Mintel, a marketing research group, recently published results of consumer surveys that reflect this idea.  As more and more Americans are moving toward greener purchases the production of green products have increased over 200% in the last 5 years.  Mintel noted a trend in consumers’ growing interest in products that are not just organic or natural but address their environmental concerns.  More than ever shoppers want to purchase goods that help protect and preserve the world around us.

In this vein the green lifestyle has welcome arms around the solar based, environmentally friendly grass fed model of production.

A few of our favorite burger fixens include sautéed wild mushrooms on top of the burger, blueberries added directly into the meat, a blue cheese topping, the unbeatable combination of bacon and cheddar cheese, red onions, and a endless combination of condiments from as simple as ketchup and mustard to exotic homemade twists of Mediterranean, Mexican and Indian cuisine.

This weekend to kick off the burger season I think I will go basic with the classic burger and lettuce, tomato and onion.  Can’t wait.

At American Grass Fed Beef we are also excited about a new product which is a half-pound burger patty.  Though not for the faint and dainty, none of my boys are that, this will be an exciting new and convenient way to enjoy grass fed beef.  Not even on the website yet, look for it in the next week or so.

For the second time in a month we have had a major amount of fencing washed away.  Yet, we are thankful to have missed some of the devastation left by the tornados associated with this last storm system.  Damage to emerging pasture is getting critical and we have had to put animals into some sacrifice areas to protect the main pastures.  These are paddocks that contain our least productive grass density.  The animal impact upon the sodden ground will leave them appearing to have been disked with a plow.  After the animals are rotated to grassy pastures we will come behind them and sow new grass.  In the long run they will actually be improved, but in the short time they take a beating.

Currently, we have planned for working one group of yearlings this week to separate by size and prepare for spring grazing rotation of range pasture.  Our pens are also soaked and even rubber boots will make for difficult moving as the mud comes half way between the knee and ankle.

Viewing and photographing these wild species is truly my greatest hobby and an endeavor that I just can’t seem to find enough time to explore.  Yet, it always seems that my greatest encounters with wildlife occur when I do not have a camera in hand.  One such encounter was yesterday.

While walking along one of my typical trails I came upon a group of elk.  They were out on the edge of the woods at the interface where the pasture meets woods.  A large bull elk was acting strangely.  He was walking imbalanced and stumbling.  My first though was that a poacher had snuck into the area and shot him.  Standing very still I stood and watched, unsure of what I could possibly do to help him if he had been shot.  As I watched he began turning from side to side trying to lick his back.  He then began to turn in circles like a small dog chasing his tail.  All of a sudden he ran and came to a quick stop like a quarter horse going through a reigning routine.  When he put on the brakes to stop both antlers fell off onto the ground on each side of his body.  I had been lucky enough to actually see an elk shed his antlers!  It was a remarkable sight. 

Remember antlers like that of elk and deer are shed each year and grown back.  Very shortly this same elk that I witnessed shed his majestic crown will begin a new rack in velvet.  Velvet is the vascular covering for the new horns as they grow.  This velvet is shed as the soft cartilage type tissue hardens.  Horns on the other hand are permanent structures that have bone underlying the horny tissue and maintain a blood supply. 

Cattle have horns.  Cattle that are selectively breed to not have horns are called polled.  Many producers who have cattle with horns choose to dehorn in order to facilitate easier and safer handling.  They dehorn the young calf by the use of caustic chemicals or by cauterizing the horn bud of the calf.  When dehorned at an older age the horns must be removed by cutting or sawing them off.  When removed in this way there can be considerable blood loss.  We do not dehorn our cattle unless for a medical / physical reason such as a horn with a tip that grows into the face.

More and more consumers are regularly buying products that are considered good or less harmful for the environment.  According to the research from Mintel International Group conducted in December more than one-third of consumers surveyed said they “regularly” buy green products, compared to only 12% in August, 2006.  Those who responded that they “never” buy green products were cut in half, to 10 percent.

Consumers are voting for what exists in the world by how they choose to spend their dollars. 

We have always been proud to have our farm located on the Current River (actually 3 miles distant) it is one of Missouri’s Scenic Waterways and its crystal clear waters are truly a delight for fishing and sporting.  Yet when the region receives a deluge of this magnitude it sure causes heightened awareness of the fierce power of nature.  Beautiful streams become torrents of muddy, violent, raging water that push everything in its path downstream in crashing rage.  

We are all safe for which I am thankful and we slept in a warm dry house, some in the area were not so lucky.  Yet, we are not without our destruction.  Large amounts of fence are gone and some pastures this morning had cattle grazing in a lake.  Pastures beside creeks have lost calves, swept downstream.  It will take days to help the momma cows and calves match back up and determine the loss.

In the midst of a crisis it is always gives you pause when certain sights imprint an image on your mind.  While surveying the damage and wading knee deep water where about a half a mile of fence had been washed away I happened upon a calf.  The calf was curled up in that oh-so-sweet manner on top of a clump of debris.  I assume patiently waiting for momma to return.  It was the picture of peace.  Tranquility when all around you the world rages. 

This early spring we have had lots of moisture.  In fact, we are wet.  My husband is a pilot and was flying in a couple of weeks ago and called to ask the condition of our grass strip.  I told him, “You better land elsewhere unless you have equipped the plane with pontoons since you have been gone.” 

Rain is one of those vital parts of growing good grass.  As a farmer, talking weather is not just a pastime it is part of your soul.  Our Missouri soil is partial to erosion and when saturated makes driving on pasture like driving on ice.  We forbid anyone from driving off the farm roads unless in an absolute emergency. 

Animal impact can change a field to mud in 12 hours.  Yet, when not left to further abuse and properly rested it also seems to go a long way to bringing out and restoring native grasses.  Managing for wet conditions is as important as managing for drought yet can be a tool to improve pasture if used correctly. 

Patrick McElroy is the Executive Chef of the historic, four-diamond Hyatt Regency in St. Louis at Union Station.  He focuses on flavors steeped in the traditions of Midwestern cuisine and as such he has a passion for sourcing products directly from local farms. 

Patrick and his family have visited our farm and we have been greatly encouraged by the support he offers to independent farmers, ranchers, and growers who share his same philosophies concerning quality, healthiness, freshness and sustainability in our food chain. He represents a growing number of chefs who vote for what exists in the world by where they source their food.  They support generational farmers and have an appreciation of their skills and craft.  By this support they are active partners in the preservation of these farms and the skills and the quality of product represented, ensuring that these artisan products are not lost or forgotten.  American GrassFed Beef has been a staple on Patrick’s menu for several years. 

I think you will enjoy this article written by Patrick for the Hyatt Culinary newsletter.

