| HOW GRASS BECOMES BEEF |
One evening in late July, I was jogging down a gravel road that parallels the old railway. The air was cooling rapidly as the sun slipped toward the lip of the mountain range. Everything looked trimmed in gold leaf—the grasses going to seed, the Ponderosa pines, and the white rail fence bordering a small pasture. Until I was upon him, I didn’t notice the horned Hereford bull standing abreast the barbed wire fence. He was so close to the road, his yard-long horns might have struck me if he had turned his head. They curved outward into fine tips, like skewers. I sidestepped to give him berth and my pulse rate quickened. What delicate genetic wiring kept this formidable half-ton creature from plowing right through the fence lines? But he only followed me with his pink-rimmed eyes, chewing steadily, as I jogged past.
Considering I don’t live on a ranch, I’ve had more contact with cattle than seems reasonable. Roughly twenty-five thousand cows, more than three times the number of people, populate the place I now call home. I’ve witnessed a calf being born on a February morning as I drove by, the steam rising from the warmth as the calf plopped onto the snow-splattered ground. Late winter is the traditional calving season, timed for the calves to be weaned by fall, and babies curled on the hay feed in the fields are an everyday sight. Grazing cattle are the icons of the rural landscape, so ordinary that we hardly notice them. Only when I nearly collided with that bull did I stop and consider the miracle that they perform for us every day of their lives.
For beef cattle, eating is their one and only job, and they are perfectly engineered to do what we cannot: digest fibrous plants. In apparent leisure, they forage diverse grasses, legumes, and other plants as if they’re composing the perfect mesclun salad mix. Using their binocular vision, cattle constantly scan the landscape on a mission for their next grazing spot. They sample with their tongues, then curl them around the tastiest and most nutritious bites to yank off the tender tips. Unlike sheep and goats, their ruminant cousins, cattle have no front teeth or prehensile lips, only a bony upper plate, lower teeth, and broad molars for chewing. While they stand contemplatively chewing their cud, an astounding biochemical process ensues within their gut. Their digestion extracts abundant nutrients locked up in plants that are essential to human life.
Even if, like Fletcherites, we chewed every bite one hundred times or puréed grass into smoothies, we could never digest that stringy cellulose into usable energy. The enzymes in our feeble single stomach are just not up to the task. It takes a rumen, the largest of these bovines’ four stomachs, and its colonies of bacteria to ferment the fibers and manufacture the pure protein that feeds them. A food chain unto themselves, these beasts have the capability to transmute chlorophyll produced by the sun’s energy into muscle loaded with flavorful compounds. With human intervention, those muscles become our meat.
Before it was associated with heart attacks—and ages before mad cow disease, E. coli, environmental degradation, and global warming—beef was a wholesome, nourishing, and desirable food source. Generous in fats, its protein was rich in heme iron, a type more readily absorbed into the bloodstream than plant-based iron. How sensible, then, that for tens of thousands of years, humankind diverted precious energy stores into getting more of it. An amenable herbivore, the giant auroch, evolved alongside humankind until both depended on one another. The cattle cohabitated with their breeders and offered a generous and reliable meat supply to grow each generation stronger, healthier, and longer living.
Suddenly, in the 1970s, beef fell out of favor in the United States. High in fat and cholesterol, it was the prime suspect for atrociously high rates of heart disease. When the twin risks of diabetes and cancer were linked to eating beef, a steak seemed as hazardous as smoking. For thirty long years, beef hasn’t been able to shake its disgraced reputation, and today, eating a juicy hamburger is still a guilty pleasure.
Along came grassfed beef with its apparently sterling health report: less overall fat, saturated fat, and calories, and more omega-3s, CLAs, and vitamins A and E. In a stunning reversal of everything we’d been told about beef, it seemed possible that this “new” beef might actually be good for you.
What gets lost in the newsflashes about grassfed beef is that all beef is a power-packed source of amino acids, vitamins (A, B6, B12, D, and E), and minerals (iron, zinc, selenium, phosphorus, niacin, and riboflavin), and it always has been. Any beef you buy today contains a third less fat than it did before the low-fat revolution. With the plunge in beef sales, the industry reacted quickly and decisively to change breeding and feeding practices to produce leaner beef. In total fat and saturated fat counts, a three-ounce portion of most retail beef cuts is on par with the same amount of chicken (on a range between a boneless breast and thigh).
On top of the meat industry’s fat overhaul, nutritionists have revised their initial understanding of the impact of fats and cholesterol in the diet. Good fats, those that stimulate the immune system and may even prevent heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, co-exist in beef with the bad artery-clogging fat. Half of the saturated fat in beef is monounsaturated, the type that can lower cholesterol and reduce blood pressure. One-third is stearic acid, shown to have no net effect on blood cholesterol levels. The most recent nutritional guidelines green light four to seven ounces of lean beef per day—a portion that concerns many health advocates as excessive in a country where annual beef consumption averages just under sixty pounds for every American.
