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Grass-fed Meat Feeds You Optimally

written by

PtF Farm Store

posted on

January 27, 2022

In keeping with our promise last week, this post will delve into the nutrition side of grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef. First, I’ll go into the common science-based points such as omega fatty acids and CLA, and then we’ll visit the less known aspects. Here goes:

Omega Fatty Acids-

Although it’s now almost common knowledge among educated consumers that grass-fed meat has a more balanced ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 fatty acids when compared to grain-fed, most people do not know that grass-fed beef contains up to 5 times more Omega 3’s than grain-fed.

If you’re like me, science jargon such as this tends to go in one ear and out the other, but let’s get into it a bit. Omega 3 fats, when consumed, become anti-inflammatory compounds in the human body while Omega 6’s become inflammatory compounds. While the body needs both, they need to be balanced.

 When we consume an excess of Omega 6 fats – which are found in grains, processed vegetable oils, and grain-fed meat (foods Americans eat a lot of) – we tip the scales toward overall inflammation in the body (which is the core of most disease).

Omega 3’s, however, which are proportionally high in green vegetables, fish, and in grass-fed meat and milk, make up a relatively small portion of the American diet. The imbalance of Omega’s in the American diet is merely one factor contributing to myriad disease epidemics the western world deals with today.  

As most of you know, chronic inflammation is a big deal in today’s world, and we need all the anti-inflammatory compounds we can get.

GRASS-fed: Omega 3 to 6, about 7 threes to 1 six

GRAIN-fed: Omega 3 to 6, about 1 three to 15 sixes                                                                                           

Conjugated Linoleic Acids (CLA’s) –

Not so well known as the omega 3/6 point above, CLA is a healthy fat discovered in 1978 at the University of Wisconsin. Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is a naturally occurring fatty acid found mostly in full-fat meat and dairy products derived from pasture raised ruminant animals (cows, sheep, goats, etc.). An interesting side note is the mention of full-fat when fat is largely vilified in mainstream food science (i.e., perhaps fat is not all created equal; not all fats are bad).

CLA is found in the fat of grass-fed meat, and is greatly diminished—or non-existent—if the animal is finished (fattened) on grain. Please note, unless your beef was clearly marketed as “grass-finished” (different than merely “grass-fed”) it is not grass-finished, and was finished on grain. For the complete low-down, watch this two-minute clip.  

CLA is widely touted as useful for weight loss because it strengthens the body’s metabolism. It is also well researched as an excellent antioxidant, as well as containing anticarcinogenic and antidiabetic properties.

   GRASS-fed: if grass-finished, optimal CLA’s are present

   GRAIN-fed:  CLA’s greatly diminished or nonexistent    

GMO’s –   

Perhaps the discussion of GMO’s is slightly out of place in this discussion, because an animal can be grain-fed without using of GMO feedstuffs. That said, with 92% of all corn and 94% of all soybeans grown in the US being GMO, finding non-GMO meat that is grain-fed is certainly a rarity.

Foremost is the largely hidden tolerance differential in glyphosate residues from human food to animal feed. The USDA allows up to 20 times more glyphosate in animal feed than is tolerated in human food. To explain, glyphosate is the active ingredient in the widely used herbicide Roundup, as well as in generic brand broad spectrum herbicides. With glyphosate becoming an increasingly known health threat since the WHO announced is as a “probable carcinogen” in 2015, such high tolerance of the chemical fed to food animals is certainly questionable.

Equally important, glyphosate has been proven to be cumulative in not only the human body, but in animals as well. If a beef animal is fed GMO corn and soybeans in a feedlot for approximately five months or 150 days, how much glyphosate is accumulated in the meat and fat of that animal? The truth is, we don’t know.

Glyphosate also messes with bacterial flora. The reason for this can be best explained via its active role as an herbicide. Widely used to kill weeds in commercial crop production—as well as lawn care etc., glyphosate is a chelator that binds essential minerals and enzymes needed for plant production. It works similarly in the gut of an animal or human, thereby interfering with the role of bacterial flora needed for optimal digestion and limiting uptake of vitamins & minerals.