Evolution Of The Health Food Movement

The American Grassfed Association (AGA) said Wednesday its board has voted to start certifying grass-fed meat operations under a new industry-backed standard administered by Food Alliance, owner one of the most comprehensive agricultural eco-labels in North America.

“We can now begin the process of developing the audit protocols that will allow our members to certify their farms and ranches as grassfed,” AGA Beef Director Will Harris told Sustainable Food News.

The AGA represents more than 300 grassfed livestock producers. FA certifies farms, ranches, food processors and distributors for sustainable agriculture certification, which addresses labor conditions, humane animal care, and environmental stewardship.

Certified businesses can use the green, FA eco-label on its products to show off social and environmental responsibility.

FA Executive Director Scott Exo told SFN earlier that it could his group could start taking applications and undertaking inspections of producers wishing to be AGA-certified by May.

AGA’s grass-fed marketing claim standard is intended to exceed the requirements for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s grass-fed standard announced in October, which allows animals confined to feedlots, given antibiotics and growth hormones to still be labeled ‘grass-fed’ as long as they were fed a forage diet.

And since producers seeking FA certification are already assessed against rigorous animal welfare standards including no hormones or non-therapeutic antibiotics, Exo said those passing certification under the specific AGA grass-fed standards will be able to market products with both FA and the AGA’s American Grass Fed seals.

“[Producers] will be getting a twofer,” he said.

Grass-fed meat producers have waited for years for the department to develop certification standards and procedures, like the organic certification and seal, to distinguish grass-fed animals from conventionally raised animals.

And though the USDA did ban the use of antibiotics and growth hormones in its ‘naturally raised’ marketing claim standard it released in December, it still leaves out the issue of confinement.

The comment period for the proposed voluntary standard for a naturally-raised marketing claim for livestock and meat was recently extended to March 3.

Still, Exo said splitting sustainable agriculture practices into separate marketing claims can be especially frustrating for producers.

“The problem with slicing things so thinly is that a producer has to put words all over packaging to get his marketing message across,” he said.

Exo said with both Food Alliance and AGA grass-fed certification producers are able to have a host of practices assessed to standards that consumers are calling for; all in one certification process and indicated by the FA and AGA seals.

“That is the kind of simplification that the marketplace is looking for,” he said.

This certainly has been the age of beef recalls; each one seems to be bigger than those prior.  The Topps recall this year was huge but this current recall of 143 million pounds is the largest in history.  It is 4 times bigger than the previous record of 35 million pounds by Thorn Apple Valley in 1999.  Contamination of our food supply by E.coli 0157:H7 (the deadly pathogenic form) or salmonella have been in the news all year and certainly a source of concern.  There were 21 recalls due to E.coli 0157:H7 last year which in itself is significantly higher than the 8 in 2006 and 5 in 2005.  However, this current recall brings an already shaky red meat consumer to question the very core of the livestock industry.

Further, this time the recall is for beef harvested from downer cows which could pose a threat of mad cow disease.  A downer cow is one that though alive is not ambulatory prior to harvesting.  Symptoms of mad cow disease may present as showing neurological signs of ataxia and paralysis.   Slaughter of downer cows has not been allowed since the occurrence of the threat of mad cow disease.  It is prohibited to harvest an animal that cannot stand unless it is for reasons of an acute injury such as a broken leg.  But even then the USDA veterinary inspectors on hand are to pass judgment on these animals.  The USDA has strict rules under the 1958 Humane Slaughter Act as to the humane treatment of animals including downers. 

The current recall is considered a Class II recall, indicating that the chance of there actually being a health hazard is remote.  The USDA has explained that there is little health risk from this meat because the animals had passed ante-mortem inspection prior to going down.  In addition, the officials noted that it is required that the brains and spinal cords (called SRM – specified risk materials) from any of these animals would have been removed as required since it is believed that these are the areas most likely to harbor the disease and therefore would not have entered the food supply.  A Class I recall would indicate that consumption of the product would pose a serious health problem or death.  Such has been the case in some of the E.coli outbreaks.

Of great concern to many consumers and consumer advocate groups is the fact that nearly a quarter of all the recalled beef had been sent to the school lunch program and that most of it had already been consumed.  It has caused many of these groups to question the efficacy of our food safety system.  These groups charged that the USDA should do a better job of ensuring that questionable beef does not enter our food chain.

While consumers, beef industry spokesmen, processing industry spokespersons and producers all agree that the in-humane actions of workers at this particular facility are to be condemned the question is posed by many as to whether this is just an extraordinary and egregious incident or if it is indicative of a larger, industry-wide problem.  Of consumers and customers who contact us through our website one frequently asked question has to do with the manner in which we slaughter our animals and whether it is humane.  Many consumers come to grassfed and pasture raised meats that are sourced directly from small-scale family farms for the health benefits and safety issues.  However, the umbrella of interest in pasture based agriculture goes beyond these attributes to include those folks who are not opposed to eating meat but want to make absolutely sure that the livestock is cared for, transported and harvested in a humane manner.  Additionally, there are some who come for the environmental issues. 

For this reason, we decided some time ago to have third party verification of our humane pastured raised management at the farm, when the animals are transported and when they go through the harvest process.  We are very proud to have passed two humane audits.  We bear a certificate of approval from the American Humane Association as well as Steritech.  We feel that this gives extra assurance to our customers that we are passionate about the well being of our animals.

My advice to consumers who are concerned about this revelation of animal abuse at a facility in California not extend the judgment to all animal harvesting facilities.  The proverbial, “Don’t throw out the baby with the bath...” need not apply and the consumer stop eating meat altogether.  Please continue to enjoy the health benefits of beef but investigate from where it is sourced.  Choose small-scale family farms that personally care for their animals on open pastures.  Choose meats that are processed in third party audited facilities where the humane treatment is a priority.

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.

I never forgot the story and through out my career and life had only used antibiotics when they were truly indicated.  This article by Michael Pollan is certainly worthwhile to consider. 

By MICHAEL POLLAN
Published New York Times: December 16, 2007

The word “sustainability” has gotten such a workout lately that the whole concept is in danger of floating away on a sea of inoffensiveness. Everybody, it seems, is for it whatever “it” means. On a recent visit to a land-grant university’s spanking-new sustainability institute, I asked my host how many of the school’s faculty members were involved. She beamed: When letters went out asking who on campus was doing research that might fit under that rubric, virtually everyone replied in the affirmative. What a nice surprise, she suggested. But really, what soul working in agricultural science today (or for that matter in any other field of endeavor) would stand up and be counted as against sustainability? When pesticide makers and genetic engineers cloak themselves in the term, you have to wonder if we haven’t succeeded in defining sustainability down, to paraphrase the late Senator Moynihan, and if it will soon possess all the conceptual force of a word like “natural” or “green” or “nice.”

