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grass fed beef

Cows the climate solution?

By timmukyPosted on Posted in environment, farming, industrial agriculture, sustainableTagged , , , , , , , , 3 Comments on Cows the climate solution?

sacred cow

In “The Climate Solution: Got Cows?”, Adam Sacks says well managed cattle grazing could solve all our climate problems by the middle of the century.

With proper care of ruined grasslands, variously called managed grazing, holistic management, or carbon farming, we can restore billions of acres of the world’s soils.  Along the way we can pull all the excess carbon out of the atmosphere and put it back into the ground where it belongs – in forty years or less.  We can return to our long-gone preindustrial atmospheric concentrations of 280 ppm, the atmosphere that made the climate that made the planet very friendly to humans and many other creatures.  It’s a climate strategy where we have the world to benefit, at minimal cost and very low risk

Wow. That’s an optimistic and bold claim.

The particulars are as follows:

* We can begin doing it right away (in fact, we already are), with or without government and/or corporate support.
* It costs nothing or less in the scheme of things. For your local third-world family farmer, for your 100,000-acre rancher, and for everyone in between it will probably turn a profit.
* It requires no expensive and toxic fossil fuel inputs – fertilizers, pesticides – in fact, they will ruin it.
* It is so low-tech that it is mostly pre-tech (but a little bit of low tech can make it easier in some circumstances). As a result, the risks of unintended consequences are minimal.
* While there’s still a lot to learn, as always, we already know how to do this very well.
* Children will love it (they love animals and nature).
* It will feed millions or more people on sustainably harvested animal protein, animals that have been treated humanely throughout their lives, and it will maybe even put an end to the despicable practice of factory farming.
* It will heal billions of acres of land that industrial humans have ravaged and destroyed, restoring vital soil flora and fauna, and re-establish plant and animal diversity as well crucial hydrological cycles including groundwater replenishment, flood control, and patterns of rainfall.
* We don’t have to waste resources on nonsensical and dangerous geo-engineering schemes, nor do we have to keep hoping for miracles.

Not surprisingly, there are objections to this scenario. George Werthner’s recent Counterpunch article, Why grass-fed beef won’t save the planet attempts to throw a wet blanket over Sacks’ claims, stating that “cattle production of any kind is not environmentally friendly.” That is probably true of the cattle business as currently constituted. But I think Werthner and Sacks might be talking about two different things. One, cattle production as it is, the other cattle production as it might be. Or maybe I’m just being optimistic, given that I am at present one of these holistic managers of my pastures.

There are a lot of competing claims floating around right now. The anti-grassfed argument has many components, but the one that has attracted the most attention is a recent study showing that grass-fed cows actually produce more methane than feedlot cows. It is indeed a counterintuitive finding, but I think it’s incredible that this one factoid gets ripped out of context and paraded around in major media outlets. See? Those crazy grass-fed hippies don’t know what they’re talking about. Leave raising cows to the professionals!

Dare I suggest that PR firms retained by the powerful beef lobby have helped to nudge this story along?

To me, this is another faux-contrarian argument emerging from the FUD-osphere (FUD standing for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt), which has been described as a “network of Sith-lord scientists and unrepentant PR flacks who have no compunctions about tweaking their research methodologies … to generate results both favorable to industry and confusing to those trying to understand the truth.”

Because really, it’s only one part of the big picture. And the big picture, no matter what your perspective, is that the feedlot model of raising cattle is an absolute abomination, and it has to change.

From the Discovery News article I quoted above:

“There’s a lot of range of what the [methane] emissions are from beef, and that is real variability,” agreed Rita Schenck, Executive Director of the Institute for Environmental Research & Education in Vashon, Wash., who has also studied this question.

“It is different in different places. It is different in different growing regimes. It’s just different. I think the numbers are really close,” she said, so the scales can tip one way or another depending on the specific circumstances.

“To some extent, all of this bickering about carbon footprint is missing the forest for the trees,” Weber [Christopher Weber of Carnegie Mellon University], is that accurately quantifying how much soil carbon contributes is difficult, and it can vary dramatically from place to place — even in locations just a few feet away said. “”In terms of air pollution, water pollution and odor, concentrated feedlots are a disaster. In terms of other environmental impact, there is no question that grass fed is better. My problem is that people really play on the carbon footprint angle, when it’s really not clear. “

Keeping America safe … from foodies

By timmukyPosted on Posted in corporatism, environment, farming, industrial agriculture, sustainableTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments on Keeping America safe … from foodies
Grass-finished beef. I KNOW where this has been. Photo by yours truly.

Updated below.

As I was sayin’, there’s something a little fishy about all these contrarian takes on conventional wisdom, by writers who style themselves as brave iconoclastic thinkers but really are just defenders of the status quo.

