In direct response to the OP, grass-fed beef tastes different.
When I was raising my own, everything they ate (with the exception of the mineral salt lick) came from my own property. They grazed until the dead of winter, at which point they switched to eating hay that had been cut on my own fields. They definitely tasted better.
Now that we’ve sold the ranch, I buy from one of my old neighbors who does things the same way. The only difference is that he raises Angus, which is higher-fat. I actually prefer the lower-fat meat we got from our Corrientes (tastes more like elk than beef, actually).
We can argue economics and semantics till the cows come home, but the bottom line is that people will buy what they think tastes best. Fat tastes good to most people, so they want cattle that are fattened up before slaughter.
vison and Pullet, I have a couple of questions. Keep in mind, as before, I’m a city feller, and most of what I know of farming is from reading and from hearing scraps of info from farming friends.
One farm friend tells me he prefers hormone-free beef because the gristle layers are thinner, and can be eaten instead of cut out. He likes to eat some of the fat on a steak, but with thick gristle, he has to cut off the fat, then cut off the gristle to eat a bit of fat with a bite of steak. Do you agree with the thinner-gristle part?
I can understand that grass-feeding beef is less efficient than feed-lotting. Is that still true if you factor in getting an EPA fine once or twice a year when a dung lagoon dumps into a stream after a couple days of heavy rain? I’m not assuming that’s routine for most feedlot operations, by the way. When it does happen, the news story talks about the difficulty of finding enough farmers to accept the dung as fertilizer. Is it true that farmers reject this time-honored organic fertilizer?
This is certainly true in almost all realms culinary…fat generally equals flavor. Pork fat in the skillet with the green beans, fattened livers from geese (mmmmmm…), more marbelization in steaks, etc.
Not to mention that higher marbelization allows the steak consumer to cook the meat to well done without totally sacrificing every ounce of moisture and tenderness meat has…even if I think well-done steaks are paramount to sacriliege…
I like grass fed beef because I think it tastes better. It’s fat enough, certainly.
What most people call “tender” is “mushy” to me. I don’t think a steak should be “fork tender”, I like a bit of chew. Not tough. I don’t like tough meat any more than anyone else does. But a grass fat beef at 18 - 24 months is going to be tender.
There are many reasons why farmers refuse manure as fertilizer and if I can find the time later I will post about more. First, though, the manure from feedlots is often “contaminated” with hormone and antibiotic residues. Second, it is often miles from any cropland. Third, it is not easy to know exactly what the chemical composition of the manure is, as to content of nitrogen, etc. (Often it is “too high” in nitrogen.)
These are not insurmountable problems, obviously. I think it’s appalling that tonnes and tonnes of manure are regarded as toxic waste.
One farm friend tells me he prefers hormone-free beef because the gristle layers are thinner, and can be eaten instead of cut out. He likes to eat some of the fat on a steak, but with thick gristle, he has to cut off the fat, then cut off the gristle to eat a bit of fat with a bite of steak. Do you agree with the thinner-gristle part?
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Hadn’t heard anything to this effect myself. Maybe vision has some data. I guess, if the theory runs that grass-fed beef are not as fatty overall, then they wouldn’t have as much connective tissue associated with all that adipose, and therefore would be less gristly. Just my WAG, though.
Finding things to do with the manure is indeed getting harder, particularly in the poultry industry. With every E. coli outbreak, people get more and more freaked out about using cattle manure. Poultry are basically chronically infected with salmonella. And then there is the whole feed-back scare with Mad Cow disease. There just ain’t a lot of places to put all that shit any more.
Not everyone uses the lagoon method that you mention for the exact drawbacks you cite. Although, those that have lagoons are strictly regulated and have to make preparations to avoid storm spillages and whatnot. Clearly, it’s not perfect, but we try to minimize the danger as much as possible.
The other options for manure have their own drawbacks. Field drying only works in dry climates, and has dust issues, which lead to disease spread issues. Composting requires proper handling and long times to work correctly.
Biodigesters are probably the best, but the cost is prohibitive, especially when talking about the kind of volumes you need for the number of animals we raise.
In short, we need fewer animals. But, to do that, we need fewer people wanting to eat animals. Or just fewer people total. In fact, that would cure a lot of the problems.
Vision, can you provide some cites indicating that hormone levels make it out into manure in any higher levels in supplemented cattle compared to non-supplemented cattle? Considering the differences are miniscule within the cow’s own tissues, and that the supplement is an implant and not fed, I’m doubtful of your claim.
Grass fed beef (to me) is more flavorful than grain-fed beef. It has less fat marbling, so you have to slice it thin, and cook it quickly (too much cooking dries and toughens the meat).
Argentine beef is mostly grass fed, and is quite good.
Why is buffalo different from beef? If both animals are grass fed, shouldn’t the meat be pretty much the same? that said, i’ve had buffalo steaks and its very good.
venison: I’ve had both wild and farm-raised; farm-raised is better.
I remember the first time I had deer I hated it, then someone gave me deer that had been fed corn, and I like it. Clearly what the animals eat effects them. Ducks in particular. But husband shoots ducks and the ducks that eat fish are HORRIBLE. They taste, well not like fish but fishy. It’s hard to describe.
Ducks in the wild don’t taste like farm ducks.
Also remember it’s not only agricultural lobbys but the way the US government is set up. The Sentate is based on two per state. This accounts for a disproportionate influence of agriculture and mining interests in the nation.
In my experience, beefalo tastes a lot different than beef and buffalo. I try to buy it when I see it because I quite enjoy it.
We usually have a freezer full of elk, deer and bear but I’m thinking of trying some grass-finished beef from a farmer near Yakima. If it’s to my liking, I plan on attempting the grass farming ‘thing’ in the future.
Your second link is the most interesting because it is a description for a research project that is trying to answer the very question you and I are pondering. They won’t finish until 2010, so that will be something to watch for.
Your first link is a news article talking about the study the folks in the second link are putting together. Naturally, since the study hasn’t finished, there is no answer one way or the other.
The third link is broken.
The link to Science Daily describes a modified lagoon technique which, while awesome, has no mention of hormones or other chemicals.
The pdf from Ohio State is talking about antibiotic and drug residues in the animal’s tissues, not manure.
Digging around on Pubmed, I can’t find any studies that look at whether manure from hormone supplemented animals has higher levels of active hormone than non-supplemented animals. There are a lot of studies confirming an increase in stray hormones in the environment, and linking those back to domestic animal droppings. But, until 2010, it appears we won’t know if those levels rise when we go screwing with the endocrinology of the critter.