I don’t know about beef, but anthropologist Marvin Harris claimed in a couple of his books that fattening with corn was essential to the 19th century pig market. There were essentially two efficient ways to get your corn crop to the market – either use it to make corn liquor, or feed it to pigs and have it walk to market by itself. Corn and pigs was, he claimed, a match made in agricultural heaven – pigs thrived on a diet of corn, and pork was the most common meat on the market (he has cites from several European visitors stunned by the ubiquity in the American diet). Harris claims that, once at market, pigs were further fattened on corn before being slaughtered, but I don’t know how deeply he researched this. Stranger might be right about feedlots being a 20th century innovation, but I’m not clear on whether the pigs were so numerous at any individual market that antibiotics were required.
I’ve heard that the soup companies buy a lot of those.
On the other hand, what’s with the premium price on grass fed beef?
People from other countries often refuse to eat American food
The European Union boycotts the U.S.'s hormone-grown beef. The routinely used synthetic hormones zeranol, trenbolone acetate and melengestrol acetate pose “increased risks of breast cancer and prostate cancer,” says the European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Veterinary Measures.
I’m thinking it was relatively tough meat compared to the gourmet cuts of today simply because of the long cattle drives that caused the animals to develop a lot of muscle.
Antibiotics wouldn’t have been available. Widespread production of human-made antibiotics, and their use in livestock production, didn’t occur until the 1940’s.
Interesting, a few generations back my family were all subsistence farmers on farms that would never be profitable in the modern environment, and I remember my grandfather who always kept a few hogs every year to raise for pork and when he’d take me out to help feed them, he frequently did so with whole fresh ears of corn (which he also grew), I remember being shocked you could throw a whole ear at a hog and it’d frequently grab it in mid-flight and frequently swallow it down almost instantly.
If you read beyond the headline, the article lists numerous advantages to grass-fed over grain-fed beef and literally no disadvantages. All the cons are about eating beef as opposed to not eating beef; they make no distinction at all between types of beef. And even the cons are dubious. Beef may be an unproven factor in colon cancer, uncooked beef can contain parasites, and high iron foods may be bad for people with hereditary hemochromatosis. The article is close to an advertisement for eating more-expensive grass-fed beef.
As a pretty close comparison 19th and 20th century cattle drives in Australia, which often ran 1,000-2,000 miles and some even more than 3,000 miles aimed to get cattle to near-urban grass paddocks weeks before their intended slaughter, precisely so they could be fattened up and bring a better price.
The 19th century consumer would probably notice a difference between two pieces of beef that had come from just outside of town and another that had to make its own way from the edge of the Simpson Desert but, to be fair, cooking, sauces and handling after slaughter probably erased much of that difference
Presumably some corn was grown near the market; but those farmers who were further away from the market found it made more sense to feed their corn than to ship it.
The best marketing techniques for farmers who are close to a city are often different from the best techniques for those far from a city; to some extent true, even today.
My neighbors/friends raise a few hogs each year. They feed them stuff that would otherwise be composted; sour milk, deformed vegetables, bruised fruit, etc.
As far as corn, they grow sweet corn for human consumption (sold at their farm market) and field corn for sale as feed (to farmers finishing beef). Any corn not fit for sale goes to their pigs.
Oh, and cornstalks! Once used as silage, now they are sold to the public for decoration.
I’d imagine pigs were widely transported to market only after the opening of the railroads. (Ditto corn.) I doubt they were ever allowed to walk great distances like cattle were. I don’t think they’re herd animals, and it would have taken them ages to get anywhere on their short legs.
I don’t believe they can forage the same way cattle do either.
In a week or two I’ll be helping our neighbors walk their 6 pigs from their pen to the truck that will transport them for slaughter. It’s a ~25 yard walk and every year it’s a total shit-show. If not for the bacon reward, I’d be a no-show.
Huh! I knew about wild pigs foraging in forests, but never livestock pigs. Thanks for the link!
(If you take the train from Moscow to Helsinki, BTW, you can often see wild boar running through the forests farther north.)
As for walking pigs to market, I envisioned a Far Side cartoon of a “Swine Drive” in the Old West.
I actually lived on a pig farm for some time a while back (a very long story). I managed to avoid the worst parts, but I was always leery of the well water.
Quite an endorsement, isn’t it, coming from WebMD?
I conclude that modern beef would be fattier/more marbled, with bigger yields due to hormones; also better husbandry/veterinary science means you’d lose fewer from the herd. And of course the industry gears up to bring you the product at the most attractive price they can.
But the stuff from the wild west would be better for you (often the sworn enemy of “tastes good.”) My WAG is that slaughtering on a smaller scale would be more sanitary and they had none of the 20 lb freezer pack business…they had to eat it when it was fresh. Not sure about the expense; modern producers save by operating on a big scale, but I would guess back then there were fewer middlemen and they didn’t buy corn to fatten them.
We buy these nice plastic-wrapped packages with artificially colored beef and assume it’s safe. I don’t mean to pick on just beef, though: remember the Blue Bell ice cream listeria recall? Onions are being recalled now due to salmonella? We put a lot of faith in those who produce our food. From 2019:
Geez! The “winner” is…
1. Chicken strip products
Pounds recalled: 11,760,424
Reason(s) for recall: Possible foreign matter contamination
Company: Tyson Foods, Inc.
Brand name(s): Tyson
Date recall initiated: May 4, 2019
Over 11 million pounds?
As far as wild boars go, there was a great documentary about it but I can’t find a decent version on line. To give an idea…
In my experience, flavor in food goes along with, not against, higher nutritional levels and better ecological/humane raising practices. Feedlot/factory meat, in particular, to me seems tasteless. Tender, sometimes to the point of queasy flabbiness; but little or no flavor.
Of course, I’m talking about the raw ingredients. Taste buds accustomed to the highly-processed stuff may like that better.
I don’t think they had much in the way of sanitary standards in the 1800’s. And I think meat was often eaten cured, dried, and/or pickled.
You’re right about the huge modern recalls, though. Our current problem is that food from hundreds of different places all gets mixed together and shipped out to hundreds of other different places; so that a problem in one corner of one field can make people sick in dozens of states or even countries.
