Grass fed beef

This will be short and sweet. Hubby has fattened out probably about 10,000 head of cattle the past 35 years. He is "the" guru in my humble opinion. Corn is grass, corn is the grass seed, corn makes tasty beef. Yes, I know all about the omega fatty acid jazz, I am an herbalist and nutritionist. We feed high fiber silages/hi moist corn with haylage, dry hay and trace minerals. Grass fed beef is fine, if that's what you want, most of our customers demand corn fed. But remember our corn fed is not like the Big feedlots who push whole corn and liquid suppliments/hormones/Rumensen.

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Disease is not an entity, but a fluctuating condition of the patients body, a battle between the substance of disease and the natural self healing tendency of the body......Hippocrates

we are lucky to have small producers of all livestock in my area. i think i am spoiled.

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this message has probably been edited to correct typos, spelling errors and to improve grammar...

"All that is gold does not glitter..."

Ehh ones all??? LOL,

I am serious though, I would quit eating beef alltogether if i had to deal with grassfed.
I however agree you have to eat portions less than what we usually do.

I agree that if an animal is sick, they need to be treated. But it should be taken out fo the food chain. Here is a link to McDonald's (the world's largestest consumer of beef) and their antibiotic's position http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/values...al_policy.html

If McDonalds is pushing for low/no antibotics, my guess is they have some studies done that are influencing their decision

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030628/food.asp

Just because they say its fine for withdrawl, doesn't mean they are going to eat that steak. I'm new to the cattle side but it stands to reason that cattle now use more antibotics than humans do, it wasn't that way in the good old days. All food production is geared for mass production and with that is a down side to making a "product" as cheap as possible as fast as possible. Hence hormones, 100,000+ feedlots and an eye on what to substitute for feeds (chicken feathers..I'm sure that is good for people to eat).

http://www.eatwild.com/foodsafety.html

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John 9:4 We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us.* The night is coming, and then no one can work.

We have been getting grass fed beef for about four years. When I first purchased it, the owner said some people think it has a more gamey taste, but i never noticed it. It is delicious and I have never had a tough piece of meat. I do notice that the fat I pour off hamburger is a different color. I gag if I have to purchase beef in the store when I run out before I can get more grassfed in August each year.

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Cindy in PA

Wow - broad range of opinions here.....

Personally, I prefer grassfed. Never had trouble with gamey taste, or tough texture. I think 'tough' has to do with how you cook any type of beef, but I could be wrong. The only tough beef I've had was beef I cooked too long, something I would tend to do to store-bought, out of fear of its age/contamination. That fear stems more from the middle-men, and the grocery store chains, than the initial producer of the beef. I've had home-raised grass-fed, and home-raised grain fed. My husband and I think grain fed tastes bland. We just prefer grass fed.

Forty (human) serving sizes of grain go into producing half a pound of edible, feed-lot raised beef, according to some things I've read. My solution to this is to raise my own on grass, since we like it, and to also eat other types of meat, produced more efficiently, here on our two acres. In other words - we don't eat as much beef as we would like, by choice.

niki

No less than 2 pages of antibiotics for cattle in my tractor supply catalog Jena. Check out this link for info on how growth hormones ARE appearing in poultry.

http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/hormones/

The way we have always raised our beef is somewhere in between I guess. We usually butcher Jersey steers. They are raised on all the pasture they can eat. Then about a month before butchering, they get started on a grain ration to put a little extra plump on them. They don't have any shots or growth hormones and they run free in the pasture till they day they are butchered. The meat is delicious and healthful. We have even butchered 8 year old jersey milk cows this way and the meat was very good. Next month we will be doing a 10 year old Angus cow. Lots of burger and roast there!

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Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

We have always raised ours in the same fashion. Pasture, hay in the winter, with a modest amount of grain at the end. One thing I firmly believe in is to let steers get to at least 1 1/2 years old before slaughter. I think they are much more flavorful when allowed to grow a bit older.
Now, however, we are going to switch to Highland cattle and find out if the attributes I have read so much about make sense for us. I like the idea of more efficient use of pasture, leaner yet still tender and flavorful meat, and older steers at slaughter.
We also do not use implants or routine antibiotic use. No need for it, we are not trying to be commercial operators.

and

LOL, which one is it?

And the tough/bad taste can also be altered by a marinade & tenderizer. The point of beef tasting like beef (most store bought has a mild/no flavor because its processed too young and what the feedlots feed the cattle) is people can buy flavor injected meat & poultry. Its big business (get meat processor magazine or go to their website and see what I mean). People want to have flavor in their food because they aren't getting any from their current selection. I like the flavor of beef but I don't want the hormones & antibotics that go along with it.

The government is prone to lobbying from the beef lobbyists who pressure congress to go along with whatever processes they want to incorporate to their production. Even the UK and other countries won't accept our beef. Why do we?

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John 9:4 We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us.* The night is coming, and then no one can work.

We don't have almost anything BUT grass-fed here (Costa Rica) - if you age it, it is fine. Not as rich as grain fed, but I still like it.

Not much fat on the food - but that is okay - we have avocados and lots of other sources of fat if we need them.

But, we are planning a trip to the USA in a few months - and I am planning on a prime rib dinner....