Confucius advised that if we hoped to repair what was wrong in the world, we had best start with the “rectification of the names.” The corruption of society begins with the failure to call things by their proper names, he maintained, and its renovation begins with the reattachment of words to real things and precise concepts. So what about this much-abused pair of names, sustainable and unsustainable?

To call a practice or system unsustainable is not just to lodge an objection based on aesthetics, say, or fairness or some ideal of environmental rectitude. What it means is that the practice or process can’t go on indefinitely because it is destroying the very conditions on which it depends. It means that, as the Marxists used to say, there are internal contradictions that sooner or later will lead to a breakdown.

For years now, critics have been speaking of modern industrial agriculture as “unsustainable” in precisely these terms, though what form the “breakdown” might take or when it might happen has never been certain. Would the aquifers run dry? The pesticides stop working? The soil lose its fertility? All these breakdowns have been predicted and they may yet come to pass. But if a system is unsustainable — if its workings offend the rules of nature — the cracks and signs of breakdown may show up in the most unexpected times and places. Two stories in the news this year, stories that on their faces would seem to have nothing to do with each other let alone with agriculture, may point to an imminent breakdown in the way we’re growing food today.

The first story is about MRSA, the very scary antibiotic-resistant strain of Staphylococcus bacteria that is now killing more Americans each year than AIDS — 100,000 infections leading to 19,000 deaths in 2005, according to estimates in The Journal of the American Medical Association. For years now, drug-resistant staph infections have been a problem in hospitals, where the heavy use of antibiotics can create resistant strains of bacteria. It’s Evolution 101: the drugs kill off all but the tiny handful of microbes that, by dint of a chance mutation, possess genes allowing them to withstand the onslaught; these hardy survivors then get to work building a drug-resistant superrace. The methicillin-resistant staph that first emerged in hospitals as early as the 1960s posed a threat mostly to elderly patients. But a new and even more virulent strain — called “community-acquired MRSA” — is now killing young and otherwise healthy people who have not set foot in a hospital. No one is yet sure how or where this strain evolved, but it is sufficiently different from the hospital-bred strains to have some researchers looking elsewhere for its origin, to another environment where the heavy use of antibiotics is selecting for the evolution of a lethal new microbe: the concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO.

Public-health experts have been warning us for years that this situation is a public-health disaster waiting to happen. Sooner or later, the profligate use of these antibiotics — in many cases the very same ones we depend on when we’re sick — would lead to the evolution of bacteria that could shake them off like a spring shower. It appears that “sooner or later” may be now. Recent studies in Europe and Canada found that confinement pig operations have become reservoirs of MRSA. A European study found that 60 percent of pig farms that routinely used antibiotics had MRSA-positive pigs (compared with 5 percent of farms that did not feed pigs antibiotics). This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study showing that a strain of “MRSA from an animal reservoir has recently entered the human population and is now responsible for [more than] 20 percent of all MRSA in the Netherlands.” Is this strictly a European problem? Evidently not. According to a study in Veterinary Microbiology, MRSA was found on 45 percent of the 20 pig farms sampled in Ontario, and in 20 percent of the pig farmers. (People can harbor the bacteria without being infected by it.) Thanks to Nafta, pigs move freely between Canada and the United States. So MRSA may be present on American pig farms; we just haven’t looked yet.
Scientists have not established that any of the strains of MRSA presently killing Americans originated on factory farms. But given the rising public alarm about MRSA and the widespread use on these farms of precisely the class of antibiotics to which these microbes have acquired resistance, you would think our public-health authorities would be all over it. Apparently not. When, in August, the Keep Antibiotics Working coalition asked the Food and Drug Administration what the agency was doing about the problem of MRSA in livestock, the agency had little to say. Earlier this month, though, the F.D.A. indicated that it may begin a pilot screening program with the C.D.C.
As for independent public-health researchers, they say they can’t study the problem without the cooperation of the livestock industry, which, not surprisingly, has not been forthcoming. For what if these researchers should find proof that one of the hidden costs of cheap meat is an epidemic of drug-resistant infection among young people? There would be calls to revolutionize the way we produce meat in this country. This is not something that the meat and the pharmaceutical industries or their respective regulatory “watchdogs” — the Department of Agriculture and F.D.A. — are in any rush to see happen.

The second story is about honeybees, which have endured their own mysterious epidemic this past year. Colony Collapse Disorder was first identified in 2006, when a Pennsylvanian beekeeper noticed that his bees were disappearing — going out on foraging expeditions in the morning never to return. Within months, beekeepers in 24 states were reporting losses of between 20 percent and 80 percent of their bees, in some cases virtually overnight. Entomologists have yet to identify the culprit, but suspects include a virus, agricultural pesticides and a parasitic mite. (Media reports that genetically modified crops or cellphone towers might be responsible have been discounted.) But whatever turns out to be the immediate cause of colony collapse, many entomologists believe some such disaster was waiting to happen: the lifestyle of the modern honeybee leaves the insects so stressed out and their immune systems so compromised that, much like livestock on factory farms, they’ve become vulnerable to whatever new infectious agent happens to come along.

You need look no farther than a California almond orchard to understand how these bees, which have become indispensable workers in the vast fields of industrial agriculture, could have gotten into such trouble. Like a great many other food crops, like an estimated one out of every three bites you eat, the almond depends on bees for pollination. No bees, no almonds. The problem is that almonds today are grown in such vast monocultures — 80 percent of the world’s crop comes from a 600,000-acre swath of orchard in California’s Central Valley — that, when the trees come into bloom for three weeks every February, there are simply not enough bees in the valley to pollinate all those flowers. For what bee would hang around an orchard where there’s absolutely nothing to eat for the 49 weeks of the year that the almond trees aren’t in bloom? So every February the almond growers must import an army of migrant honeybees to the Central Valley — more than a million hives housing as many as 40 billion bees in all.

They come on the backs of tractor-trailers from as far away as New England. These days, more than half of all the beehives in America are on the move to California every February, for what has been called the world’s greatest “pollination event.” (Be there!) Bees that have been dormant in the depths of a Minnesota winter are woken up to go to work in the California spring; to get them in shape to travel cross-country and wade into the vast orgy of almond bloom, their keepers ply them with “pollen patties” — which often include ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and flower pollen imported from China. Because the pollination is so critical and the bee population so depleted, almond growers will pay up to $150 to rent a box of bees for three weeks, creating a multimillion-dollar industry of migrant beekeeping that barely existed a few decades ago. Thirty-five years ago you could rent a box of bees for $10. (Pimping bees is the whole of the almond business for these beekeepers since almond honey is so bitter as to be worthless.)

