Grass-fed beef - Is this what you pictured?

beef
#21

I don’t want to add the discussion (I don’t understand why anywhere would picture that as truth, by the way. I don’t trust about anything food industry does and not all countries have the land to do it anyway… but I don’t have data about that), I have brought a photo.
If I picture grazing cattle, that’s different, that’s various colored (mostly white and red, I mean on the same animal, it’s our most common breed) cattle on an emerald hill! :smiley: As I saw that several times. I do see the same breed on less hilly areas. But now I picture this afterwards:

marhaksm
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Hungarian Gray, our ancient breed, we had millions in the mid-1800s according to a table I saw there and then it went down to almost zero. Modern times care about animal species and traditional breeds more so the number raised but the newer breed kept its place. The beef farm I occasionally get meat from keep and sell some. Farms apparently like variety, the nearby pig farm has all kinds of pigs too, Mangalica (curly fur, comes in red color that I like and extra fatty. extra pricy too, usually), white, black and white, Duroc (my SO calls them “roasted pigs” as they have a wonderful reddish brown fur)… Some domesticated piglets are striped, did you know that? I didn’t until a few years ago.

And the cattle grazing is very much needed for proper variety in plants and that affects the bird populations… The area with the Hungarian Grays are famous about its birds and indeed, it’s amazing!

I can picture pretty things about chicken too but bad ones as well. Even if they are home-raised. I saw chickens kept in a tiny dark shed. Even the luckier hens got only a few wilting weeds on the bleak, almost barren yard. But at least there was light. Wow.
Chickens are where it matters A LOT how they were kept. Cheap chicken is pretty much tasteless. Cheap pork is super tasty. Beef has the same price in the supermarket and from the farm, I only ate the cheapest cuts (still luxury to me) and the right cuts were very tasty. Beef shank is great, I understand why I have read it’s perfect for stews :wink: It makes wonderful Goulash. There is a bit work with it and some cat food is produced in the process, not 100% edible for us but it’s the cheapest and very good. But deer is cheaper (when I buy it at the right place or when it’s on sale but I almost always buy meat on sale, there are sales all the time) and 100% edible so I choose that if possible. For some reason, leanness doesn’t bother me if it’s ruminant meat.
But good chicken is quite tasty (still not substantial for me) while cheap chicken is meh. But the former costs like 4 times as much money, it can be more expensive than beef at that point (cheapest beef but still! beef is worth WAY more than some chicken if you ask me).

#22

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#23

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#24

And grazing does good to Nature as I wrote. Grazing has an effect on plant variety, it has an effect on insect variety, then came the birds… And everyone wins.

How to do things in large scale I don’t know. I wish for way less humans on this poor planet. And smarter ones. Well, nicer to Nature and each other, more like. But being smart helps. And being less. We are a very harmful species.

#25

OK, so how would that work? Farmers just start annexing more land just because it exists? Because it’s free or something?

As far as doing things responsibly, that’s a totally different conversation. If cattle been shipped to processing that will remain on grass, aside from the fact that those facilities aren’t farms, and therefor don’t typically have never ending pastures for them to graze on, what do you feel the difference is between grass off the ground vs grass being fed via automation systems?

Yes, they call that smart business, and that’s not a bad thing, stupid financially irresponsible companies are slow and inefficient, and then go under which costs everybody in the end. My job has me on farms and greenhouses daily, and sorry, the ones at that size that people, and not corporations own couldn’t feed the masses if their life depended on it. I’m all for supporting local businesses and voting with my wallet and also paying a little more for a better end product, sorry, but to think a country with hundreds of millions of people could pull it off solely on places like that is beyond unrealistic, it’s delusional.

(Bob M) #26

I’m only partway through this, but I think he’s arguing we should have cattle grazing on public lands.

I think this has benefits, as you can get rid of some of the vegetation. I listened to another podcast where they were advocating the same for forests, although I think using a wider range of ruminants (including goats).

It’s an interesting podcast, particularly the commercials. Want something to help your cattle’s biome? You can get it.

(Geoffrey) #27

I would definitely benefit the land.

I’ve often wondered why more people don’t eat a wider range of ruminants. I know that some can be pricey but others like goat are fairly inexpensive and it’s good eating. I try to raise one for slaughter every year when I’m not raising sheep.

#28

I tend to agree but we have to be aware and careful of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Mad Cow in People). I think it’s found in deer as well.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creutzfeldt-Jakob_disease)

The kangaroos around here have a tapeworm that can get in your eyes or brain, if you eat their liver.

#29

Then what do you suggest? How do we avoid the feedlot?

I actually prefer the taste of corn finished meat but I try to buy grass fed to get some of the nutrients, because I think it is healthier in general and finally, because I did picture them calmly grazing in a field rather than on a horrible scary feedlot.

Thoughts on this?

