Grass-Fed Backlash
With sales of grass-fed beef soaring and the good news of healthy beef wafting over the land like aromatic smoke over a barbecue pit, it's only natural there would be a backlash. Maybe you've seen articles that purport to "debunk" the benefits or demystify the "myths" of grass-fed beef. Whether this is propaganda from Big Beef or honest (but wrong-headed) critiques by people who care about food is often difficult to assess. Either way, we thought it would be fun to dissect the backlash point-by-point. We'll start with Food Safety.
Is Grass-Fed Beef Safer?
Grass-fed beef producers like to crow about how our beef is cleaner and less susceptible to contamination by pathogens than beef produced in feed-lots. This seems like common sense: Estancia cattle wander the naturally-occurring pastures of Uruguay with approximately a football field of grazing land for every animal. Compare that cow paradise to animals raised in feed-lots: crowded shoulder-to-shoulder into pens where they shuffle around in a thick slurry of their own waste products (there's really no nice way to describe this):
This is a serious issue since bacteria like E. coli have killed scores of people in the US in recent years. First let's note that all of the outbreaks--100% of the sickness and death--can be traced to beef produced in feedlots. No illness has been traced to beef raised grazing on pasture. But let's also acknowledge that this could arguably be a matter of probability: grass-fed beef still represents only a tiny fraction of the total beef consumed in the US.
Pasture-Raised = Grass-Fed = Cleaner Beef
Part of the difficulty of addressing the backlash lies with the very term at the heart of the controversy: "grass-fed". Although grain-fed beef is synonymous with feedlots, grass-fed does not always mean pasture-raised. It's safe to say that what consumers expect when they purchase grass-fed beef is pasture-raised beef (not cattle thrown grass in feedlots). And that's what we here at Estancia mean when we say that grass-fed beef is cleaner than feed-lot beef: pasture-raised, grass-fed beef (the only kind Estancia sells) is cleaner (not to mention safer, healthier, and more delicious).
Clean beef starts with clean and healthy animals. Contamination occurs when pathogens in a cow's waste somehow enter the processing facility, and fatal outbreaks of sickness occur when the pathogens contaminating the processing facility are deadly new strains. This can occur via residue on the exterior of the animal or during slaughter. There are really three factors to consider: 1. Dangerous pathogen levels inside the animal, 2. Dangerous pathogen levels on the outside of the animal when it enters the slaughterhouse, and 3. Anti-pathogen measures in the facility. Let's leave off the third point for the purpose of this blog post (though we'll get back to it in the future because it's important).
Grain-Fed Cows = Sick Cows
Indisputable Fact #1: Pathogen levels in feedlot animals are higher than in pasture-raised animals due to the animals' crowded conditions and constant exposure to their own waste. Cattle fed high-levels of grains (what happens in all large feedlots) get sick because ruminants evolved to eat grass in its pre-vegetative state (before the grain is formed). This is well-documented and uncontroversial. So why would anyone feed grain to a cow? Because if the animals survive they gain weight faster than they do when grazing grass and because there's a massive glut of corn in the US due to subsidies paid to corn farmers by the federal government (Agricultural Welfare).
Feedlots Depend on Antibiotics
How do feedlot operators keep their animals alive? They give them antibiotics, often the same ones that humans are prescribed by their doctors to fight pathogens. The result? The well-documented development of antibiotic-resistant drugs that can be traced directly to feedlots. Now compound the problem by crowding animals together, allowing new strains of pathogens to spread from animal to animal, mutating and growing more adaptive and stronger as they attack one animal after another and survive one antibiotic treatment after another. Feedlots are breeding grounds for super-bugs.
Dirty In = Dirty Out
Indisputable Fact #2: The dirtier and sicker the animal is during its lifetime, the more likely it will be the source of contamination once it enters a processing plant. Feedlot beef are more likely to be infected with pathogens because they live in a pathogen-filled environment (waste-filled pens) and are crowded close together and therefore its easier for pathogens to spread from one animal to another. Contrast this to animals raised on pasture: we don't need to treat our animals with antibiotics to keep them alive, they graze clean grasslands instead of standing in their own waste, and they aren't crowded together.
No matter how carefully pathogen-laden animals are scrubbed and washed before entering the processing facility and no matter how carefully they are slaughtered so as to avoid cutting into their digestive track (where the pathogens live), some pathogens will inevitably enter the processing plant and contaminate the beef that comes out the other side. Dirty animals mean the likelihood of dirty beef is much higher. Clean animals mean clean beef. It's that simple.
Backlash B.S.
So what's the backlash all about? How can anyone argue that grass-fed beef isn't cleaner and safer than feedlot-raised beef? Some like to cite studies like this one and this one. But those studies only looked at the end-product beef produced under different systems, not each step along the way: from pasture or feedlot to processing. No one is arguing that all feedlot-produced beef is dirty; we're saying that the likelihood of contaminated beef coming from feedlots is much higher because there are more (and more antibiotic-resistant) pathogens per animal every step of the way.
The backlash gained momentum thanks to James McWilliams (who we love to pieces but whose contrarian gadfly routine can be a bit wearying): cows raised at pasture are not immune to deadly E. coli bacteria. His semi-valid point is that a study found that a deadly strain of E. coli
McWilliams (and other well-meaning backlashers) want to be sure that no one makes themselves some grass-fed beef tartar thinking that grass-fed beef can never make you sick, but in doing so they distract from a more important and fundamental truth: grass-fed, pasture-raised beef is cleaner than feedlot-produced beef.
Our friends at onlygrassfed.com debunk McWilliams' debunking (re-debunk? de-debunk?):
The benefits of 100% pasture raised, grass fed beef are numerous, including the fact that if you consume it, you have a much lower risk of E. coli exposure than if you eat grain fed, industrially farmed beef. However, the reasons for the lower risk are not that the animal is naturally immune to E. coli colonization, but because the entire beef production chain for grass fed beef is typically cleaner.
At Estancia, food safety starts with clean and healthy animals and continues through our state-of-the-art processing facility. Our animals never see a feedlot. We lead the industry in safety protocols are our processing plant and third-party audits of our facilities to be extra sure that the beef we produce is safe. Clean and healthy is our guarantee, from pasture to plate.