   GRASS-fed:    zero GMO’s

   GRAIN-fed:    most likely contains GMO’s/glyphosate, certainly if sourced from supermarkets   

Complex vs. Simplistic Nutrition –

Perhaps the least discussed fact of grass-fed grass-finished meat is the conversation of complex micro-nutrients.

Ruminants, when given the opportunity/environment, will self-select plants based on their immediate nutritional needs. In essence, self-medicate based on today’s condition. One day a cow may need the micro-nutrients found in clover, the next day—or maybe the next hour—she may need the nutrients found in chicory, plantain, or ragweed.

For this exact reason, at Pasture to Fork we are very careful how or when we demonize what most farms consider weeds. Only if the cows refuse to eat the plant in all stages of growth do we consider it a nuisance plant. For example, cows love ragweed when its young and leafy, only to refuse it when it gets older and woody. So, we let ragweed grow in the spring and early summer, but mow it down in the fall when the cows no longer eat it.

Most so-called invasive plants are opportunistic in nature, meaning they will germinate when the soil/moisture/oxygen conditions are right. Even after a decade in this vocation, I’m still amazed that a plant seed can lie in the soil for many years, yet when the opportunity presents itself, it will germinate and grow.

For this very reason we don’t merely raise grass-fed beef, which we think is too confining. We call it pasture raised beef or salad bar beef because it’s literally produced on a salad-bar of plants so that the cows have access to as wide a variety of plants as possible.

According to research, original prairie lands had more than forty species of plants per acre. In fact, the late Allan Nation (editor of the Stockman GrassFarmer) would say that after plowing, it takes a hundred years for habitat to recover back to its original pre-plowing plant diversity. We’re just 12 years into it on some of our land, and we’re seeing increased diversity every year already. Plenty of room for additional healing and recuperation, for sure.

In today’s modernized culture, we have far too narrow a variety in our diets, thereby missing out on the variety of vitamins and minerals our more widely fed forefathers enjoyed. You might ask if we can taste the difference if the beef had the advantage of wide plant diversity. The answer is no, our sense of taste is not that sophisticated, but our gut bacteria are [that sophisticated] and will benefit from more species diversity in our diets. Perhaps we need the nuance of plantain—digested through a cow—to round out our gut and immune system.

On the flip side, grain-fed beef is raised on an extremely narrow variation of feeds. Basically corn, soybeans, and just enough hay to keep the rumen functioning. What’s more, high octane feed such as grain—because the cow is not designed to eat large amounts of it—short-circuits the long, slow fermentation process in the four stomachs (called the rumen), causing it to become too acidic. This in turn creates opportunity for the overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria such as e. coli (which may find its way into the meat during slaughter), affects the overall health of the animal, and robs the eater of a host of micro-nutrients, vitamins, and minerals found in a more natural product.

     GRASS-fed: highly complex nutrition full of micro-nutrients

     GRAIN-fed: highly simplistic nutrition prone to bacterial contamination

And that, is The View from the Country.

Quotes worth Re-Quoting –

“You are what what you eat eats.”― Michael Pollan

“Per ounce, organic grass-finished beef is cheaper than many common foods like potato chips, red wine, name-brand cookies, popular coffee drinks, fancy donuts, and even fresh strawberries. And if we were to compare price per gram of protein, or per micronutrient, we’d see an even better value.” ― Diana Rodgers

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The Folly Of the Calorie

The Folly Of the Calorie

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Climate Change

Climate Change

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But maybe it isn’t in light of the fact that 70% of all grain grown in the US is to feed herbivores who are not designed to metabolize them. Although human induced climate change is a very real possibility, I don’t see it as a burgeoning apocalypse. However, it’s a very real threat to our domestic ability to feed ourselves. This is not a problem government can fix via massive spending bills. Yes, they could stop throwing taxpayer money around in the form of crop subsidies, which would take away the incentive for the overproduction of monocrops such as corn and soybeans. But government will not stop or even slow climate change by limiting the use of fossil fuels or eliminating animal agriculture. The solution must come from the people. Each of us has a responsibility to decrease or eliminate our own portion of the demand for annual-crop-based foods and create demand for regeneratively produced perennial-crop-based foods. 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No Antibiotics!

No Antibiotics!

