Grass Fed:
What’s in a Name

Best greetings of this day,

The few days of rain last week have ended and we're back to clear weather – more moderate temperatures, though, appropriate for the season. The rain this year has depended upon which ridge one is behind. Generally, the immediate area has had more than other parts of the state. Local farmers are making some pretty nice third cut hay and the beans are getting ready to come off. The bucks are out of velvet and the turkeys are starting to gobble and strut.

For those of you keeping score, the UK is experiencing round two of the foot and mouth disease outbreak, with over 1800 head slaughtered in this round. To add insult to injury, they are also experiencing the first cases of bluetongue in their country. Huge implications for stock as well as trade.

I've been talking grass fed beef to a lot of folks lately – farmers, potential farmers, folks exploring making some changes in their farms, and, of course, the eaters. One of the things that I discovered pretty early on it that the words "grass fed" mean a lot of different things to people – so much so that I've begun to string together the loooong title of grass fed/grass finished when I'm talking to folks. Heck, it doesn't take that much longer to say. And it makes a point that not all beef on grass is created or handled in the same manner.

As farmers and beef producers, we are in the interesting position of trying to differentiate our beef from all the rest of the beef sold, be it in stores or off the farm. How can we do that in a way that doesn't confuse the heck out of the eater (hmmm,… isn't that the same as the consumer ??!), or, as Anne Lappe likes to call them, the co-producers. And how can we do that in a way that truthfully represents our beef?

I can tell you; not all of the feedback I get about grass fed beef is good. Several local farmers and most of the local butchers don't have anything good to say about it. My championing the cause is construed by them as yet another goofy thing that I'm up to, along with having pigs on pasture and fences that move,…..

Having said that, I can tell you that the feedback I get from grass fed Devon/Devon cross beef is exceptional – from both eaters and farmers. A friend of mine, who has experienced Devon cross meat for well over a year, sent a buddy of his, another local farmer known in the area for his really good beef, some Hardwick Beef beef. Less than a week after he dropped the meat off my friend got a phone call: How do I grow beef that tastes like that! It's the best meat I've ever tasted!

We're working on that as we speak – and it's exciting to see the transitions.

The different ideas about grass fed/grass finished beef extends beyond the taste, texture and eating experiences. Certainly I've found that many farmers who claim to raise grass fed beef actually supplement with grain, either all the time or "just" to get the last finish on them. I was truly shocked, naïve as I may be, when I became aware that several of the national and institutional protocols for grass fed beef allow a significant portion of grain in the animals' ration. And these from organizations who market their meat as grass-fed. Surely the well-educated "big boys" should know better??

How can the end user, the consumer and eater, make decisions about their beef if grass fed has so many different meanings and applications, many of which are ordained by the company marketing the product? It can get even more complicated on the local level, where folks are purchasing directly from the farmer and may equate "being outside on a farm" to being grass fed. The lines get very fuzzy, it seems to me. And the fuzz appears to increase in proportion to the advertising budget of the producer.

Grass fed may mean eats grass but 10% of the ration can be grain; eats grass but gets grain in the last month or so to put some "finish" on the beast; eats grass but gets chop daily; eats whatever they can eke out in an overgrazed pasture; or gets well managed intensively grazed mixed growth pasture or???

Don't even get started on the idea of grass finished – that can really add another consideration to the equation. We might have an "eats grass until the grass is gone, then gets slaughtered"; eats grass until s/he makes n pounds, or n months, then gets slaughtered, or we might actually have animals that have been finished, as judged by body condition and fat distribution, on grass. And we all know that these are all very different animals – and that they provide different experiences to the eater.

It's a little unfortunate, too, that some of the cattle who have been used to compare grass based and grain based production systems were not finished, but were slaughtered at the same time as the grain finished animals. That's why studies such as those being done by Hardwick Beef are important – they are using animals who have finished on grass.

It's been made very clear that the attributes of beef that has been fed grain, even a small amount of grain, particularly at the slaughter end of the equation, is not only esthetically different, but also different nutritionally than beef that is grown and finished without the "benefit" of having been fed grain.

Susan Duckett 's work has clearly shown that the Omega 6: 3 ratio is a solid means of distinguishing grass fed/grass finished beef from other types of beef. The grass fed/grass finished beef will have Omega 6:3 ratios of 2:1 or less while beef finished with a few weeks of grain will have Omega 6:3 ratios of somewhere around 10:1. Feedlot beef has Omega 6:3 ratios of over 20:1. This is a huge difference.

Are the variations in the "grass fed" beef industry going to compel the eaters to demand Omega 6:3 ratios on their beef so they can be assured that they are eating the real thing??

In addition to getting clear about what the words grass fed really mean – and what they might be construed to mean, it also seems to me that grass beef farmers need to pay attention to the nutritional claims they are making about their meat. It seems to me that it's prudent to consider these claims carefully and make sure they are accurate and cannot be used by detractors and nervous other than grass beef producers to help us shoot ourselves in the foot (feet!?). More about that in another note,……

Take care,

Susan Beal