Organic
Beef — Natural Meat Steaks Its Claim
By Sharon Palmer, RD
Today’s Dietitian
Vol. 7 No. 9 P. 36
Home, home on the range
Where the cattle and livestock graze
Where seldom is heard an unnatural word
And the cows eat grass all their days
Driving up the long, dusty route through central California,
you will spot conventional cattle farms that span for miles
with thousands of cattle wedged into feedlots, doused with enormous
sprinklers during the sweltering midday heat. The stench will
follow you for miles. But as the route winds through the valley,
rustic country farms dot the landscape where cattle graze serenely
beneath hundred-year-old oaks on the rolling, golden California
hills.
Farther north in the Point Reyes National Seashore in northern
California, you will find one such ranch called Marin Sun Farms.
With seven properties in Marin and southern Sonoma counties,
Marin Sun Farms manages 3,500 acres with 300 yearling beef and
400 mother cows to provide a local source of humanely raised,
100% grass-fed beef, free of artificial growth hormones and
antibiotics. With 2,083 acres of certified organic pastures,
Marin Sun Farms seeks to restore, conserve, and maintain the
productivity of their lands through holistic ranching practices.
The mild climate and rich soil support a variety of native grasses
upon which the livestock graze in open space for their entire
life. The livestock select their diet naturally from the pastures
as they graze, reminiscent of the natural herds that once roamed
America’s vast open land.
Marin Sun Farms is just one of the many new-age farms that
have forever changed the landscape of American ranching. Helped
by the wild success of Niman Ranch, the legendary network of
independent family farms with the slogan “raised with
care,” these farms are supplying concerned consumers with
a healthier and more humane final product.
Meat Times, They Are a-Changin’
Today, the demand for natural, organic, and grass-fed beef is
through the roof. Increasingly more consumers are interested
in how that neat little piece of meat got on the styrofoam tray,
asking questions about how the animal was cared for, kept, and
fed. This trend received a kick-start by star chefs proclaiming
the name of a particular meat ranch right on the menu. While
natural markets were the primary domain of these specialty meats
in retail sales, they are now more widely available in supermarkets,
club stores, and online shopping venues. Safeway recently introduced
organic beef in 240 of its 1,700 California stores.
Some major factors pushing consumers toward an alternative
meat supply include concerns over antibiotics, growth hormones,
and other drugs in meats. People are also pursuing meat of livestock
that feed on non-genetically engineered feed and pastures without
animal parts as a safeguard against mad cow disease or bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Consumers even want to know
that animals are treated humanely and provided plenty of wide
open space, without a cage or feedlot in sight. They care about
how the farm is managed and whether the practices are eco-friendly—from
the management of manure to how much fossil fuel is used. Many
of today’s consumers want to support local farms in their
community, calling themselves “locovores.” Respondents
to a national survey cited health and nutrition (66%), taste
(38%), food safety (30%), and the environment (26%) as motivational
factors behind organic food purchases.1
Such consumer desire has fed into the organic meat boom, making
organic meat the fastest-growing segment of the organic industry.
According to Organic Monitor, a business research and consulting
company, organic meat sales in the United States have expanded
more than 150% since 2002, with high growth rates expected to
continue as retail distribution increases. During the past five
years, more than 1,000 U.S. ranchers have switched herd to an
all-grass diet. This new movement has given small, local farms
a method of distinguishing themselves from the masses and revitalizing
their operations.
“It is true: Organic meats are in demand. But the penetration
is very young; it is 1% of the meat sales in the U.S. I predict
it will continue to be fast in growth over the next five years,”
says Wende Elliott, founding organic farmer of Wholesome Harvest,
based in Colo, Iowa. Elliott was an organic consumer living
in a large city. Due to her concern about how her family’s
meat supply was raised, she decided to move to Iowa and raise
it herself. Today, Elliott is the president of Wholesome Harvest,
a coalition of many small farms that can boast that their animals
live on a pasture-based system with an organic feature; a commitment
to nutrition, fair trade, food safety, and food quality; and
full traceability of their meat products. She was awarded the
Excellence in Agricultural Award from the Iowa Farm Bureau in
2004, the first woman and first organic farmer to receive the
award.