In 2005 the demand for honeybees in California had so far outstripped supply that the U.S.D.A. approved the importation of bees from Australia. These bees get off a 747 at SFO and travel by truck to the Central Valley, where they get to work pollinating almond flowers — and mingling with bees arriving from every corner of America. As one beekeeper put it to Singeli Agnew in The San Francisco Chronicle, California’s almond orchards have become “one big brothel” — a place where each February bees swap microbes and parasites from all over the country and the world before returning home bearing whatever pathogens they may have picked up. Add to this their routine exposure to agricultural pesticides and you have a bee population ripe for an epidemic national in scope. In October, the journal Science published a study that implicated a virus (Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus) in Colony Collapse Disorder — a virus that was found in some of the bees from Australia. (The following month, the U.S.D.A. questioned the study, pointing out that the virus was present in North America as early as 2002.)
“We’re placing so many demands on bees we’re forgetting that they’re a living organism and that they have a seasonal life cycle,” Marla Spivak, a honeybee entomologist at the University of Minnesota, told The Chronicle. “We’re wanting them to function as a machine. . . . We’re expecting them to get off the truck and be fine.”
We’re asking a lot of our bees. We’re asking a lot of our pigs too. That seems to be a hallmark of industrial agriculture: to maximize production and keep food as cheap as possible, it pushes natural systems and organisms to their limit, asking them to function as efficiently as machines. When the inevitable problems crop up — when bees or pigs remind us they are not machines — the system can be ingenious in finding “solutions,” whether in the form of antibiotics to keep pigs healthy or foreign bees to help pollinate the almonds. But this year’s solutions have a way of becoming next year’s problems. That is to say, they aren’t “sustainable.”
From this perspective, the story of Colony Collapse Disorder and the story of drug-resistant staph are the same story. Both are parables about the precariousness of monocultures. Whenever we try to rearrange natural systems along the lines of a machine or a factory, whether by raising too many pigs in one place or too many almond trees, whatever we may gain in industrial efficiency, we sacrifice in biological resilience. The question is not whether systems this brittle will break down, but when and how, and whether when they do, we’ll be prepared to treat the whole idea of sustainability as something more than a nice word.

I say this to explain how odd it may seem that I should be writing about the consumption of offal.  Our farm primarily sells beef muscle cuts.  Yet, offal is a misunderstood and improperly maligned part of a beef carcass.  So, while many of our customers are rediscovering beef many more should be encouraged to discover offal.

Offal (pronounced aw-ful) is a nearly complete class of food in itself, encompassing all manner of things such as heart, liver, kidneys, glands, stomach, testicles, lungs, and entrails of an animal and even includes tail, feet, head, ears, etc.  The work offal comes from the Old English “off” and “fall”, referring to the pieces that fall from an animal carcass during butchering.  The dictionary defines offal as waste parts, especially of a butchered animal or refuse; rubbish.  How unfair since many of these organs have much to offer nutritionally as well as gustatorially.
In most of the world organ meat is readily used as part of the culture’s traditional cuisine and reflects a resourcefulness and economy aimed to use all of animal protein as gainfully as possible. They like our prehistoric ancestors instinctively prize the richly nourishing organ meats of the animals they consume.   They have an appreciation for low-in-fat, vitamin-and-mineral-rich hearts, tongues, kidneys, sweetbreads, etc.  If you are going to harvest it, then use it all.  However, offal has never been a favorite with American fare which at best views it somewhat squeamishly.  We would rather put it into rendering plants than open our minds and entertain its use as a rich and delicate part or our diet.  Organ meats compared to muscle meats are much higher in iron, zinc, vitamin B12, folate and vitamin A (liver).

It is my opinion that if you do choose to try offal in some way that you choose from an animal that has been raised in a pristine environment and will offer the greatest amount of nutritional value and safety (especially the liver) by selecting from grassfed animals who have never had antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, etc.

It is not my intent to instruct you in the cooking techniques and recipes for preparation of offal, perhaps we will do that later.

However, viscera (offal, organ meat) is gaining a foothold in restaurants and kitchens in the last few years broadening the tastes of American diners.  In fact, many of the best chefs list offal as one of their favorite meals to cook and eat.

One of the premier restaurants in St. Louis did this recently with our beef hearts.

http://www.stlbites.com/2008/02/02/in-regards-to-the-forum-you-were-right

I am not a chef but I can tell you how to prepare kidney, heart, tongue, sweetbreads and mountain oysters (testicles).  We do not even have these organs on our website and they require special orders.  Feel free to call us if you have a request.

What You Need to Know About The Beef You Eat

By Jo Robinson
Reprinted from Mother Earth News
February/March 2008

You can’t see it. And you can’t always recognize it by reading the label. But the beef in your supermarket has gone industrial.

Before factory farming took hold in the 1960s, cattle were raised on family farms or ranches around the country. The process was elemental. Young calves were born in the spring and spent their first months suckling milk and grazing on grass. When they were weaned, they were turned out onto pastures. Some cattle were given a moderate amount of grain to enhance marbling (the fat interlaced in the muscle). The calves grew to maturity at a natural pace, reaching market weight at two to three years of age. After the animals were slaughtered, the carcasses were kept cool for a couple weeks to enhance flavor and tenderness, a traditional process called dry aging. The meat was then shipped in large cuts to meat markets. The local butcher divided it into individual cuts upon request and wrapped it in white paper and string.

This meat was free of antibiotics, added hormones, feed additives, flavor enhancers, age-delaying gases and salt-water solutions. Mad cow disease and the deadliest strain of E. coli — 0157:H7 — did not exist. People dined on rare steaks and steak tartare (raw ground beef) with little fear.

What’s in Your Beef?

Today’s industrialized process brings cattle to slaughter weight in just one or two years. But it reduces the nutritional value of the meat, stresses the animals, increases the risk of bacterial contamination, pollutes the environment and exposes consumers to a long list of unwanted chemicals.

The beef contains traces of hormones, antibiotics and other chemicals that were never produced by any cow. That hamburger looks fresh, but it may be two weeks old and injected with gases to keep it cherry red. Take a closer look at that “guaranteed tender and juicy” filet of beef. The juiciness may have been “enhanced” with a concoction of water, salt, preservatives and other additives.

More ominous, the beef also may be infected with food-borne bacteria, including E. coli 0157:H7. Some experts believe this toxic E. coli evolved in cattle that were fed high-grain diets. Every year, hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef products are recalled. One of the largest recalls to date took place in October 2007 when Topps Meat company recalled 21.7 million pounds of hamburger because of potential E. coli contamination. The massive recall actually put the company out of business. 