(Doug) #30

Sad to say, much of it is ridiculous. The actual details weren’t fully revealed, and while it seems great, it relies on the addition of very large amounts of organic matter (that has to come from somewhere), as I recall.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #31

The better guide is to insist on meat from regeneratively-grazed cattle. The cattle are far healthier grazing on what grows in the field, and the soil is built up, rather than being depleted. Regenerative graziers find that they can cut out the use of fertiliser, pesticides, herbicides, and antibiotics, because most of the health problems cattle have come from being raised in CAFO’ or being allowed to overgraze the land. The grasses evolved to respond to how cattle pull on them when they eat. As long as the cattle are moved before they eat more than about a third of the plants, the plants’ root systems will remain healthy and keep the soil aerated, cooled, and healthy.

Regenerative graziers report that, without all the expensive inputs, they can price their meat competitively and still make enough of a profit to avoid having to deal with the banks. The only supplements one grazier I followed for a while on YouTube uses are minerals. He puts out a big box of certain minerals that the soil may be lacking, and the cattle choose what they need.

Overall, regenerative grazing is actually less work and more enjoyable. The taste and nutrient profile of the meat also improve over time, as the dormant seeds in the ground wake up and start to grow again. Some ranchers even report that their average rainfall improves (for technical reasons involving lower soil temperatures) and that they can do far more with less rain (since the root systems in the soil allow it to retain more water, and the lower soil temperature prevents excessive evaporation.) One rancher in the Sonoran Desert (which was all fertile range-land forty years ago) even has striking satellite photos showing that clouds form over his land, whereas his neighbour’s dry, baked soil reflects so much heat that it dries up the clouds.

So overall, the point is that “grass-fed” is not nearly as important as “regeneratively grazed.”

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #32

Well, it is certain that we don’t have enough arable land to feed everyone a vegetarian diet. Not only that, but monocropping depletes the soil, requiring the use of expensive synthetic fertilisers (made from petroleum), pesticides (made from petroleum), herbicides (made from petroleum), expensive equipment to apply them, and diesel fuel (made from petroleum) to run the expensive machines. Not to mention all the animals outright killed or run off the land, so that vegetarians can avoid killing a cow.

By contrast, there is far more agricultural land that cannot be farmed, but which can be used for grazing, and regenerative grazing methods not only eliminate the use of of expensive inputs but also rebuild the soil, without displacing thousands of small mammals and insects. In fact, as the amount of biological matter increases the soil thickness, regenerative grazing becomes a net carbon sink. Estimates indicate that if all meat in the U.S. and Canada came from regeneratively-grazed cattle, not only would the carbon sequestered be more than that released into the atmosphere from anthropogenic sources, but we could avoid the massive flooding that washes tons of top soil into the oceans.

So if we are to stand a chance of feeding the world, it’s going to have to be with meat playing a large role in our diet. A mostly plant-based diet is unsustainable.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #33

Alan Savory has become a polarising figure, largely because his holistic model strikes at the very philosophical foundations of current-day capitalism, because it emphasises people over profit, and the long-term overview over focusing on the next quarter’s profit-and-loss statement. A corporate model based on greed can’t cope with a holistic approach that treats employees as people rather than resources to be consumed.

That said, researchers such as Richard Teague have found that avoiding the term “holistic” avoids triggering bad reactions in other researchers. He coined the term “AMP (adaptative multi-paddock) grazing,” and finds that term slips through researchers’ defenses and thus Savory’s ideas can get the attention they deserve. The term “regenerative grazing” also meets with very little of the resistance raised by the term “holistic.” The benefits of this method of raising cattle are many and well-documented.

#34

So that’s why…? The nearby beef farm (with plenty of land for the animals to graze on) has the same prices than the supermarkets - except for ribeye (at least I think that is ribeye… we have different cuts with different names but as far as I can tell, it’s that and I have bought some last time. it looks very promising :slight_smile: ) as that is cheaper from the farm…

Wow!

#35

I read something like this a while ago. It was written by a former vegan who realized that to produce her tofu or whatever, even organically, worms had to be killed and other smaller animals so she realized that unless all you eat are the fruits that fall off a tree in a forest, your beans and rice are still killing something. I forget what she ate at the time she wrote the article, if anyone knows who I am talking about, please

(KM) #36

Possibly Lierre Keith? The poor woman was so conflicted about the idea of anything dying to feed her (possibly even plants) she had a brief hope she could live on sunshine. (Breatharianism. This is actually a thing. I mean it’s not a factual thing, you can’t actually live on air, sun and water, but it’s a delusional movement.) She was one of my first former-vegan writers who finally let go and got it: everything lives, and everything living dies, so everything new can live.

(Bob M) #37

I’m not sure. I like goat, and it’s popular elsewhere, just not really in the part of the US where I live.

@kib1 I read Lierre Keith’s book, where she said one day she realized how much was getting killed to give her vegetables. This is it:

Of course, when I typed “Lierre Keith” into the search engine, one of the main topics was “Lierre Keith debunked”.

To me, the idea that you have both animals and vegetables/fruit as being on the same land, along with not tilling the land, and moving the animals when it’s appropriate, seems like a plan.

#38

Actual not factual. I do like the juxtaposition.

#39

I hope this video plays. It has a bison rib steak in it!