Mary Jo Forbord, RD, executive director of Sustainable Farming
Association of Minnesota, notes that a move to local foods has
spawned to college campuses. Among a generation that recognizes
the cold, hard fact that they may not outlive their parents,
a renaissance of exploring healthier lifestyles has taken root.
These days, college campuses host foodservice operations that
use local foods, sponsor organic gardens, and rely on grass-fed
beef and source-identified foods.
Back to the Future on the Ranch
With a new focus on agricultural practices, some ranches are
returning to old-fashioned models of raising animals. “There
are two models. In the industrial model, the cattle leave the
ranch and go to a feedlot before they are slaughtered. In the
grass-fed model, after weaning we send them to another pasture
on the ranch to spend the rest of their life,” says Mike
Gale, owner of Chileno Valley Natural Beef, a family ranch in
Marin County dedicated to grain-free feeding that doesn’t
use antibiotics or hormones.
“I grew up on my family’s ranch in the Point Reyes
National Seashore. After college, I was looking to create a
new ranching company of my own based on the principles of sustainability—grass-fed,
solar energy-collecting ruminants. I was told by everyone in
the industry that it could not be done. Great-tasting, grass-fed
beef without corn—was I crazy? I have [accomplished] and
continue to accomplish all of my goals,” says David Evans,
owner of Marin Sun Farms. He is working to certify the rest
of the land and animals as organic, a process that will likely
take up to five years to complete.
The grass-fed ranching movement seems to be sweeping across
America. A June article in Time explored the grass-fed revolution,
in which beef is raised wholly on pasture rather than grain-fed
in feedlots, citing that it was only after World War II that
the United States began confining cattle to industrial farms
to be fattened on high-calorie grain diets, a system that grew
to match the surpluses of government-subsidized corn and soybeans.
As a result, Americans have grown accustomed to the taste and
uniformity of feed-lot beef instead of the grass-fed beef that
was once the norm.
Beyond the Meat Labels
Though some consumers may be screaming for more natural sources
of meat, they are often confused about what it actually is.
If it is grass-fed, is it organic? Does organic meat come from
a small farm? Which type of meat is best for me and my environment?
Even experts are hard pressed to answer such questions.
“I get a lot of people [who] think organic beef is all
grass-fed, which is not necessarily so,” says Amy Barr,
RD, cofounder of Marr Barr Communications, a strategic marketing
and communications agency specializing in food, nutrition, health,
lifestyle, and sustainability. Elliott adds, “People think
free range means pasture-fed. But it means that they’re
not in a cage; it doesn’t mean they eat grass.”
It shouldn’t be a surprise that organic meat is difficult
to understand since the regulations for organic livestock are
exhaustive, covering everything from gestation to pest management
on the farm. “The organic regulations are so detailed
from the farm to the dinner plate. They are thousands of pages
long,” adds Barr.
Elliott reports that the USDA prohibited organic meat until
2002, making it the last segment of organic foods to be legally
marketable. Organic meat is beef, pork, or poultry that has
been raised and processed according to strict guidelines. All
certified organic meat is independently inspected and traced
at every phase of production to ensure compliance with USDA
National Organic Standards. Such standards include 100% certified
organic feed with no animal by-products, no antibiotics, humane
treatment, preventative health practices, and natural processing
methods. Organic producers must be certified annually for compliance
with organic standards to raise, feed, and process their livestock.
Organically raised cattle must be tracked from birth to consumption.
The USDA also allows for claims such as “No Antibiotics,”
“No Hormones,” and “Free Range.” “Natural”
meat products may be minimally processed and free of preservatives
and additives. Whole Foods Market chooses to adhere to the most
stringent animal welfare standards and definition of “natural
meat” in the supermarket industry by selling only beef,
chicken, pork, and lamb that adhere to its standards: no antibiotics;
no added growth hormones; humane raising, transporting, and
slaughter; no animal by-products in feed; and no more than one
third of an animal’s life can be spent on a feedlot.
And there is one more piece to the puzzle: grass-fed beef.