And now there’s mad cow disease, a mysterious disease that is not destroyed by cooking and has been fatal. You could ingest “prions” (abnormal proteins) by eating even a well-done rib roast. These prions infiltrate your brain, perforate it with holes, and cause death in a few years’ time.

The artificial manipulation of beef begins prior to conception. Many cows are treated with synthetic hormones, such as “melengestrol acetate,” that regulate the timing of conception, allowing all the calves to be born within days of each other — a “more efficient” process. In many ranches, herd bulls have been replaced by artificial insemination, which is a fast (read: more efficient) way to improve herd genetics. The goal is consistent size, tenderness and marbling. But industry insiders predict that many ranchers will be using cloned cattle in five or 10 years. The mass-produced calves will be carbon copies of each other. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted preliminary approval of cloning in December 2006, declaring that the meat is indistinguishable from normal meat, and is as safe for human consumption. In similar circumstances, no labeling has been required.

After the calves are born, they spend the first seven to nine months grazing on grass, the same way calves have been raised for generations. But when they reach 500 to 700 pounds, they are herded into trucks and shipped to auction barns where they’re sold to new owners and trucked to distant feedlots. The journey can take up to a week. Upon arrival at the feedlot, the stressed, thirsty and hungry calves are herded down chutes and subjected to a number of procedures, which can include dehorning, castration, branding and tagging. Then they are dewormed and vaccinated against various diseases. A common practice is to mix antibiotics with the feed, whether the now-stressed animals show signs of illness or not. Tetracycline, an antibiotic important for humans, is one of the most commonly used medications.

Lastly, the calves are implanted with pellets that contain growth-promoting steroid hormones that lose their effectiveness in a matter of months. Many animals are given new implants of higher potency to replace them. The aggressive use of hormone implants can add 110 pounds of lean meat or more to a calf. Every dollar invested in implants returns five to 10 dollars in added gain for each animal in the six to 12 months they spend in the feedlot.

Are Hormone Implants Safe?

Given the fact that nine out of 10 U.S. calves are treated with hormonal growth promoters, you can assume that most of the beef in your supermarket contains hormone residues. The FDA has approved five hormone implant growth promoters for cattle. Three of them — estradiol, progesterone and testosterone — are naturally occurring hormones that are identical to those found in humans. Zeranol and trenbolone acetate are synthetic hormones that mimic natural ones. In addition, melengestrol acetate is approved as a feed additive. Some implants contain a mix of these various substances.

Many consumers and advocacy groups are calling for a ban on these growth-promoting implants. They point to research showing that even trace amounts can promote tumor growth. At the Ohio State University, cancer researchers mixed human breast cancer cells with trace amounts of Zeranol, one of the five hormones used in U.S. cattle. Zeranol caused a significant spurt in tumor growth, even at levels 30 times lower than levels the FDA maintains are safe.

The European Commission Health and Consumer Protection Directorate-General has identified more than a dozen additional studies that raise concern about the safety of the implants, including the possibility they might cause birth defects and changes in sexual development in children. Weighing all the evidence, the European Union (EU) has banned the use of implants. They also refuse to import U.S. beef from animals treated with hormones. Although EU scientists concede there is no clear proof that the implants are harmful to humans, they assert there also is no proof that they are safe. What’s more, they say, Europeans have expressed a clear preference for hormone-free beef, even if no health risks are found. The World Trade Organization, at the urging of the U.S. government, now levies trade sanctions against the EU for closing their doors to U.S. beef.

Meanwhile, the FDA stands by its claim that beef from implanted cattle contains such small amounts of these drugs that they pose no threat to human health. In fact, the FDA is so confident in its ruling that it does not require hormone use to be listed on labels.

Grain and Antibiotics Go Hand in Hand

Hormones are just one way to speed the growth of young calves. Another strategy is to feed them an ultra high-grain diet, the standard fare in most feedlots. One reason calves are switched from grass to grain is that grain is a more concentrated form of energy. Calves fattened on grain reach maturity months ahead of grass-fattened calves. The less time cattle spend in feedlots, the greater the profit they return. Corn is the grain of choice because it’s especially high in energy.

Grain-feeding has another advantage: It keeps the assembly line moving steadily throughout the year. Grass becomes sparse during periods of drought and cold weather, which slows the growth of the calves. Grain is available year-round, allowing calves to gain as much weight in January as they do in June. It also keeps the meat cases stocked all year, a luxury we now take for granted.

But unnatural high-grain diets have a major drawback: They make cattle sick. To prevent or reduce the symptoms caused by grain-feeding, they are given a steady dose of antibiotics in their feed — adding yet another drug to the mix.

Why does grain-feeding cause health problems? Cattle, sheep and other grazing animals have a specialized stomach chamber called a “rumen.” The rumen is designed to convert fibrous plants such as grasses into a nutritious, easily digested meal. Replace the grass with grain and the rumen becomes too acidic. After several months, the condition can progress to “acute acidosis.” Cattle with acute acidosis develop growths and abscesses on their livers, stop eating, sicken and even die.

Retired animal science professor Jim Hayes, who holds a doctorate in reproductive physiology and animal science, and manages grass-based Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Warnerville, N.Y., puts it bluntly: “A high grain diet blows out their livers.” To keep the calves alive and gaining weight, they must be given a steady diet of antibiotics.
Even with these countermeasures, many calves develop “subacute acidosis,” a more aggressive form of acid indigestion. A calf with subacute acidosis will hang its head, drool, kick at its belly and eat dirt. Alarmingly, this is regarded as “natural” in the feedlot. According to an article in the trade magazine, Feedlot: “Every animal in the feedlot will experience subacute acidosis at least once during the feeding period. … This is an important natural function in adapting to high-grain finishing rations.” When calves are finished on high-grain diets, a certain amount of suffering is simply taken for granted.

Antibiotics as Growth Promoters

The calves are given antibiotics for yet another reason, one that has nothing to do with preventing or treating disease. Quite by accident, ranchers discovered that small doses of antibiotics called “subtherapeutic doses” allow animals to make more efficient use of their feed. (Antibiotics can boost metabolic rate, nutrient absorption and protein synthesis.) According to a 2001 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an estimated 70 percent of all the antibiotics used in the United States are now being given to healthy animals to improve their growth and performance.

Many scientific and medical groups — including the American Medical Association — are calling for a reduction in the use of antibiotics in animals. The practice is creating and spreading antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. When people or animals are treated with antibiotics, a small percentage of the bacteria survive because of genetic differences. Once all the normal bacteria are destroyed, the resistant bacteria are free to grow without competition. If you were to become infected with these bacteria, the drug used to treat the cattle would be ineffective. Alarmingly, half of the drugs being used to treat animals are identical or nearly identical to those used to treat humans.
A number of European countries have greatly reduced animal use of antibiotics. In Denmark, farmers voluntarily suspended use of antibiotic growth promoters by more than 60 percent without any significant economic impact.

