Corn Fed Beef vs Grass Fed Beef

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Corn Fed Beef vs Grass Fed Beef

grass fed beef vs corn fed beef

When we think of beef we invision the picture above, grass fed beef. But today the meat we buy in the supermarkets is far different. It is mostly corn fed beef.

Cows, sheep, and other grazing animals are blessed with the ability to convert grasses into food that we can digest. They can do this because they are ruminants, which means that they possess a rumen, a 45 or so gallon (in the case of cows) fermentation tank in which resident bacteria convert cellulose into protein and fats.

In the past, all beef was grass fed beef, but today what is commercially available in the United States is almost all feedlot corn fed beef. The reason? It's faster, and so more profitable. Seventy years ago, steers were 4 or 5 years old at time of slaughter. Today, they are only 14 or 16 months. You can't take a beef calf from a birth weight of 80 pounds to 1,200 pounds in a little more than a year on grass. It takes enormous quantities of corn, protein supplements, antibiotics and other drugs, including growth hormones. The end result, and this is what ends up on you plate, is corn fed beef full of growth hormones, protein supplements and antibiotics. This is a virtual breeding ground for toxins and bacteria to develop.

Watch this video entitled Killer Burgers and Toxic Steaks! It's a sad commentary on corn fed beef.

Author and small-scale cattleman Michael Pollan wrote recently in the New York Times about what happens to cows when they are taken off of pastures and put into feedlots and fed grain:

"Perhaps the most serious thing that can go wrong with a ruminant on corn is feedlot bloat. The rumen is always producing copious amounts of gas, which is normally expelled by belching during rumination. But when the diet contains too much starch and too little roughage, rumination all but stops, and a layer of foamy slime that can trap gas forms in the rumen. The rumen inflates like a balloon, pressing against the animal's lungs. Unless action is promptly taken to relieve the pressure (usually by forcing a hose down the animal's esophagus), the cow suffocates.

A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis. Unlike that in our own highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick. Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio."

Thank you to Prevent Disease.com for the content below:

You see Before World War II, beef cattle were raised on grass. It could take four years to fatten a steer. But then the industry switched to corn, a sort of time machine for a steer. Today calves start out on milk and grass but then, when six months old, they’re sent to a feedlot. By the time they are about 14 months old, corn-fed steers weigh enough to be slaughtered. "Corn fed beef " may sound wholesome, but in fact corn is not healthy for cattle.

The cattle's digestive systems are designed for grass, not grain. Corn fed beef fatten up quickly. A corn diet makes cattlesick, sometimes fatally. The animals must have antibiotics to stave off illness and infection until they weigh enough to be slaughtered, as well as hormones to promote quick growth. All this saves money for the growers and keeps the price of beef low.

Corn is a problematic crop, too. It’s heavily subsidized by the government and thus overproduced. It demands vast doses of pesticides and fertilizers, requiring huge quantities of natural gas and oil to produce. Toxic runoff from feedlots has become an environmental hazard, polluting ground water and land.

In addition, corn-fed beef is not good for people, particularly the people who regularly eat fatty steaks and burgers. Corn fed beef is tender, with the marbling consumers have come to expect—and thus is high in fat, especially saturated fat. A four-ounce serving of grass-fed beef typically has 7 to 10 grams of total fat, compared with 14 to 16 grams in the same cut of corn-fed beef. Grass fed beef, besides being lower in saturated fat, also contains more of the beneficial unsaturated fatty acids called omega-3s (similar to those in fish), as well as more vitamin E. Grass fed beef also supplies more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), another type of fat that has potential health benefits.

Hormones and antibiotics

And then there’s the matter of the hormones in corn fed beef. By the time the meat gets to your plate, residues are very small—not enough to worry about from a health standpoint. What is worrying is not the effect on consumers, but on the environment. Hormones from cattle (and other sources) end up polluting water. And not all scientists are comfortable with the idea of residues in meat: the European Union has refused to import American beef raised with hormones.

Another problem is the antibiotics used in corn fed beef to prevent or treat disease. Again, residues in meat are not likely to hurt people, but use of antibiotics leads to resistant strains of bacteria in animals and in the environment. (Thus, if you get sick from Salmonella, for example, the strain may be resistant to many antibiotics.) Meat from corn-fed cattle is also far more contaminated with E coli bacteria, partly because corn interferes with ruminant digestion, and partly because the animals are crowded together in filthy conditions. E. coli levels are much lower in grass fed beef.

Bottom line America, spend the extra money and feed your family healthy, grass fed beef, poultry and lamb. My family has gone to eating Bison (Buffalo) and even Elk from Colorado. It's wonderful and healthy. Stay away from corn fed beef whenever possible.

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