Recently, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS)
released a revised proposal for a grass-fed meat label claim
for its process-verified labeling program. The revised standard,
which applies to cattle, sheep, and other ruminant livestock
(not pigs), requires that animals certified as grass-fed receive
at least 99% of their lifetime energy source from a grass- or
forage-based diet. This is an increase from the 2002 proposed
amount of 80% of lifetime energy received from a grass- or forage-based
diet. Meat products from livestock raised in accordance with
the AMS grass-fed standard could be labeled with the grass-fed
claim along with the “USDA Process Verified” statement
and shield.
But it gets more confusing. “There are organic, natural,
and grass-fed meats and they are mixed and matched and layered
upon each other,” says Barr. Some ranchers, like Elliott,
are “beyond organic” as they work to exceed organic
standards by also committing to the environment, family farmers,
fair trade principles, revitalization of rural communities,
and pasture-feeding animals.
Plenty of cottage industry farmers may not be certified organic
but raise their livestock with similar principles. Some consumers
find local meat sources more desirable than “big”
organic ranches. Forbord, a fifth-generation farmer, and her
family maintain a small 480-acre farm with roughly 90 cattle
in western Minnesota. The Forbords’ grazing lands are
certified organic, but they have foregone certified organic
labeling of their meats. “Pursuing a certified organic
label would mean we would have to bypass our local custom processor.
Working with our local community is more important to us than
organic certification. We enjoy knowing our customers and they
value knowing how we raise their food,” says Forbord.
Gale has chosen to bypass organic certification for his Chileno
Valley Natural Beef because he would have to use a certified
organic slaughterhouse. “Our customers are more concerned
about how the animals are handled rather than whether it is
organic. There are nuances to these terms. If you think organic
beef is the answer, it’s not. They could be organic grain-fed
beef. The buyer must beware,” he says.
Holly Givens, communications director of the Organic Trade
Association (OTA), reports that all organic ruminant species
must have access to pasture and there has been some desire to
make that more specific. As a result, the USDA and the National
Organic Standards Board have been considering whether to make
the standards more detailed.
Wrangling for a Healthier Ecosystem
While livestock producers have argued for years that organic
ranching is impractical and near impossible, small farms across
the country are proving them wrong. Traditional ranching is
fossil fuel-dependent, but organic farms work in harmony with
nature using sustainable practices. Forbord notes that at her
farm, from the time the calf is born to the time it is processed,
they use one half gallon of fossil fuel, a number that is going
down. Supporting local farms also cuts down on “food miles,”
the number of miles it takes to get food to the dinner plate.
“I have learned over many years as a farmer that nutrition
starts with a balance of nutrients in the soil, feeding a great
diversity of plants on the landscape. Where I live, the diversity
of plants combined with herd of buffalo and fire formed the
tallgrass prairie ecosystem,” says Forbord.
“People care about the nourishment of their bodies. They
want to be healthy and they want to live sustainably. They do
not want to contribute to environmental degradation. They want
to support small business and a meaningful community,”
says Evans, whose goal is to make the land productive for generations
to come and help support a food system that supports its community.
Marin Sun Farms products are not shipped out of state; instead,
they are sold to local restaurants such as Chez Panisse in Berkeley,
Calif., and at local farmers’ markets.
Givens reports that having animals as part of the farm system
is important because it closes the loop for farm fertility and
the farm functions as a system. Managed manure handling is also
important, and organic farmers are mandated to ensure that animal
waste does not endanger the environment around them.
But Gary Weber, PhD, executive director of regulatory affairs
for National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, points out,
“Modern cattle production methods actually decrease the
amount of inputs necessary to produce the level of beef to meet
the needs of consumers worldwide for U.S. beef. If U.S. cattle
producers were to attempt to produce the current beef supply
with 1955 technology, we would need a cattle herd about 80%
larger than that of today.”
Meat Going to Market
The logistics of supplying customers with meat from small farms
are not simple. Many small farms will not ship meat as a commitment
to support the local food system and avoid further consumption
of resources. Coalitions such as Wholesome Harvest, with its
network of more than 40 small family farms, pose a solution
to distribution.
Organic, grass-fed, and natural meats are becoming more widely
available in supermarkets. Elliott notes that her organic meat
products even reach hospitals and schools, reporting that SYSCO
is getting in on the organic meat act by piloting a program
through Wholesome Harvest that connects customers with local
meat sources.