Virtually all the beef in your supermarket comes from animals that were treated with growth-promoting antibiotics. You can’t tell by reading the label, however, because the FDA doesn’t require antibiotic use to be listed. It’s agribusiness as usual.

Chewing Gum, Spent Hens and Garbage

There seems to be no end to cost-cutting measures in the modern feedlot. To further lower the cost of feed, which accounts for 60 percent or more of the total cost of raising cattle, many cattle are fed “byproduct feedstuffs.” This can range from nutritious ingredients such as beet pulp and carrot tops, to junk: stale bread or candy and heat-treated garbage. As one feedlot operator told me, “Byproduct feedstuff is anything that is cheap, keeps the cattle growing and can be found close to the feedlot.”

In New York state, chewing gum has been used as a cheap feed supplement. The novel practice was recommended in a 1996 study in the Journal of Animal Science. The study concluded that stale chewing gum — still in its aluminum wrappers! — can “safely replace at least 30 percent of [cattle] growing or finishing diets without impairing feedlot performance or carcass quality.” In other parts of the country, cattle are being finished on stale pizza dough and candy bars, even heat-treated garbage. Feedlot operators drive to the manufacturing plants or municipal landfills and load up their trucks with this yummy fare, or they buy the used goods from middlemen called “jobbers” who offer a more varied buffet.

According to a May 21, 2007, article in The Wall Street Journal, reliance on junk food has shot up in recent years because the cost of feed corn has doubled due to the increased use of corn for ethanol production. According to the article, one farmer now feeds his cattle a ration that is 17 percent stale candy and 3 percent stale “party mix.” Another feeds a 100 percent byproduct diet, including French fries, tater tots and potato peels.

Some byproduct feedstuffs are high in protein and are considered a welcome addition to a high-grain diet. This list includes chicken feathers, salvaged pet food, ground-up laying hens (known as “spent hen meal”) and urea, a non-protein source of nitrogen synthesized from ammonia and carbon dioxide that is widely used as fertilizer. Urea can sicken cattle if not mixed carefully with feed.

The USDA does not require producers to tell you what the animals were fed.
An Industry Gone Mad

Beyond the obvious “yuck” factor, there is a compelling reason to restrict the use of byproduct feedstuffs in cattle production: It can spread mad cow disease, the most frightening disease in the history of the cattle industry. Until 1997, many of the cattle in the United States and Europe were fed blood, meat and bone meal from other cattle. Scraps of meat and bone left over from the slaughtering process were rendered (heat-treated), ground into meal and then fed back to the cattle. In essence, cattle were being fed to cattle, turning herbivores into carnivores — and cannibals.

No one realized that abnormal proteins called prions could survive the rendering process and transmit a deadly brain-wasting disease called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease. Now research strongly suggests that people who ingest meat from BSE-infected cattle can be inflicted with a related and deadly brain disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). As of July 2007, there have been three cases in the United States in people who are believed to have contracted the disease in other countries, and 201 cases worldwide, most of them (166) in the United Kingdom. Only 13 of the people who have contracted the disease since 1990 are still alive.

An Attempt to Clean Up the Feed Supply

Mad cow disease helped pull in the reins on an industry that was getting out of control. In 1997, the FDA ruled that the rendered products of cattle, sheep, deer and goats could no longer be fed to other ruminants. They also took steps to remove from the food supply the types of meat tissue most likely to carry BSE, including the small intestine, spinal cord, brain and other nervous tissue.

In 2004, the agency also banned the practice of feeding mammalian blood products to cattle, because new research showed that blood also can transmit BSE. Blood was a common ingredient in the milk “replacer” fed to dairy calves. Feeding poultry litter was banned as well. Poultry litter is a polite term for the blanket of manure, shavings, spilled feed, dead birds and feathers that accumulates on the floor of large poultry operations. It can be a hidden source of BSE-infected beef, because the FDA still allows meat and bone meal from cattle to be fed to chickens.

The meat industry now uses a mechanical process called Advanced Meat Recovery (AMR) to strip every scrap of meat from the bones. AMR increases the risk that spinal cord and other nervous tissue that can harbor BSE will enter the food supply. The Food Safety and Inspection Service has tightened the regulations about which parts of the animal can be stripped, but the process is not risk free.

Mad Cows and You

Most of the beef we now consume comes from cattle that were born after the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) removed the most hazardous ingredients from cattle feed and banned sensitive beef tissue from the human food chain. Therefore, your risk of vCJD is lower than it was a couple years ago and much lower than it was 10 years ago.

For many people, however, these safeguards are not enough. Some maintain that the USDA is testing too few cattle to get an accurate measure. In other words, if they tested more animals, they’d find more disease. Another cause for concern is that BSE has been found in ordinary meat from sheep, not just the brain, intestines and spinal cord. Some fear that prions might be found in the steaks and roasts of cattle, as well.

Centralized beef processing magnifies whatever danger exists. If tissue from just one BSE-infected cow is ground into hamburger and mixed with meat from other cattle, tons of meat would be contaminated. This is what has happened many times already with E. coli 0157:H7 contamination. Unlike other food-borne diseases, cooking does not destroy the prions that cause mad cow disease.

Japanese health authorities are equally skeptical about the safety of U.S. beef. To protect the health of Japanese citizens, they test every animal for BSE, including the beef imported from the United States. Many people urge the United States to adopt the same rigorous standards.

So far, the USDA has refused to extend its testing program, claiming there is no scientific justification for such an extraordinary measure. It also asserts that wide-scale testing might give the false impression that the U.S. beef supply is unsafe. To maintain the aura of safety, the USDA prevented individual companies from testing their own cattle. (Read more about this in Mad Cow Disease: Should the USDA do More? December 2007/January 2008.) When Creekstone Farms, a Kansas cattle company, successfully sued the USDA in federal court to be allowed to begin testing for BSE in June 2007, the government agency filed an appeal, blocking the testing. In an unprecedented move, the USDA has even banned the marketing of BSE test kits, saying that the test procedures have not received their official approval. Since 2003, dozens of countries have issued total or partial bans of U.S. beef because of their concerns about mad cow disease. Some have since been lifted.

Less Nutritious Too

Mad cow disease, hormone implants and the excessive use of antibiotics may dominate the headlines, but there’s another problem caused by taking cattle off grass and fattening them on grain and byproducts: The meat loses nutritional value. Grass is a richer source of healthy fats and antioxidants than grain, and as a direct result, meat from grazing animals has more of these nutrients than meat from grain-fed cattle. In a study published in the journal Meat Science in 2005, a team of Argentinean researchers determined that grass-fed meat is higher in vitamin C, vitamin E and beta carotene.

