5 Reasons to Add Grass-fed Beef to Your Grocery List

This article appeared in The Mother Earth News
August/September 2007
Alison Rogers 

It's the middle of August, time to gather your friends for that barbeque you've been promising to host all summer. But before you run to the grocery store for a couple pounds of ground beef for the hamburgers, consider this: There's a healthier, safer, better-tasting alternative. One that supports small-scale farms, a healthy eco-system and the animals' welfare. That alternative is grass-fed beef.

While most of the beef found in supermarkets is an engineered commodity, far removed from the source of protein and other essential nutrients it formerly represented, many producers are revisiting the 'grass roots' of the business and bringing us better beef. There are lots of reasons to seek out a grass-fed beef supplier in your area ? Here are five of them:

1. Grass-fed beef is low in saturated fat, yet high in omega-3 fatty acids, beta carotene, vitamin E, folic acid and antioxidants. Conjugated linoleic acid, thought to reduce the risk of breast cancer and diabetes, also is higher in pastured beef.

2. Grass-fed cattle don't require regular administration of antibiotics to combat the spread of infection that is common in densely packed feedlots. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 70 percent of the antibiotics and similar drugs produced in the United States are used on livestock, creating antibiotic-resistant bacteria that health facilities are finding hard to treat.

3. Grass-fed beef production practices do not typically include the injection of hormones to spur growth. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved six different kinds of steroidal hormones for use in food production, according to a report from Cornell University, and many are concerned that these pharmaceuticals increase the risk of breast cancer and reproductive problems in humans. (Wildlife, too, is affected ? the hormones are present in cattle waste and end up in creeks, rivers, lakes and ponds.)

4. Grass-fed beef is much less likely to harbor acid-resistant E.coli. A diet consisting primarily of grain creates an acidic condition in a cow's digestive system, and the bacteria that survive this pH level are resistant to a human's stomach acid. The result is not pretty. However, a natural diet of grass does not create this acidic environment, and study after study has confirmed that there is much less E. coli in grass-fed meat products. (Read News from Mother: Why Grass Fed is Best for more information.)

5. Grass-fed cattle herds have never been affected by Mad Cow Disease. Large confined feeding operations will add just about anything to the feed they use in order to produce the most weight gain in the shortest time possible. Sometimes this includes processed cattle brains, which is how the disease is spread.