At Pasture to Fork, we like to point out that we don’t use antibiotics in the production of the foods we raise. Why is this important? Weren’t antibiotics deemed a miracle drug that proved to be a powerful life-saving tool when they first became available? Yes, that is true, and I’ll even go so far as to say they are still a major lifesaver in human medical care eighty years later. However, today we’ll talk about how they have been abused and why it’s crucial that we limit their use to human medicine. The first known antibiotic, dubbed penicillin, was discovered accidentally by a researcher named Alexander Fleming in 1928.  Though discovered in the twenties, it wasn’t widely propagated until the 1940’s when—after saving lives miraculously in instances like the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire—the US government invested in its production to be used on the war front in WWII. It’s hard for us to imagine a world before antibiotics. 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In an effort to find new ways to cut costs for poultry farmers following the sharp decrease in demand post-WWII,  research entailed using laboratory waste used in making antibiotics as a supplement in chicken feed. Having had indications suggesting growth-promoter properties, Jukes performed one of the first controlled research projects on chickens and found the group fed antibiotic waste to be markedly bigger at the end of the 25-day feeding trial, discovering the growth-promoter properties of feeding antibiotics to animals. This discovery opened a whole new frontier for the pharmaceutical industry and a tremendous new market for growth promoters in animal agriculture. It also made for an unprecedented hubristic attitude in the world of animal agriculture, which in turn, led to the confinement animal feeding operation (CAFO’s) of today. But, the chicken had yet to come home to roost (pun intended). In the early years of antibiotics as a growth promoter the common mentality among both manufacturers and farmers was “if a little is good, more is better”, and growth promoter antibiotics were largely unregulated which resulted in heavy use, inexact dosages, and the like. Regulators, being enamored along with the industry, looked the other way and didn’t interfere. For context, let's remember this was the era when the chemical DDT was considered a marvelous and life-changing invention, only to be banned later. Even early on there was concern among a few (only a few) scientists about the prospect of antibiotic resistance. In his 1945 Nobel prize acceptance speech, Alexander Fleming warned that the development of resistance had the potential to ruin the miracle of antibiotics. Resistance is the term used to describe the ability of bacteria to mutate and overcome the proficiency of antibiotics. The thesis is that an application of antibiotics never kills all the bacteria, allowing the survivors to gain genetic resistance not only to that particular antibiotic, but other antibiotics as well. Throughout the sixties and into the early seventies, although there was little warning of antibiotic resistance, already cases of mass bacterial outbreaks occurred where antibiotics proved ineffective, including a 1967 stomach bug in Yorkshire, England where 15 babies and young children died for lack of effective and timely antibiotic treatment caused by resistance. Thus far, little to no effort was put into measuring how quickly resistance is built. Until 1974, when an independent study took place that even today is under published. Participating in the study was the Downing family from Boston, who had ten children and a small farmstead. The researcher in charge of the study, Dr. Stuart Levy, designed it to include six batches of young chickens, half being fed antibiotic-free and half fed growth-promoter antibiotics. The oldest Downing child, Mary—a sophomore in college—cared for the birds, which were housed in the Downing’s barn in separate pens 50 feet apart. A precise chore routine was adopted where the antibiotic-free birds were fed and cared for first, then the flocks fed growth-promoters, after a change of boots and washing of hands. Birds from each flock were swabbed once a week, as well as fecal swabs of each of the Downing family—and a number of neighbors as well—with the objective of learning how quickly antibiotic resistance spread through the flocks, as well as the people participating in the study. The results came quickly. Samples taken at the beginning of the experiment showed very few bacteria in the guts of the chickens, family, or neighbors containing defenses against tetracycline (the drug used in the chicken feed). That was to be expected, given the random roulette of mutation. But within 36 hours, those bacteria multiplied in the antibiotic flock, but the drug-free flocks remained clean for a few weeks longer. Then things changed. First the bacteria in the antibiotic-fed flock became resistant to multiple drugs, including other families of antibiotics like sulfas, streptomycin, etc. Then the multidrug-resistant bacteria appeared in the flocks that never received antibiotics and had no contact with the birds that did. And soon after, the same multidrug-resistance showed up in the Downing’s fecal samples. To the disappointment of his sponsors, Levy had demonstrated what