Omega-3 fatty acids are another vital nutrient that’s diminished by a feedlot diet. Calves start losing their stores of omega-3s as soon as they start eating grain. By the time they’re ready for market, very little of this heart-healthy fat remains. Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is a fat that appears to be a potent cancer fighter. CLA is higher in grazing animals than in feedlot animals. The longer the animals graze, according to a study published by the Journal of Animal Science, the higher the CLA content of their meat.

While we know some of the nutritional effects of feeding grain to cattle, no one has studied how byproduct feedstuffs affect the meat. But it is reasonable to assume that a steak from a cow that got 30 percent of its calories from chewing gum will be lower in a number of vitamins and healthy fat. Garbage in; garbage out.

Make My Beef Truly Fresh and Truly Natural

The beef industry and government regulators go to great lengths to assure the public of the safety of the U.S. beef supply. We are told that the meat is inexpensive, safe and abundant. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the public policy center for the beef industry, denies that grain-fed meat is less nutritious than grass-fed meat, and dismisses organic grass-fed beef as a mere “niche market.”

Meanwhile, dozens of countries around the world and millions of American consumers are increasingly skeptical of the U.S. beef industry and of the ability of the government to regulate it in the best interests of the consumer. In record numbers, people are buying beef from small-scale producers who raise cattle on pasture and choose not to supplement with grain, byproduct feed, hormones or antibiotics. These savvy consumers are placing their vote of confidence in beef made the old-fashioned way — cows grazing green grass and growing at their natural pace. Learning more about beef and its alternatives is the key to being able to choose healthy, natural beef.
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So You Want Better Beef?

Finding an alternative to industrial beef takes effort. The cattle industry is highly consolidated, with the largest 25 feedlot companies now supplying 40 percent of all U.S. beef. The packing industry is even more concentrated. The top four beef packers (IBP/Tyson, Excel/Cargill, Swift/ConAgra and U.S. Premium/National Beef) harvest more than 80 percent of the meat. By contrast, in the 1960s the top four packers slaughtered less than 30 percent of all cattle. The trend is likely to continue, partly due to the fact that food giants, such as Wal-Mart and Safeway, cut costs by reducing their number of suppliers. Except for a small section of the meat case devoted to “natural meats,” all the remaining beef you see in the stores comes from animals that were fed high-grain diets and treated with hormones, antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals.

But you can find beef from cattle that were not fed filth, pumped up with hormones or treated with unnecessary antibiotics. And you can make sure it’s good and fresh. Better choices are beginning to pop up in natural and specialty grocery stores, on the Internet and in a growing number of traditional supermarkets. Here are a few pointers on how to find them:
• Opt for organic. The use of growth-promoting hormones and antibiotics is not allowed in certified organic beef production. Nor is feed made from animal byproducts, including meat, blood and bone meal from chickens, pigs and ruminants.
• Go for the grass. Choose beef from cattle that were 100 percent “grass-fed” or “grass-finished.” These animals are raised on their natural diet of grass from birth to market, and are not routinely given antibiotics and hormones. Look for a comprehensive grass-fed label from the American Grassfed Association in the coming months.
• Look at labels. Check for phrases like “Naturally Raised,” “No Hormones Added,” “Raised Without Antibiotics” and “Never Fed Animal Byproducts.” But don’t be afraid to do a little detective work; these kinds of labels rely primarily on the integrity of the producers, rather than independent certifying agencies.
• Comb your community. Don’t be afraid to ask your local producers how they raise their beef, and beware those who don’t want to answer you! You can find producers near you at farmers markets and on the Web. Try www.eatwild.com or www.localharvest.com.
• Poke the package. Look for thin, flexible plastic wrap that clings to the meat. Modified atmospheric packaging, or MAP, requires meat to be wrapped in thick, gas-impervious plastic with enough head room to trap the gases that keep the meat looking fresh for an unnaturally long time.
• Deduce the date. Meat must have a “Sell by” or “Use by” date that states how long the meat is likely to remain safe to eat. But producers are not required to tell consumers when the meat was packed. Processors who use MAP avoid listing the packing date, as it would spoil the illusion of freshness. Look for meat that tells you exactly when the meat was packaged for sale.
• Buy beef and nothing but. It’s easy to avoid injected beef. The large print usually boasts “Extra Tender and Moist” or “Marinated for Flavor.” But the fine print of the label reveals injections of up to 30 percent of a mysterious water-and-chemical concoction.
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Processed is the New “FRESH”

Ten years ago, virtually all the beef on the market met the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) definition of “natural,” which means it has been minimally processed and contains no added ingredients, colors or preservatives. Now, beef is “flavor and moisture enhanced,” meaning it has been injected with a water-and-chemical solution — a marinade concocted by a chemist, not a cook — to make it look fresher longer, mask off-flavors or make it more tender and juicy.

In addition, a growing percentage of beef is treated with Modified Atmosphere Packaging, or MAP. Raw meat is placed in airtight packages and injected with gases to delay or disguise the normal aging process. The meat industry hopes that MAP will save up to a billion dollars a year by keeping the meat in the display cases longer.

The irony is that pastured cattle have enough natural antioxidants in their diet to keep their meat truly fresh longer than feedlot beef. What the processing plants try to do with a mix of chemicals, Mother Nature does on her own. To read about injected and gas-packed meat in greater detail, see Shocking News About Meat (June/July 2007).