Much of the health concern about beef stems from the feedlot practices developed to maintain cattle in confinement while maximizing their growth. To prevent bloat, acidosis, and liver infections, confined cattle receive daily doses of additives that improve digestion and are injected with slow-release pellets of synthetic estrogen that can add up to forty extra pounds. The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) and The National Cattlemen’s Association contend that the residues in the meat from these animals are not a risk to human health. Still, much of the public’s hearts and minds have turned against these practices. Of particular alarm are the public health dangers of antibiotic resistant bacteria in muscle meats carrying superbacteria such as Staph (staphylococcus aureus) and in waterways from toxic runoff linked to feedlot manure lagoons.
If keeping cattle on grass is better for our own health and the public’s, it’s hard to fathom how much it benefits the animals themselves. My own awareness grows each time I’m in close contact with the ruminants who feed us and the people who raise them on grass.
Beef cattle are born on one of the country’s 750,000 privately owned ranches where they spend the first stage of their lives living in pastures and nibbling the fresh grasses. After weaning at about six months, some calves remain on their home ranches to graze and, in winter, to be fed hay, which is dried and stored grasses. Consuming only plants their whole lives, these cattle are raised to maturity and slaughtered between one thousand to twelve hundred pounds anywhere from sixteen to thirty-six months old. This beef is “grassfed.”
All the rest, about 95 percent of the annual calf crop, are trucked from the ranch (sometimes via a stocker producer for additional weight gain on grass) to feedlots concentrated in the Midwest, Great Plains, Southwest, and the Pacific Northwest. Confined to pens, the cattle consume daily rations of mash—a blend of cereal grains that can include corn, barley, sorghum, or wheat (plus ionophores to help them digest the feed, protein supplements that can include chicken meal, byproducts from food processors, and roughage in the form of wet ground corn stalks called silage). The cattle reach a slaughtering weight of 1,200 to 1,400 pounds between sixteen and twenty-four months of age. This beef is “grain-fed.”
The move to the feedlot is a radical rift in the cows’ lifestyle and diet. Research studies show that their rumens react immediately, dropping in pH, which reduces bacterial synthesis. The grain-based feed gradually changes the nutritional composition within their muscles, the same ones we ultimately eat.
Animal breed, sex, and age all play a role in any beef’s nutritional makeup, but scientists and nutritionists agree that what affects it most is what the cow ate—especially during the final three to six months of its life, the stage called finishing. In side-by-side comparisons of grain-fed and grassfed beef samples, there are striking differences in their nutritional profiles, most notably in the levels of essential saturated fatty acids and antioxidants. Some of these contrasts you can actually see and others you can taste.
Nearly all of the research comparing grain-fed to grassfed beef hinges on fats, what scientists call lipids. You can see it in the thick white edge of fat around the muscles and the strands of fat within the muscles called intramuscular fat, or marbling. Beef from animals that never ate anything but grass is consistently lower in overall fat and saturated fat. While cholesterol levels are constant no matter the feeding regimen, grassfed beef has a better balance of those fatty acids, such as stearic acid, that do not raise cholesterol.
The point of feeding cows grain is to pack on the pounds. No wonder they’re fattier. It’s logical that an animal that strolled around all day eating plants would be leaner than one that stood in a pen and was fed the equivalent of a fast-food diet. (One rancher put it to me this way: “Would you rather eat an athlete or a couch potato?”)
Things get more complicated when we delve into a class of nutrients called beneficial fatty acids. The subjects of intense nutritional study, certain polyunsaturated fatty acids (omega-3s) show promise of protecting us from heart attacks, cancer, and immune disorders. Surprisingly, many of these life-enhancing fatty acids start out, in one form or another, in grass.
Outside of fish, the best sources for omega-3-type fatty acids are flaxseed, walnuts, canola, wheat germ, tofu, and grass. Grasses are loaded with certain omega-3s produced in their chloroplasts (ALA and EPA/DHA). Cattle fed only plants synthesize more of these fatty acids into their fat and flesh through the bacterial activity in their rumens. The lower pH in the rumen of grain-fed cattle inhibits this synthesis. While grassfed beef doesn’t carry nearly the omega-3s of flaxseed or fish, it has two to four times more than meat from grain-fed animals. Is it enough to matter—or in scientific terms, to have a biological effect?
Researchers are striving to determine whether the levels of these good, unsaturated fats in grass-fed beef bring any benefit to human health. A consensus seems to be emerging among nutritionists worldwide that it’s the ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s that matters most and the lower the better. In all cattle, omega-6 is fairly constant, but the higher concentrations of omega-3s in grassfed cattle shift the ratio to more healthful 2:1 and lower (on par with wild game meats), compared to the feedlot beef ratios averaging 7:1 and as high as 14:1. The omega-3 level is one of the reasons why grassfed beef has a more intense taste than grainfed beef that people describe as “gamey.” (Meanwhile, trials to increase omega-3 levels in feedlot beef with supplements like fish oil have failed because the beef has a distinctive and off-putting fishy flavor.)