they had hoped to disprove. Even though the feed contained just tiny doses of antibiotics, those doses selected resistant bacteria—which not only flourished in the animal’s systems, but left the animals, moved through the farm’s environment, and entered the systems of other animals and of humans in close proximity (but did not spread to any of the neighbors—which served as the control group). This served to reinforce some of the early scientists concerns that these altered bacteria were an untrackable, unpredictable form of pollution. In her comprehensive book, Big Chicken, Maryn Mckenna (where I learned much of what is written in this article) eloquently relates not only the facts given above, but also tells the story of years and decades of industry and regulator pushback against the idea of restricting farm-use antibiotics—even into the 2000’s. She shares stories of horrible illnesses and epidemic-proportion bacterial outbreaks costing the lives of people who were unknowingly harboring antibiotic resistance being quietly transmitted from farm to food to consumer. Stories even of outbreaks traced backward by epidemiologists from the victims to the farms on which the meat was produced. The resulting reports and database entries, by the way, were then ignored and buried by regulators and industry leaders. In the book, Mckenna does an outstanding job of presenting antibiotic resistance for what it is, a silent threatening contaminant that moves through a largely unaware society, looking for its next victim or victims. Even today, it’s not a subject well-covered by the media, largely due to the pharmaceutical interests in keeping it hush. And this is where we find ourselves today, fifty years later. Although farm and food related antibiotic use has garnered a far more attention in recent times than anytime in history, they are still being widely used in the poultry, pork, and beef industries, both as growth-promoters and as preventative doses to prevent illness on factory farms. Several years ago, some of the major poultry providers—including Perdue—made a PR effort in the direction of “antibiotic-free.” The reason I say a PR (public relations) effort, is because it was driven, at least in part, by an increasing concern among the people regarding human-medical-use antibiotics used in agriculture and the subsequent risk of antibiotic resistance. Borne out of that effort—which was also driven by recognition within the industry that growth-promoter antibiotics were losing their effect—came a family of drugs called “ionophores”, which were not quite the typical antibiotic, were not classified as an antibiotic (conveniently?), but were essentially an industry antidote to traditional antibiotics. However, it allowed the meat industry to advertise their product as “antibiotic-free” without taking the risk of losing production due to the loss of both growth-promoter and preventative antibiotics. Granted, ionophores were not used—at least not as heavily—on humans, but that doesn’t change the farce of “antibiotic-free” in the meat industry. Vaccines have also been adopted in the meat industries as a sort of replacement for sub-therapeutic antibiotics. Modern vaccines—including mRNA technology —has been used increasingly in recent years as a solution to the rising pushback—and loss of effectiveness—against antibiotics used in meat production.   To summarize, the discovery of antibiotics changed life as we know to a degree we cannot imagine, mitigating risk of bacterial infection astonishingly. However, the advent of antibiotics used in animal agriculture quickly threatened the efficacy of human-use antibiotics due to rapid rise of resistance to early antibiotics—and even faster, to other families of antibiotics. From the mid-1940’s into the 2000’s the meat industries, pharmaceutical companies, and even regulators ignored and repressed concerns involving the threat of antibiotic resistance. Despite attempts and posturing of certain players in the meat industries, even today it appears as if the mass-producing meat purveyors are unwilling and/or unable to completely absolve themselves from antibiotics in the production of human food, which only furthers the hazard of superbug infections that are resistant to nearly all common medical-use antibiotics. Until the industry becomes willing to abandon its intense confinement production model, I don’t see the antibiotic story changing. However, the upside to this is that farmers who are willing to adopt a more natural template like the outdoor pasture-based model can completely eschew antibiotics, which is the grassroots future to clean eating for those who know and care about the antibiotic issue. At Pasture to Fork, we are unwavering in our stance against using antibiotics to produce your food, even making "No Antibiotics" one of our stated protocols. While we believe the risk of regularly consuming antibiotics is great enough for adults, it’s even greater for children, and investing in future generations is paramount in our opinion. And that’s The View from the Country. P.S. I highly recommend reading Maryn Mckenna's book, Big Chicken. This article does not do her work justice but is a mere sneak peek.

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    Honey Brook PA 19344-1229
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