But there is also concern for the economic realities of these
meats. Organic, grass-fed, and natural meats have been called
“meat for the rich,” as the price is significantly
higher than conventionally raised meat. According to the Agricultural
Marketing Resource Center, prices for all beef products offered
in retail supermarkets average $3.56 per pound compared with
natural and organic beef products, which average $5.19 per pound.
“We keep them longer than in industrial ranching and we
incur more risk and expense since we don’t use antibiotics.
So we have to charge more,” says Gale.
Is It Healthier Than Conventional?
People are also flocking to natural, organic, and grass-fed
meats with health in mind. One primary public concern so widely
touted in the media is the potential for BSE. According to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, BSE possibly originated
as a result of the feeding of scrapie-containing sheep meat-and-bone
meal to cattle. There is strong evidence that the BSE outbreak
was amplified and spread throughout the United Kingdom cattle
industry by feeding rendered bovine meat-and-bone meal to young
calves.
Growth-promoting hormones have been used by the beef industry
for more than 30 years to improve an animal’s ability
to more efficiently utilize nutrients and produce leaner, more
affordable beef. Numerous scientific bodies and regulatory agencies
have concluded that the use of hormones in beef production is
safe. But critics express concern over the potential health
impact of hormones in meat production and the negative environmental
impact of hormones entering waterways from livestock feedlots.
And what about all those antibiotics given to livestock? “Routine
use of antibiotics in food production is an inappropriate and
wasteful use of antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance is a pressing
concern for everyone,” says Forbord. According to The
Ohio State University Extension, cattle in 83% of U.S. commercial
feedlots routinely receive antibiotics for disease prevention
and growth promotion during the finishing period. This practice
has been linked to the development of resistant bacteria, which
can be transmitted through food and sicken people with infections
that are more difficult or impossible to treat with those same
antibiotics.2 In June 2001, the American Medical Association
adopted a resolution opposing nontherapeutic use of antimicrobials
in animal agriculture. But the National Cattlemen’s Beef
Association stresses that the U.S. government mandates that
no beef with antibiotic residues that exceed FDA standards will
be allowed in the food supply.
There is a growing body of evidence that indicates grass-fed
beef might be healthier than conventional beef. According to
a recent literature review of value-added nutrients found in
grass-fed beef products conducted by the College of Agriculture,
California State University in Chico, and the University of
California Cooperative Extension Service, researchers found
that cattle feed or the composition of the ration has a significant
effect on the fatty acid profile of the final beef product.
In addition, they noted that the research to date would support
the argument that grass-fed beef is higher in vitamins A and
E, conjugated linoleic acid, and omega-3 fatty acids when lipids
are compared on a gram of fatty acid/gram of lipid basis. In
general, grass-fed cattle are slaughtered at lighter weights
than grain-fed beef, producing leaner, lower fat carcasses overall,
thus having an overall lower percentage of fat and higher portion
of favorable unsaturated fatty acids.3
What Dietitians Need to Know
While in the past dietitians typically reined in their nutrition
advice to safe territory, they now find themselves bombarded
with questions ranging from the nutritional facts about artisan
products to the benefits of sustainable, local foods. Not only
might dietitians be pressed upon to discuss these issues with
the public, but they may also need to have a better understanding
of the food system—from the soil to the plate. After all,
the organic and local food movement appears to be here to stay.
Givens reports that for its 20th anniversary in 2005, the OTA
surveyed industry research organizations and long-time member
companies to ask them to envision the organic industry in the
year 2025, adding, “Their responses predicted that organic
products would be commonplace and would be sold anywhere and
everywhere by 2025.”
“Dietitians are becoming more comfortable with exploring
what happens to food before it arrives in the grocery store,”
says Forbord. “We must continually enhance our knowledge
of food systems to maintain our position as the food and nutrition
experts. Our clients and patients are making food choices for
reasons beyond nutrient content. To maintain credibility, we
need to increase our understanding of the deeper values that
are mirrored by food choices. If we are up to the challenge,
dietitians will have a vital role to play in emerging food systems.”
— Sharon Palmer, RD, is a contributing editor at
Today’s Dietitian and a freelance food
and nutrition writer in southern California.
Organic
Beef — Natural Meat Steaks Its Claim