CLA, or conjugated linoleic acid, also enthralls the nutritional community because of its potential cancer-preventing, heart disease-reducing, and supportive immune system properties. Unfortunately, all of the current CLA research to date is based solely on animal studies, and international health experts haven’t agreed on a daily intake for it to have a biological effect. What they do agree on is that we don’t ingest enough of this fatty acid. Since grass is the lone source, consuming more foods from the pastured ruminants who produce CLA (both dairy and meat) is the surest way to get more.
Finally, grassfed beef supplies more antioxidants, including vitamin A and E and glutathione (GT) that protect cells against cancer-causing free radicals. Compared to grain-finished beef, the butter-colored fat of grassfed beef contains seven times as much carotene, a compound that produces vitamin A, which keeps the lining of the eyes, mucous membranes, lungs, intestines, and the skin healthy while producing more white blood cells. Immunity-enhancing vitamin E is also three times as high in grassfed beef than in grainfed beef.
Although it looks strange to many, this yellowish fat, which becomes more so with an animal’s maturity and time on grass, is a sign of healthfulness in beef. From study to study, what becomes convincingly clear is that the nutritional quality of the fat begins to wane the moment cattle leave the grasslands for the feedlot.
During a chilly downpour in May, my family went to Carman Ranch to help our friends Cory Carman, Dave Flynn, and their three pre-school-aged kids gather cattle. Since November the herd had dwelled in a pasture awaiting a daily hay delivery from Dave. After a long, snowy spring the grasses were shamrock green, and they looked good enough to eat.
Turning cattle back onto the grass is an annual event at many family ranches. The only difference is that none of the Carman Ranch cattle would ever go to a feedlot. No calves would suffer the stresses of separation and transport or the change in diet and climate.
In the corrals, I stood amidst the mother cows who shifted aimlessly around me, sniffed the air, and bellowed for their calves. They were so close I felt the warmth from their hides and smelled their damp earth-and-dung scent. I felt small next to their wide flanks, and a trill of anxiety coursed through me that I’d get crushed against the wooden fence slats. But they edged away without seeming to take any notice, more at ease than I was with our longstanding interdependence.
Husbanding large livestock is serious labor any way you go about it. I watched as Dave led the cows through a green metal chute. He looked delighted to be out in the rain, replacing green ear tags and giving immunizations. He was powerful yet gentle while handling these giants who depend entirely on his care. Like all ranchers, his relationship to them transcends profits and loss statements, with no vacation or sick days included. From my perspective, the responsibility is awesome.
Many romanticize the return to pasture-based ranching methods, but raising beef demands far more than just letting cattle graze on their own as nature intended. It calls for deep understanding of the natural grass cycles and the soil’s minerality and water absorption qualities. Ranchers like Dave and Cory who practice intensive rotational grazing use a system of lightweight movable fencing to create smaller, temporary paddocks that prevent overgrazing while restimulating plant growth and regenerating the soils.
Throughout the spring and summer, Dave would restring the fence lines into fresh pasture every few days. By moving them frequently, the cattle would nip only the tips of the plants once, ideally, fertilize them, and crush some of them, returning carbon into the soils. For her part, Cory would continue annual experiments on her family’s lands to maximize plant restoration, weed control, and carbon sequestration (along with marketing and selling their beef in Portland). By managing their lands in this fashion, they are some of the many ranchers taking an active role in creating a future that is healthier in every respect.
We drove our rigs to a nearby pasture to gather the yearlings—one-year-old steers that would become next season’s beef. They waited in a cluster by the gate as if they knew something good was in the offing. Dave rode the four-wheeler, calling out commands to his Border collie who darted after those that stopped to feast on the waist-high grasses along the ditch. Another friend drove the hay truck—loaded with all five of our kids—to lure the cattle down the quarter mile of quiet country road. There, the cattle would rejoin their herd at the home ranch where they were born.
As the cows turned up the driveway, the rain relented and the sun warmed the damp, sweet grasses that stood lush and ready. We guided the herd, but once inside the fence lines, all took off in a trot toward the pasture. We gathered to watch as mothers, calves, juvenile heifers, and steers began to eat, four hundred necks bent to the grasses.
Next to me, Dave was soaked through his stained tan work coat and his smiling cheeks were splattered with mud. “This is a great day,” he said.
We call them all cows, but, technically speaking, “cow” is an adult female bos taurus that has birthed a calf. Mother cows are impregnated each year by a bull or by artificial insemination and nine months later give birth, ideally all on their own. Any one-year-old, male or female, is a yearling. Young males are typically castrated at birth to become steers, since bulls are of limited use and need to be kept separated from the herd. Only one bull is required for about twenty-five to forty cows (depending on the age and terrain) during the breeding season. Females less than two years old are heifers (heffers); they become cows only after their first calf. Some heifers are bred and become replacement mother cows, the foundation of the herd, but most are sold along with the steers to supply the beef market. |
COW 101