Sources
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Veterinary Medicine 
• Vet Q. 1999 Oct;21(4):154-8. Residues from anabolic preparations after good veterinary practice, Henricks D.M.; Gray S.L.; Owenby J.J.; Lackey B.R., Source: Apmis, Volume 109, Number 4, April 2001.
• USDA fact sheet on Mad Cow Disease
• University of Minnesota Extension 
• D.J. Patterson and M.F. Smith, University of Missouri-Columbia. November 8, 2006. An integrated approach to development and application of precise methods of estrous cycle control for beef heifers and cows.
• Journal of Animal Science. 2002. 80:1746–1751
• www.popsci.com/popsci/science/64b99082cc73d010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html
• www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/ansci/beef/as1178w.htm 
• www.ers.usda.gov/publications/sb974-3/sb974-3.pdf
• www.aginfolink.com/new_documents/FTR%20January%202007.pdf
• www.cattletoday.com/archive/2000/August/Cattle_Today104.shtml 
• Mycattle.com AS-1154, September 1998, Dr. Charlie Stoltenow, Extension Veterinarian, Dr. Greg Lardy, Extension Beef Specialist.
• http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/ansci/beef/as1178w.htm 
• The Food Revolution by John Robbins
• www.fas.usda.gov/itp/policy/hormone.html 
• www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Beef_from_Farm_to_Table/index.asp
• www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Water_in_Meats/index.asp
• Annual Report and Accounts 2001, Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, "Control of beef meat quality." Nigel Scollan.
• Wolf, B. W., L. L. Berger, et al. (1996). "Effects of feeding a return chewing gum/packaging material mixture on performance and carcass characteristics of feedlot cattle." Journal of Animal Science, 74(11): 2559-2565.
• USDA Fact Sheet, FSIS Further Strengthens Protection Against Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy  
• www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom/hot_issues/bse/content/printable_version/BSE_Chronology_Canada_Final.pdf 
• New York Times, January 1, 1989, “Beef Dispute: Stakes High in Trade War” by Milt Freudenheim.
• Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine, Vol. 10 (2005) no. 5, BSE Safety Standards: An Evaluation of Public Health Policies of Japan, Europe, and USA. Gino C. Matibag, Manabu Igarashi and Hiko Tamashiro.
• pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8222/print/8222madcow.html
• Janofksy, Michael. “25 Million Pounds of Beef is Recalled” New York Times, August 22, 1997.
• Mellon, Margaret, Charles Benbrook, Karen Lutz Benbrook, “Hogging It: Estimates of Antimicrobial Abuse in Livestock.” Union of Concerned Scientists, January 2001.
• Liu, S. and Y. C. Lin (2004). "Transformation of MCF-10A human breast epithelial cells by zeranol and estradiol-17beta." Breast J 10(6): 514-521.
• Opinion of the Scientific Committee on Veterinary Measures Relating to Public Health on Review of previous SCVPH opinions of 30 April 1999 and 3 May 2000 on the potential risks to human health from hormone resides in bovine meat and meat products, April 2002.
• Beef Cattle Handbook, BCH-3500, by Rick Stock and Robert Britton, University of Nebraska
• Data presented by Professor Henrik Wegener of the Danish Veterinary Institute to the Western Pacific Chemotherapy and Infectious Diseases Congress on December 3, 2002.
• Lauren Letter, “With Corn Prices Rising, Pigs Switch to Fatty Snacks.” The Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2007.
• “Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Current Data,” (July 2007). The National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, Scotland.
• Lancet Neurol. 2004 Jul;3(7):389. “Prion protein in muscle tissue of sheep.”
• Descalzo, A.M., et al. Meat Science 70 (2005) 35-44. “Influence of pasture or grain-based diets on antioxidant/oxidative balance of Argentine beef.”
• Duckett, S. K., D. G. Wagner, et al. (1993). "Effects of time on feed on beef nutrient composition." Journal of Animal Science 71(8): 2079-2088.
• Noci, F., F. J. Monahan, et al. (2005). "The fatty acid composition of muscle fat and subcutaneous adipose tissue of pasture-fed beef heifers: influence of the duration of grazing." Journal of Animal Science 83(5): 1167-1178.
• Rick Sallinger, “Beef Packaging Technique May Mislead Consumers.” Oct 12, 2006 8:00 pm US/Mountain.
• Illinois Farm Bureau data, 2005.
• Khan.Mafruza, WHAT'S THE BEEF? CONSOLIDATION AND MARKET MANIPULATION IN THE BEEF PACKING INDUSTRY, Corporate Research Project, March 2004.
• Trade partners notified U.S. beef safe to eat: Chicago Sun-Times,  Mar 29, 2004 by IRA DREYFUSS.
• Time Magazine, “The Grass-Fed Revolution” Sunday, June 11, 2006 By Margot Roosevelt.
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November 28, 2007 the USDA-AMS proposed label for naturally-raised was published for comment and the public has until January 28 to weigh in with their opinions.  The claim reads as follows:

“Naturally Raised – Livestock used for the production of meat and meat products have been raised entirely without growth promotants, antibiotics, and have never been fed mammalian or avian by-products.  This information shall be contained on any label claim that an animal has beef naturally raised.” 

This Federal Register notice can be found at http://www.ams.usda.gov/lsg/stand/naturalclaim.htm.

This proposed label claim makes no reference to animal welfare or housing conditions and is entirely based on the feeding practices.  I have deep concerns, as do many sustainable producers with this proposed label claim and the flaws contained within.  The flaws that I see with the proposed naturally raised label are as follows:
• There is a lack of any reference to animal welfare or to how an animal is raised.
• The proposal gives minimum standards with a bar set so low that it will make the claim meaningless; it would more properly be called “Naturally-Fed” since it does not address how the animal is raised. 
• It will allow for large factory-farm producers to comply with minimal standards and not address animal welfare or confinement feeding operations.
• It will lead to further consumer confusion over natural products and their labeling. 

Quality production practices established by sustainable livestock producers are appreciated and have value with many consumers in the market today.  This label threatens to erode this reputation.  I feel like it is another example of how industrial agriculture is trying to hijack a name.  We have seen it in organic, in grassfed and now in naturally-raised.  A marketing claim that uses “Naturally Raised” should include standards for animals care, stewardship of land and resources, health and feeding, and include standards for allowing the animal to fulfill its natural behaviors such as grazing.  That natural behavior doesn’t happen in a feedlot where the producer is only making a concession to not feed growth promotants, antibiotics and animal by-products.

A Zogby survey conducted in 2007 showed that 48% of respondents believe that meat, dairy and eggs labeled as “natural” come from animals that are raised with free access to the outdoors where they can move around and live in a manner in which nature intended them to live.  This label addresses nothing concerning how the animal is raised.  Hence, large industrial producers could have a CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) omit the antibiotics and hormones and label the product “Naturally Raised”. 

In 2006 when the USDA grassfed claim was published for comment nearly 20,000 consumers and producers answered the USDA and expressed the idea that they believed the term belonged to animals raised on pasture not in a feedlot.  I believe that the same would apply here and that consumers have the image that “Naturally Raised” involves the idea that these animals (ruminants anyway) are raised with free access to pasture.  This label will not provide the consumer with enough information to make an informed choice concerning their food purchases.  As such it is a disservice to those consumers who would vote for what exists in the world by how they spend their money.

What would cause the AMS to allow for a label that causes more confusion instead of making clear standards that would leave the producer and the consumer in complete understanding?  Is there something more sinister behind this claim?  One wonders if large industrial producers who see the label as having value in the marketplace and hence adding profit to the bottom line have lobbied and pushed for this vague standard.  It will allow these producers to jump on the natural bandwagon.

If you share a concern about this label then please comment to the USDA concerning how you feel.