Vegetarian authorities claim that raising livestock is a misuse of land, causes global warming, ground water loss and pollution, loss of species diversity, and depletion of fossil fuels. They say it is more ecological for humans to eat a grain-based, largely or totally vegetarian diet. But there’s another side to the story that they don’t tell you.
Contrary to popular beliefs
Not all animal products are harmful to health, and not all animal husbandry is inhumane or unecological. The usual arguments against meat, eggs, and milk apply only to products from grain-fed, factory farmed animals and heavily processed meat products, such as conventional bacon, hotdogs, sausages, and lunch meats. Unprocessed and minimally processed products from 100 percent pasture-fed animals can be extremely healthful and humane. Grass feeding animals can actually be more ecological than row cropping grains and beans.
The nutritional composition and health effects of any animal product depends entirely on the animals’ diet while the ecology or unecology of how it was raised depend on what the animal is fed and how it is raised.
If the following excerpts from The Garden of Eating: A Produce-Dominated Diet & Cookbook by Rachel Albert-Matesz (me) and Don Matesz intrigue you, you can buy a copy of the book here. You can also read Why Grassfed is Best, which has been republished under the title Pasture Perfect: The Far-Reaching Benefits of Choosing Meat, Eggs, and Dairy Products from Grass-Fed Animals by Jo Robinson. Visit her site for more info
Benefits of Grassfed (Pasture-Raised) Animal Products
1. Improved nutrition
Grass-fed livestock are better nourished than grain-fed animals. Livestock have better digestion and assimilation when raised on pasture foods, which is what nature intended they eat. Studies show that this produces meat, eggs, and milk that contain more vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and omega 3 fatty acids than conventional feedlot products.
2. Avoid food poisoning
Grain feeding adversely alters farm animals’ intestinal flora and pH, promoting pathogenic strains of acid-resistant E. coli and Salmonella bacteria. Strictly pasture-fed animals are less likely to harbor legions of these malicious microbes. Mad cow disease is not found in cattle fed entirely on pasture and hay. It’s a product of factory farming and feeding ruminants a species inappropriate diet.
Sanitation violations are rare in local USDA inspected processing houses used by small farmers selling grass-fed animal products. These skilled butchers process one animal at a time and sterilize equipment between each animal.
3. Ecology
Only about one-third of the Earth’s land mass can be used for food production; only about one-third of this is suitable for growing crops. Suburban sprawl and erosion from row cropping continue to reduce this area. The remaining two-thirds of the usable land supports growth of plants that humans can’t eat but ruminants, such as bison, cattle, deer, elk, zebra, eland, sheep, and goats can eat.
According to the USDA Conservation Reserve Program, cultivated soils returned to pasture gain an average of half a ton of carbon per acre per year for the first 5 years after restoration. Returning row-cropped land to grassland actually helps combat global warming. Compared to cultivated lands, properly managed pastures make almost no contribution to soil erosion, ground water loss, or water pollution.
Do grazing cattle damage range lands?
Only if improperly managed. Grazing animals are a natural, essential part of healthy grassland ecology. If managed in a way that mimics natural patterns of native animals (deer, elk, bison, sheep, etc.), grazing cattle can improve rangelands. Well-managed grazing increases the number and vigor of native perennial grasses, reduces weed species, improves vegetative cover of stream banks, hastens manure decomposition, and extends the pasture’s growing season.
4. Energy efficiency
Raising animals entirely on pasture is probably the most energy efficient of all food production methods. To raise row crops, farmers commonly invest 5 to 10 calories of fossil fuel (for large machinery used for tilling, planting, and harvesting) for each calorie of food or fiber harvested.
Pasture-based animal husbandry is 10 to 20 times more energy efficient, producing 2 calories of energy profit (food, fertilizer, and fiber) for every calorie of fossil fuel invested.
Grains and beans are energy intensive
Grains and legumes all require extensive, energy-intensive processing (such as grinding) or cooking. This is true even of so-called quick-cooking rice and cereals, which are “quick” because they are processed and precooked by the food industry. The food processing industry is the fourth-largest U.S. industrial energy user. Farming uses less than one-fifth of the energy consumed by our food system. The other 80 percent is spent in processing, packaging, distributing, and preparing the food.
Meat, eggs, and milk are all edible with little or no processing or cooking. When you buy fresh or frozen raw animal products directly from the farmer, the total energy spent in getting it to your plate is a tiny fraction of what’s spent in the industrial food loop.
5. Supports Local Family Farms
Perhaps most important, when you purchase pasture-based animal products you support local family farmers who take care of their animals and their environment. Large corporations have converted farms into mass-production animal factories that supply food to supermarkets. These corporations are running family farms out of business by producing large quantities of low-quality food, regardless of the damage inflicted on rural economies and families.
The list of scientifically documented health, economic, and environmental benefits of pasture-based animal husbandry and grass-fed animal products is so large we can’t present it all here. Visit Jo Robinson’s site for up-to-date information.
If you want to support sustainable, local agriculture based on healthy family farms, purchase more locally produced, pasture-based animal products (as well as fruits and vegetables) from your state, region, and country. Grass-farming supports small, local farmers (and businesses in their communities), relationships between growers and consumers, and health of people and our precious planet.
Excerpted from The Garden of Eating: A Produce-Dominated Diet & Cookbook by Rachel Albert-Matesz (me) and Don Matesz. © Copyright 2004, Planetary Press. Order from our web site for immediate delivery.
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