Better Beef

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Robinson also notes there are very few nutritional differences between “certified organic” and feedlot beef, something many people don’t understand. “Currently to certify beef as organic, you simply have to give the cattle organic feed and refrain from using antibiotics and growth hormone implants. A lot of organic beef comes from animals that are fed organic grain in a feedlot. Although the meat will be ‘cleaner,’ it won’t be any more nutritious than feedlot beef. The cleanest, most nutritious beef comes from cattle that are both certified organic and grass-finished. Then you have the best of both worlds,” she says.

For true beef lovers, a grass-finished product is the gold standard. As soon as an animal is moved from pasture to grain, the health benefits associated with being grass-fed start to decline, Robinson says, and within three months “you can almost completely undo what you’ve done with the grass.”

Mad Cow Cases Not Found in Grass-finished Cattle

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, or more commonly, mad cow disease), has not been found in grass-finished animals. Mad cow is believed to be caused by feeding cattle pieces of brain and nerve tissue from other infected animals. (This practice was abolished in the United States in 1997.) When humans consume meat from animals with mad cow disease, they risk contracting its human form — Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Mad cow disease has not been found among grass-finished animals because they eat forage materials exclusively.

Robinson says the U.S. mad cow case confirmed in June has prompted so much media attention that in just one month, more than 50,000 new visitors checked out her Web site, www.eatwild.com, which documents grass-fed health research and lists current producers. “I see the number of visitors rise with each mad cow scare — basically, it just goes up, hits a plateau, goes up, hits a plateau, goes up, hits a plateau ...”

There is another safety reason for eating meat from grass-finished cattle: It is less likely to be contaminated with acid-resistant forms of E. coli, a serious foodborne bacteria. E. coli from feedlot beef can be deadly. In the worst outbreak, an estimated 600 people became ill and three people died. U.S. researchers have found that high-grain diets make E. coli more virulent. When cattle are fattened on grain, their digestive tracts become unusually acidic and kill off most of the E. coli. The bacteria that survive are those that have adapted themselves to an acidic environment. This is a major problem for human health, because our first line of defense is the acidity of our own digestive juices. Acid-resistant feedlot bacteria can survive our gastric juices in sufficient number to make us ill. By contrast, the E. coli from grass-finished cattle remains sensitive to acid and is quickly destroyed in our stomachs. “Switching cattle from grass to grain to speed their growth has created a lot of unforeseen problems,” Robinson says.

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