Grass-fed

The most recent issue of Time magazine has some surprisingly good articles on food, particularly The Grass-Fed Revolution. This isn't revival, but it is a case of people coming to some level of awareness of the American agri-business problem.

God made a world in which actions have real consequences, some of which are getting very hard to deny. That what we feed what we eat has effects for good or ill is slowly starting to penetrate even the thick American skull. This article (in probably the most influential weekly news magazine in America) tells some the truth about grain fed beef and factory farming. The only downside is that the USDA is preparing "standards" for grass fed beef. No doubt they will own the words "grass fed" just like they do "organic."

Excerpt

"Grass-fed meat is beef with benefits," says nutritionist Kate Clancy, author of a recent Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report. UCS, a Washington-based nonprofit, reviewed scores of studies and concluded that a change from grain-based feedlots back to a purely pasture-based system "would be better for the environment, animals and humans."

Radical as that scenario may seem, it was only after World War II that the U.S. began confining cattle in factory farms that can fatten 50,000 head a year on high-calorie grain. Until then, cattle grazed on grass their full lives--as they still mostly do in Europe, South America, New Zealand and other beef-producing nations.