Here’s another one, on a subject dear to my heart, the merits of grass-fed (and -finished) over “conventionally raised” beef.  In the ominously titled Beware the myth of grass-fed beef at Slate, Dr. James McWilliams, associate professor of history at Texas State University, scores yet another high-profile national opinion place. Previously, he had posted pieces on the New York Times‘ “Freakanomics” blog with provocative titles like “Are Farmer’s Markets that Good for Us?” Last April he snared the prime real estate of the Times opinion page with Free-range trichonosis, in which he argued that free-range pork could be more dangerous that the pork that comes from factory farms.

About that particular 0p-ed. It was published April 9. On April 14, this disclaimer appeared at the bottom of the piece:

An Op-Ed article last Friday, about pork, neglected to disclose the source of the financing for a study finding that free-range pigs were more likely than confined pigs to test positive for exposure to certain pathogens. The study was financed by the National Pork Board.

(Oops. Maybe someone on the Times‘ opinion staff might have thought to ask about that before running it in the paper of record. Or maybe they did. Nobody reads the retractions….)

And McWilliams is also called out in this (generally favorable) Publishers Weekly review:

At times, McWilliams shortchanges his own arguments by failing to disclose the financial or institutional backing of his sources (including various talking heads, esoteric-sounding think tanks, and scientific journals), leaving readers to comb extensive footnotes and web links to determine how the evidence stacks up.

If  McWilliams’ goal has been to ruffle the feathers of alternative agriculture advocates everywhere, he has succeeded admirably.  Mr. Google turns up many angry responses to his sometimes shady polemics.

This one, by Tom Laskowy, pegs McWilliams as as a willing participant in the FUDosphere (FUD standing for Fear Uncertainty Doubt), a “network of Sith-lord scientists and unrepentant PR flacks who have no compunctions about tweaking their research methodologies … to generate results both favorable to industry and confusing to those trying to understand the truth.”

The FUD-osphere includes doctors who perform industry-funded research to demonstrate the safety of new drugs (Vioxx, anyone?). It includes crackpot scientists and historians, like James McWilliams, who has an op-ed in the NYT in defense of factory-farmed pork—shown to be fiction by Marion Nestle and and Civil Eats. McWilliams has a history with this kind of thing—he authored a deeply flawed article in Slate —debunked here—accusing organic agriculture of responsibility for the presence of heavy metals in soil. Meanwhile, he has written a forthcoming book about the evils and dangers of local food. Really.

In a review of his Just Food, also in Grist, Stephanie Ogburn identifies McWilliams’ modus operandi:

Again and again, one gets the uncomfortable feeling that McWilliams creates fanatical straw men in order to make his own presentation of facts seem like a rational alternative. “The problems that I have with organic agriculture have less to do with how it is currently practiced than with the inflated claim that it’s the only alternative to today’s wasteful conventional production,” he writes. But do any serious proponents seeking more sustainable alternatives to conventional agriculture claim this?

OK. To the subject at hand, the “myth” of grass-fed beef. McWilliams’ point is not wrong. It just does not merit being treated as a sensational revelation.
The news peg is pretty dramatic: one particular strain of E. coli bacteria, O157:H7, has been present in several massive recalls of beef, most recently Monday’s recall of 864,000 pounds of ground beef by California’s Huntington Meat Packing.
McWilliams accepts that the acidic stomach of grain-fed cattle is capable of spawning up to a million times more acid-resistant E. coli than grass-fed cattle, as studies at the beginning of the decade demonstrated.  However, he points out that more recent studies have shown “that grass-fed cows … become colonized with E. coli O157:H7 at rates nearly the same as grain-fed cattle.” This is not an unimportant fact (though  it ignores the important context of cleanliness at slaughter–see below).   But McWilliams takes it as earth-shattering, and  as an opportunity to deliver a knockout blow to his favorite straw man:
The point in dredging up these studies … [is]  a warning that advocacy for a trendy food choice might result in a public health hazard. Such a fear is confirmed by consulting the cooking directions provided by many purveyors of grass-fed beef. The home page for one major producer explains that “cooking ‘real food’ is not the same as cooking concocted food. … Grass-fed meats are best when raw (steak tartar), rare, or medium rare.” Given that the FDA recommends cooking ground beef to 160 degrees to guarantee safety from E. coli, this eat-it-undercooked advice could be dangerous.
Here comes the giant leap in logic: a loose claim by a purveyor of grass-fed beef  “offers a disturbing lesson in how culinary wisdom becomes foodie dogma and how foodie dogma can turn into a recipe for disaster.”Ah, the foodie, “the right-on, ‘yes we can,’ ACORN-loving, public-option-supporting man or woman of the people” of Caitlin Flanagan’s fevered dreams. Wealthy, trendy, elitist, and ultimately dangerous. Honestly, I am not always nuts about the pretentiousness of foodie culture. But there is nothing monolithic about it. Certainly, not everyone opting out of industrial agriculture can be tarred with the foodie brush either. Quite simply, there is no foodie orthodoxy, or dogma.
And that is the case with regard to the dangers, or potential dangers, of eating any kind of food. I know there are risks of salmonella even with my free-range poached eggs, but I still like them  a little runny. Just because I raise my own beef doesn’t mean there are no food safety issues to consider when serving it rare or bleu. I’ll take my chances. We all will.
At this point, those of us who are choosing alternatives are doing it not because we think we have hit on the final solution to the world’s food problems. Opting out is also in large part a protest, a refusal to buy into an industrial food system that is cruel, inefficient, unsustainable and in many ways toxic. So we still have to be careful regarding E. coli. Thank you. We knew that.
Facts are facts, and I’m sure Dr. McWilliams only toils in the service of the Truth, but one wonders how loud a splash an associate professor from Texas State would have made if his edgy, contrarian posturing wasn’t so reassuring to the corporations and trade associations that control industrial agriculture today.
Update: Another important point from eatwild.com:

