What’s in a food label? Grass Fed

I’ve been working on a series of blog posts about the meaning behind the labels you find on meat packages. Previously, I’ve written posts about the meaning behind the Organic and Natural labels and I’ve talked about how those two terms can be confused with each other and with Grass-fed labeling.

The next labeling term I’m going to cover is Grass-fed.

Hawaii Big Island Beef was popular in Hawaii.
It is all grass fed.

 

To use the Grass-fed label on a beef package, the USDA requires that the cattle were…

·         Only allowed to eat grass or hay for their entire lives

·         Never given grain or grain byproducts

·         Allowed access to pasture during the growing season

That basically means that, in the summer time, they were turned out on pasture and ate grass and in the winter time, they were fed hay because the grass wasn’t growing. They are never fed grain (corn, rice, barley, oats etc…).

You may be asking yourself, “So, what does that mean about the beef that is not labeled Grass-fed?”

That’s one of the things that makes this particular label confusing. Some people may think that beef that is not labeled as grass-fed come from cattle that never see a pasture. That’s not really true at all.

In the US, all cattle are grass-fed. 

Grass-fed cattle.

Cattle are ruminants. Their bodies are able to digest grass and convert it into energy that they can use to grow, fatten, make milk, or raise calves. Their digestive systems are much more diverse than ours. We can’t metabolize grass, but cattle can. That’s part of what makes cows so awesome!

Vallie and some of our cows.I think she was
demonstrating gymnastics to them

Calves are born and live with their mother’s for 5 to 7 months. They may be fed some grain to supplement them, but for the most part, they drink their mother’s milk and eat grass. Their mothers will eat mostly grass, too. Once they are old enough to be weaned (teenagers), they are usually sent to a stocker farm to grow for a few more months. How much grain vs. grass they get at this step depends on the time of year and the weather. If there is grass growing, they will get to eat it. If not, they will eat a combination of hay and grain.

For the final few months of their lives, cattle that comprise most of the beef in the US, will be fed a greater percentage of grain in a feedlot. In the cattle industry, we call the high-energy ingredients used in these diets concentrates because the energy is more concentrated; whereas, grass and hay are called roughages. The high-concentrate (grain) diet allows them to gain weight more efficiently and gives the beef the flavor and tenderness we expect in the US. Even then, they have to get fiber (roughages), too. So, they get hay, silage (fermented hay) and other forms of roughage. It would be unhealthy for the calves if they only ate corn. Their diet is closely controlled by nutritionists.

I have a post about the steps cattle go through to become beef.

One of my favorite blogs is written by Anne Burkholder, a mom, feedlot operator, Feedyard Foodie. She writes about daily life in a feedlot in Nebraska and her kids and beef and life in general.

Ryan Goodman, of the Ag Proud blog just wrote a great post about how cattle digest grass and grain.

Personally, I prefer the flavor of beef from cattle that have been grain-finished (fed grain for the last few months before harvest). Some people prefer the flavor of beef from grass-finished cattle (fed exclusively grass and hay). The great thing is that we have the choice.

Sometimes, labeling claims like organic and natural are confused with grass-fed, but those labeling claims have different meanings that I covered in previous posts.  Most of the time, grass-fed labels are accompanied by claims about being raisedwithout hormones or raised without antibiotics, but those labels have different meaning and will be coming up soon in my labeling blog series.

What about our Carbon Hoofprint?



A cow in Hawaii
Notice the Pacific in the background

Animal Agriculture and the Environment

As a meat producer and a mom, I hear a lot of information about animal agriculture and the environment. Some groups claim that meat production is one of the main driving forces hurting the environment. They claim that we need to go ‘back to the start’ in food production, insinuating that we should go back to producing food the way we did decades ago.

Earlier this month, I wrote a post about the enormity of the meat industry, and the massive numbers of animals and people it takes to keep 313 million Americans fed meat each and every day. We can’t go back to the food systems of 1950 and expect to be able to feed everyone that we have to feed today. Not only would food be much more expensive, taking our food production systems backwards would be bad for the environment.


Do you want to go back to the 1950's way of communicating?

This week I had a wonderful opportunity to attend an agriculture symposium hosted by Alltech, a Kentucky-based company that makes a wide variety of products used in different aspects of food production. They are a very innovative company and it’s exciting to learn about all the new possibilities in agriculture. (but, more about Alltech in a future post).


One meeting I attended at the symposium focused on the Carbon footprint of animal agriculture. There are several animal scientists and agriculturalists who have focused their research on limiting the impact that food animals have on the environment.

