Frankly I don't buy beef at the super market because it tastes awful. Our beef is not exclusively corn fed and we are a small herd, no hormones or antibiotics here. Grass fed has no where near the flavor of beef with proper (corn fed) marbling. Grass fed is a marketing ploy and you pay a premium for a cheaper way to raise cattle. They also have to be fed longer.

The real problem with beef is that its expensive, politicians think its better to use corn for making ethanol which makes the price of beef skyrocket because subsides are paid to ethanol producers which is stupid when one realizes that saw grass is a better CHEAPER alternative.

What kind of feed grains are they feeding if they don't use corn? Sorghum? Barley? Wheat?

There is a HUGE difference between cheap beef, and GOOD beef. Cheap beef = pink slime - good beef - you pay more, consume less, because it's more 'beefy'.

I can guarantee you that corn is not the biologically 'proper' way to feed cows - if it was, cows would not be ruminants, needing 4 stomachs to digest the grass that they would prefer to eat. Marbling is only considered the 'proper' way beef should be eaten because of marketing. Grass fed cows have to be fed longer because they don't put on huge quantities of weight quickly, as do corn fed cows - which results in the marbling in the meat - they can't use the extra caloric input, so it results in fatty marbling through the muscle tissue.

I've sent an email to my farmer to find out what they use to feed their cattle. One good thing about knowing the farmer, is that I have no problem asking them questions, or showing up at their farm. (Which we do frequently).

Dagney I am not disagreeing with what you do to eat beef. The person feeding out the beef you are eating is still using carbohydrates,[barley, sorghum, wheat, soy bean meal/protein} if your farmer is feeding any of these you will still have marbling. Corn in one form or another is eaten by every living thing on this planet.

A cow does not have 4 stomachs it has one with 4 compartments. As far as corn not being the proper way to feed cows all of the major feedlots feed, along with their corn,> silage , hay or other roughage including grass. A cow cannot survive on corn alone. But some AR activists take this bit of information and make it their mantra "Corn is bad" If you put corn in front of a cow and grass most will go for the corn first. I am sure there is an exception but that is not a rule.

To meet the demand of the consumer is why there are commercial feedlots. The smarter people like you know that beef tastes better when its a local farmer just like local grown veggies taste better.

Marbling is better/proper because it makes the meat tastier and more tender. Excessive marbling is undesirable. The hamburger I eat/raise can be cooked with no excess fat to drain. If some like their steak tough and stringy then pure grass fed is the way to go.

We'll just have to agree to disagree - just because most major feedlots feed their cows corn, doesn't mean they should.

I believe corn IS bad - it's a monolithic monoculture that is slowly destroying farms and farmers in this country.

Cows prefer grass. CAFO cows eat corn, because they're standing knee deep in mud and manure, with no access to green grass. And my grass fed steaks, do not get tough and stringy. Guaranteed - you're invited to join us for dinner if you'd like to put that to the test. Like anything else - you need to know how to cook what you're cooking.

Your "grass fed steaks" are not tough and stringy because you admitted that they are not really all grass fed. They get grains as well just not corn.

If you are implying I don't know how to cook, you don't know me. ;) I do however know the beef industry and I do agree with you on certain points. Eliminating corn entirely from a cow's diet is not necessary or practical for most small producers. The "Organic beef grass fed only" is a way to make beef taste so bad that the AR activists win the war on anyone owning or raising animals for food. You obviously do not own cows, know anything about feed management or you would know cows prefer corn and would if left to their own devices founder themselves to death eating it above anything else.

BTW I would be known as a "free range organic beef producer." My cows spend their days roaming 50 acres of wooded pasture. I still have to supplement their feed with shucklage/silage or they would starve to death and then I would be one of those animal abusers. ;)

Fabulous reading

The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals

http://www.american.com/archive/2009...-intellectuals

Like I said, we're going to agree to disagree.

I was not disagreeing with you. I was providing facts to offset your fiction.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing.

Look, so long as you don't feed your cows on the diseased brains of other cows, I'm cool with it, okay?

Cows are like kids, left to their own devices they'll eat everything they shouldn't. Thank god they don't have credit cards.

Braaaaaaaaaainssss :yum:




Actually I'd never eat any brains. Yuk!

those two sources of ethanol have other differences besides your "CHEAPER" claim that are substantial. getting ethanol from corn (sugar) is vastly easier than getting ethanol from sawgrass (cellulose). sawgrass might be cheaper to raise (not might--IS), but turning it into fuel is way, way more complicated.

And they just found another case of BSE in a cow in the USA. But really, everything is fine. Don't worry.

They are randomly testing only something like one out of every 12,000 bovines, the last I was able to confirm. And yet they keep turning up every couple of years.

It will be very interesting to see how old this dairy cow was. If it was born in the US after 1997, when it became illegal to grind up one cow and feed it to another cow, then that's going to be very bad news for the US beef industry. It would mean that the 1997 rules aren't working.

I think the only way to be sure that US beef is safe is to test more. When you only test 1 in 12,000 animals, you don't know jack.

And here again we are talking about a dairy cow with BSE not a beef cow. It does not follow the food chain in the same way as what you typically have on your plate. I am waiting to see the origin of this cow. The type of BSE it had was NOT transmissible from animal to animal and not to humans. {atypical] It was a cow taken to a rendering plant where typically that is made into fertilizer and dog food.

This is the first line of your article: {Health officials say the diseased cow never entered the human food chain and U.S. dairy and beef products are safe. It is the first confirmed case in the U.S. since 2006.}

I always find it annoying that those that sit behind a desk with no college education in agriculture or practical experience in agriculture can say the sky is falling. This article CLEARLY explains that the system in place is working.

Officials believe it is a rare spontaneous case and not linked to contaminated food. So no it was not fed other cows.

It seems like all it takes is one or two pencil pushers to create mass delusion. You are more likely to die of a heart attack eating too much beef than you are to get mad cow disease....

Most cattle slaughtered are 24 months old and under it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to have BSE. The disease has at least a 5-7 year incubation. That's why more are not tested. They only test OLD and sick appearing animals and most OLD and sick animals are in fertilizer.

When a mommy cow and a daddy cow love each other verrrry much...

(Couldn't resist.) :D

Ain't that the truth!

http://www.13wham.com/guides/health/...Pr32YwSIg.cspx