It certainly does to mine. But, simply as it's unadvisable for united states of america to make cake and ice cream our sole ration, cattle shouldn't be eating only grain.
"Grain is fine as long every bit there'due south enough of roughage," says Grandin. Otherwise, the pH in the creature's system can become besides acidic, and that leads to all kinds of wellness issues. The thought that feeding grain to a ruminant, whose digestive system is fine-tuned for grass, leads to suffering is both right and wrong.
"The problem comes when y'all push besides hard," says Grandin. Animals abound faster on grain, she points out, and then there'due south a financial incentive for the rancher to up the grain ration. Similar anything connected with the care of animals, feeding cattle grain can be done well or poorly.
Grandin talked most other issues equally well. If the feedlot is dry, roomy and shaded, cattle are perfectly content. If it'due south muddy, crowded or hot, they're non. One of the keys to cattle happiness, it turns out, is drainage. "The feed yard should have a 2 to 3 percent slope to continue it dry," says Grandin. Pastures tin pose issues, too. "Cattle as well really like to graze," she says, "merely that hillside when you have a blizzard is not then prissy."
The key to cattle's well-being isn't in the venue. It'southward in the management. What's maddening is that, when you're standing in front of your market place's meat case, you unremarkably tin't know which feedlot, or which pasture, the beefiness came from, let lonely how it'south managed.
Is grass-fed beefiness better for the planet?
Hither'due south where things get really complicated. In general, beef is not planet-friendly. Cattle produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and beef routinely tops the charts of foods you should eat less of to curb climate change.
Grass-fed advocates maintain that well-managed grazing tin first or fifty-fifty completely compensate for methane and other greenhouse gases associated with beef cattle by locking carbon in the soil. The vegetation soaks upwardly and stores, or sequesters, carbon, preventing carbon dioxide — another greenhouse gas — from being released into the atmosphere.
The operative phrase is "well-managed." When poorly managed, grazing can dethrone pasture, and scientists and ranchers are experimenting with diverse densities and grazing patterns to effort to figure out which ones lead to more effective carbon sequestration.
According to Jason Rowntree, an assistant professor at Michigan Land University who specializes in grass-eating cattle, some researchers accept managed to sequester three metric tons of carbon per hectare, about 2.5 acres, per year. (Sequestering a ton of carbon is the equivalent of locking away 3.seven tons of carbon dioxide.)
Only Rattan Lal, manager of the Carbon Direction and Sequestration Centre at Ohio State Academy, sets expectations lower. He says one metric ton per hectare is a reasonable estimate of the maximum that grazing can sequester in a identify similar Ohio, where growing conditions generally are favorable, and a half-ton would be more realistic in drier areas. He supports grass-fed beef only says carbon sequestration "can't completely recoup for the greenhouse gases in beef production."
Weighing carbon sequestration against methane production is a dicey business, and I've read many unlike estimates. To become a back-of-the-envelope sense of how the two compare, I did the math. The methyl hydride produced yearly by a beef steer is approximately equivalent to the carbon sequestered in an acre and a half (at Lal's one-ton-per-hectare charge per unit). The steer'southward methane isn't the simply issue, of form: The climate price of each steer has to include a whole year'south worth of its mom's marsh gas, since cows have only 1 dogie annually. And so there are all the other inputs, including what goes into growing and harvesting the hay the steer eats when pasture is unavailable. As always, information technology's complicated.
I found little agreement on how much carbon well-managed grazing tin sequester, simply beyond-the-lath agreement that it can certainly sequester some. Merely, diabolically, then can well-managed grain farming: Systems that employ ingather rotation, cover crops, composting and no-till too sequester carbon. If we're comparison grass-fed with grain-fed, it'south simply fair to assume first-class management in both systems.
There are a few other confounding issues. Cattle fed grain emit less methane and grow faster, which means they're not alive — emitting methane — as long. Circumscribed cattle in feedlots allows manure to be collected and fed to a digester, which converts it to energy — or, of course, it tin leak out of badly managed facilities to pollute our water. In winter, bringing in harvested hay requires more free energy than bringing in grain, because you need more than of it. But grass-fed cattle turn a plant that humans tin't eat into high-quality people food, which is of import in places where marginal land will grow grass just not crops. It'due south a very mixed bag.
Some grass-fed cattle are better for the planet than some grain-fed, and vice versa.
Farmer Raymond Palmer raises grass-fed cattle in Lifford, Ireland. (Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)
The upshot
Where does that exit us?
Well, it'southward left me a picayune less doctrinaire. Nigh ever, when I talk to scientists and farmers almost food supply issues — whether it'south subcontract size, organic methods, animal welfare, GMOs, climate impact — the answer is complicated. When it comes to feeding people, there is never one right answer. It depends on the farm, the surface area, the animal, the crop, the weather, the market and a bazillion other things. Both Rowntree, who has spent years figuring out how best to graze cattle, and Lal, who has devoted a career to climate-change mitigation, are quick to tell me that grass-fed isn't the only way.
"No matter what strategy you choose," says Lal, "there are e'er trade-offs."
What the grass-fed vs. grain-fed debate really tells us is how inadequate labels are to differentiate skillful from bad in our nutrient supply. Yet those labels are regularly embroidered on flags and hoisted over intractable positions. Grass-fed beef is better! Buy organic! But GMOs tin can feed the earth!
What I wouldn't give for a document of prudence, attesting to sound management, humane standards and responsible stewardship on whatever kind of farm. It's worth working toward, and lowering the flags would be a expert start.
Haspel, a freelance writer, farms oysters on Greatcoat Cod and writes most food and science. On Twitter: @TamarHaspel. She'll join Wednesday's Gratuitous Range chat at noon: live.washingtonpost.com.
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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/is-grass-fed-beef-really-better-for-you-the-animal-and-the-planet/2015/02/23/92733524-b6d1-11e4-9423-f3d0a1ec335c_story.html
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