It’s true that producing food from animals results in the production of green house gasses. All animals breathe out carbon dioxide and cows produce methane in their stomach when they digest their food. It’s just how their systems work. Regardless of the way a farmer produces food (grass fed, organic, antibiotic free, or conventional), some green house gasses are going to be produced.

I was excited to learn one of the speakers at the symposium was my friend, Dr. Jude Capper, author of the Bovidiva blog. But, unfortunately, the storms early in the week delayed her plane and she wasn’t able to make it to the symposium. She sent me a link to her slides and I’ve seen her speak before. I’ve even discussed her research in my post about the beef industry.


Dr. Jude Capper

According to Dr. Capper, animal agriculture contributes to 3.1% of the total US carbon footprint. I love the analogy she uses to explain the environmental impact of animal agriculture. She compares two vehicles; the first gets 5 miles per gallon, the second gets 35 miles per gallon. You automatically think that the first vehicle is an environmental nightmare and the second is a much more environmentally-friendly choice. But wait… the first vehicle is a bus carrying 50 passengers and the second is a car carrying 4. That means, that for a 350 mile trip, the bus can carry 50 passengers, getting 250 people miles per gallon, whereas the car only carries 4 and gets 140 people miles per gallon. Now, which one is better for the environment?

The same rules need to be applied to animal agriculture. The more productive an animal is, the smaller its impact on the environment.

Dr. Capper goes on to compare animal agriculture of today (her data is based on numbers from 2007) to that of 30 years ago (1977). One cow of today produces 131% of the beef that one cow would have produced 30 years ago, and each pound of beef produced requires only 81% of the feed, 86% of the water, and 66% of the land a pound of beef required thirty years ago. Using our modern practices, farmers today are producing more beef and using fewer animals and less natural resources. She goes on to say that a pound of beef today results in 80% of the manure, 80% of the methane, 89% of the nitrous oxide and has 82% of the carbon footprint that a pound of beef had in 1977.

The carbon footprint of animal agriculture will decrease when animals breed and have babies as often as possible, when they are healthy and free of disease, and they will produce much more food with improved genetics. (In animal agriculture, when we talk about improving genetics, we are not talking about creating GMO animals. We are simply talking about breeding the best to the best and getting babies that are even better. Some scientists can use the animal’s DNA to tell them which animals carry the best genes and use them to decide which animals to use for breeding.)

Dr. Capper is a big proponent of using technologies to increase the amount of food each animal produces, including feeding animals in feedlots as well as utilizing antibiotics, hormones, and beta agonists. These have such a positive impact on productivity that one cow raised using them would produce enough extra beef to feed seven children with school lunches for a whole year! Some of these technologies are banned in Europe, but that decision results in 244 million metric tons of extra beef that must be imported to European countries each year.

Many people think that producing animals using all grass systems would be better for the environment, but that is terribly inefficient. Animals fed only grass need about 7 more months of growing time to be ready for harvest and they are about 175 pounds lighter than those fed grain. If all US beef was produced on grass, we would need 131 million more acres of land (75% of the size of Texas) and 468 billion more gallons of water (equivalent to that used by 53.1 million US households).

When you consider how large the global food supply is and how diverse the farming practices are, it’s easy to see how small changes to improve productivity can make huge differences in the amount of total food produced. Just controlling parasites in a small, 35-cow herd can result in enough extra beef to supply 19 families with their annual beef demand. Worldwide, disease in animals causes a 20% loss.

The next speaker at the symposium (really the first speaker since Jude couldn’t make it) was Dr. Frank Mitloehner. It was great to see Dr. Mitloehner at Alltech. He was a graduate student at Texas Tech when I was an undergraduate and was the teaching assistant in some of my classes. Dr. Mitloehner is now a leading researcher in animal agriculture and its impact on the environment. He uses the term ‘sustainable intensification’ when he discusses improving the impact of animal agriculture on the environment. 


Dr. Frank Mitloehner

He told us that the global population will triple in his lifetime and most of the human population growth will occur in the developing world. Farmers will have to produce enough food to feed 9 billion people by 2050 and they will have about the same or maybe a little less land than they have today. So efficiency is key. In the US, we have the most efficient food system in the world, meaning that our farmers produce the most meat, milk and eggs using fewer natural resources than anywhere else in the world. It takes 5 cows in Mexico to make the same amount of milk that one cow can produce in the US. That’s 4 more cows eating feed and hay, drinking water and pooping.

Developing countries are really far behind in animal husbandry, and that’s understandable. Dr. Mitloehner stated that the best way to improve the environmental impact of animal agriculture worldwide would be to help these developing countries produce food more efficiently. In the developed world, he says that the environmental impact could be improved by learning ways to utilize animal waste to produce energy. (Some farmers already capture the gasses from their manure to produce electricity.)