Whether or not grass-feeding reduces the number and acidity of E. coli in the digestive tract of cattle, there is another undisputed reason that eating grass-fed beef may be safer. Cattle raised on pasture are cleaner at the time of slaughter.

E. coli contamination takes place in the slaughterhouse when manure from an animal comes in contact with meat. The less manure on an animal when it enters the slaughter house, the less likely the meat will become contaminated.

It is difficult to remove all the fecal contamination from feedlot cattle because they stand all day long in dirt and manure. In a recent article in the magazine Meat Marketing and Technology, the associate editor stated that pasture-raised animals were much easier to clean “because they come from small herds raised in relatively clean pastures.” Most U.S. cattle, he said, “are raised in far larger numbers in congested and typically less sanitary feed lots.” (“The Future of Food Safety,” by Joshua Lipsky. Meat Marketing and Technology, April 2001.)

Here’s the beef

By timmukyPosted on Posted in environment, farming, industrial agriculture, sustainableTagged , , No Comments on Here’s the beef

Very proud of myself.  This Thursday marked the culmination of a two-year dream to raise and process my own beef.  Dicky, an affable, professional butcher from Moore’s Meats, made a house call to our  farm, and killed, skinned and quartered a young steer, one of the fourteen thirteen cows in the herd I’ve been raising since last spring.

Naturally, for this city boy there was a degree of emotional discomfort to see a large, complex animal felled with a shot to the head, and transformed into meat before my eyes.  We are not so sentimental that we name our cattle, but the steer in question, #18, had a personality. He was fearless and curious and docile, if that makes any sense.

But  perhaps the best thing about the emotional aspect of this affair was that my stress level on the day was higher than the steer’s ever got. His heartbeat might have quickened a fraction when he smelled the strange man walking towards him, pointing a long stick … but that was it. #18 never had to experience the disorientation and panic of being loaded, transported, crowded and harassed in his last hours.

So that was a good thing. Also, the fact that he got to this nicely rotund body condition while eating an exclusive grass/hay diet.  He wasn’t stuffed with grain, and never saw an antibiotic. He had nothing to do with the massive, and massively ugly, industrial cattle production system. Since he came to our farm at about three months of age, he never left it. He spent no time standing up to his ass in mud and shit in a feedlot. No trucks, no gasoline, no corn or beans or fertilizer or herbicide were involved in his raising (OK. Maybe minimal amounts of gasoline).

Yay, me.

I ain’t gonna lie. This wasn’t easy. There was a good deal of labor involved, nearly all of it supplied by yours truly. When the grass is growing, I moved my herd to a new paddock every day by moving electric wire with portable step-in posts. And when the grass is not growing, the procurement and placement of hay, combined with doing constant battle with Kentucky mud (mixed with cow piles), is an unrelenting (and pretty unpleasant) challenge. As is doing all of this without the purchase of tractors, trailers, handling equipment, ATVs and four-wheel-drive trucks. That’s the trade-off. More labor in exchange for keeping expenses, debt, and  inputs to an absolute minimum.

My one big insight into agricultural endeavors, especially those involving “alternative” techniques, is that it takes years to see the true benefit of your efforts. Or detrimental effects. Going by the inspiration of books by Wendell Berry, Gene Logsdon, Joel Salatin, and others, and regular reading of crackpot (in the best sense) publications like Stockman Grass Farmer and Eatwild.com, I’m trying to do my humble part in a reinvention (0r rediscovery) of American agriculture. I  like to think I’m stumbling forward. It would be nice if my farming skills were not so rudimentary, but they are, and they will have to do ….

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