Now, we know that being more productive and producing more food is good for farmers, but some countries even take it one step further. The next speaker was Aidan Cotter from the Irish Food Board. He told us about a program in Ireland, called Origin Green that measures the carbon footprint of individual farms in Ireland and allows them to compare themselves to other farmers.



They measure the inputs and outputs of each farm and grant sustainable accreditation to farmers that are producing efficiently. Their accreditation focuses not only on carbon produced, but also measures efficiency of production, like how often the cows calve, how young they are when they have their first calf, how heavy the calves are at weaning, and how efficiently they gain. If a farmer needs a boost in efficiency, the program works with them to help them improve their farm. This accreditation is quite lucrative because beef factories pay a premium for cattle from farms that are certified as sustainable. The supermarkets that sell the beef in Europe demand beef that is produced sustainably.

During the question and answer period, Dr. Mitloehner brought up a point that I think is very important. In developed countries like the USA, 1/3 of the food we produce goes into a landfill. All the food that is wasted contributes to greenhouse gas production and the national carbon footprint, but it isn’t used. That is such a travesty. Both Dr. Capper and I have since written blog posts about food waste.

I hope this post was helpful. I really think that the impact of animal agriculture on the environment is something that is largely misunderstood. Please comment if you have any questions. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find someone who does.

Both Dr. Capper and Dr. Mitloehner have been interviewed in the Meat Mythcrusher video series and their videos have some great insight into their research.

Aloha from the Mom at the Meat Counter




Our family recently returned from a trip to Hawaii. That’s right, Hawaii, the Big Island. I want to go back so bad that I dream about flowers and lava rocks. In fact, I’d really like to just move there. We loved it!

My sister married a guy from Hilo, HI, and we went over for a reception with his family and friends. Then, we stayed for 10 days.

Ask anyone in the meat business and they will probably tell you that one of our favorite things to explore on vacation is local food. We head to markets or grocery stores, take pictures of meals, and ask anyone that will answer us about their food. I love to check out what people eat, especially meat, and where they buy it, and how they prepare it, and what they eat with it. Anything about local food interests me.

So, needless to say, that’s what I did in Hawaii. I thought I would share some of my Hawaiian food adventures on my blog.

At the wedding reception, my new brother-in-law wanted us to experience authentic Hawaiian cuisine. We were served octopus, a tomato and raw salmon salad, and poke, which contained slightly-cooked tuna. I wasn’t very brave that day, I only tried the poke, but the pork on the main dish was very good. I became braver later and even tried Sashimi, which is uncooked Tuna. It was very good!

 


As a side we had these Hawaiian sweet potatoes. They are white until you cook them, and they turn purple.


After church in Arkansas, we have refreshments of banana bread or cookies. After church in Hawaii, they served sushi. I had never had sushi, but felt it would be rude to refuse, so I tried it and I was so glad I did. I really liked it!

Asian culture is very strong in Hawaii. Mark’s family is Japanese and Korean. We had many meals with them. Such wonderful people! At my parents’ house, we have silverware in a little canister like this. My new brother-in-law’s parents also had chop sticks.






Ed had coconut pancakes with Portuguese sausage at the World Famous Ken’s Pancake House. They even had coconut syrup (the white one). I tried the Guava syrup, but it was not for me.

 

We had L&L Hawaiian barbeque in Honolulu the day we went to Pearl Harbor. Hawaiian barbeque is not slow cooked like on the mainland. It was heavily seasoned, thin sliced and cooked in a skillet. We had chicken, beef ribs and beef steak. It was served with a heaping helping of rice and either garden salad or macaroni salad. So much food!

We went to a Noni fruit and cattle farm. I’ve done research with Noni fruit in ground beef. I took more pictures of Noni fruit and Noni trees than anything. More about that in another blog post.

 

Mixed-breed cattle in Hawaii, like these, are called Poi dogs
These cattle eat grass and the Noni fruit from the trees. The Noni farmer loves it because the cows keep the trees pruned so it’s easier to harvest the fruit.

At the Noni farm, we also learned about Korean Natural Farming. I am going to do some more research on the subject. It was very intriguing.

 

I am not normally a big grass-fed beef gal, but this was delicious!

 

Our new friends from the Noni farm shared home-grown avocados, papaya, and tangelos (a cross of an orange and a tangerine). And, of course, a Noni fruit.

We always visit the grocery store when we travel. We head right to the meat case and see how things look.

Paniolo’s are Hawaiian cowboys. This store was up in the cattle-ranching area of the Big Island, near the Parker Ranch which is the fifth largest ranch in the US.

Hawaiian meat counters look a lot like those on the mainland, but remember that most of the red meat has traveled thousands of miles.

A more local choice was Big Island Beef that is raised right on the island.

Chicken feet are very popular in Asian cultures. I had never seen them in the meat case, though.

Beef casing. I guess for making sausage. 

Pigs feet. I have seen these on the mainland.





Chop Sui!

Beef tongue. I’ve seen this one on the mainland, too.



Pork tails.

 



Pork intestine. I had never seen it quite like this before.

Of course, loads and loads of fish.

  

It's not a great picture, but, yes, that is an octopus… in the grocery store.

 

 

We went fishing and Dad caught a Mahi Mahi. We gave most of the meat to the boat crew, but we tried some. It was really good!

This is the captain cleaning our fish. He and the other crew members were taking little bites of the raw fish right there. We were not that brave.

I know this post has been quite different from most my previous posts, but I really enjoyed our trip. We learned so much and had such a wonderful time. I am planning a trip to Florida in a few weeks. I’m sure I’ll have some pictures of food from that trip, too.

What is the difference between ‘Organic’, ‘Natural’, and ‘Grass-fed’ meat?

I know you have seen lots of claims about 'Natural' or 'Organic' or 'Grass-fed' on meat labels in the grocery store and in menus at restaurants. Along with that, there always seems to be something on TV or the radio or the internet about organic this or natural that and people making claims why this product or that one is better than all the rest. What most people don’t realize is what those claims really mean when they are printed on a meat label or in a restaurant.

Since I've written this post, I've also done a series of posts on food labels.

Organic. The United States Department of Agriculture (through the Ag. Marketing Service) manages the National Organic Program which certifies producers that produce and handle organic produce. Organically raised livestock must be in compliance with the National Organic Program rules beginning at the last 1/3 of gestation. They must be only fed organic feed and allowed to graze only organically-managed pastures. They are not to be given hormones or any other growth-promoting agents, and only allowed to be given vaccines when they are not sick (nothing else). There are requirements that they must be allowed access to outdoors. All of these regulations are certified by agencies accredited through USDA. In order to place the USDA organic seal on the label of a product, it must be made with 95% or greater organic ingredients. Meat labeled as “organic” is very expensive because it costs a lot to produce.

Natural. Lots of people think that ‘Natural’ is the same as ‘Organic’. It is not. According to USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, a product with the word ‘Natural’ on the label must be …

 A product containing no artificial ingredient or added color and is only minimally processed. Minimal processing means that the product was processed in a manner that does not fundamentally alter the product. The label must include a statement explaining the meaning of the term natural (such as "no artificial ingredients; minimally processed").

So, ‘Natural’ is pretty open-ended. It usually comes with another claim like ‘no antibiotics added’ or maybe ‘grass-fed’. Other than that, it’s pretty similar to all the other meat you see. If it doesn’t say ‘grass-fed’, it’s probably not. If it doesn’t say ‘no antibiotics’, they may have been given. Realize that antibiotics have regulations for food animals that ALL producers must follow, natural or not.

The USDA has a nice webpage explaining requirements for several phrases we see on meat labels.

Grass-fed. Most people understand that, in the United States, producers feed cattle grain for the last 3 or 4 months of their life. This is an efficient way to get the cattle to gain weight and fatten to a point where American consumers like to eat beef. Face it, most of us like juicy, tender beef, and that comes from fat beef. Some people don’t like their beef fattened this way. Several countries around the world don’t feed cattle like this. Some cattle spend their entire lives eating grass. Grass-fed beef is generally leaner and has a stronger flavor than grain-fed beef. Some people like it that way (not me).

2016 Amendment. Some of the rules for labeling meat as grass-fed have changed lately, but the premise has stayed the same. Meat processors that want to label their product as 'Grass fed' must have each label approved independently, so technically, the label could mean something slightly different for each company. However, small and very small processors can still use the 'Grass fed' label with the following definition.  The animal must have only been allowed to eat grass or hay for its entire life (except milk when they are babies). They should also be allowed continuous access to pasture during the growing season.

Grass-feeding takes a longer time to get cattle large enough to slaughter, and there is not as much meat on grass-fed beef. So, it costs more.

I am not trying to say that meat labeled as ‘Natural’ or ‘Organic’ or ‘Grass-fed’ is any better or worse than any other meat you may find in a grocery store or a restaurant. I will tell you that it is also not any safer or more nutritious than other meat. I just tell people, eat what you like, and when it comes to food labels, know what you are paying for.