Thanks for the post. I'm glad to be invited to be part of such an important part of our industry.  

Grassfed has a better Omega3 to Omega 6 ratio.  There is loads of data on Jo Robinson's site www.eatwild.com  for the stats on this.
We at AGA don't engage in the "them versus us" debate.  Anything we can do to support American Family Farms and Farmers  we do.   The social and environmental upsides to keeping animals on pasture are a major part of what we focus on. Keeping rural economies healthy by supporting all the industries that help that landscape alive and economically viable is important to us.  If you have a chance, read Dr. Patricia Whisnant's blog on her website as to why they bought their processor when it was going to be shut down. There were butchers there that had been cutting meat for decades, and keeping those jobs in the community was important to them. www.americangrassfedbeef.com

Thanks for the opportunity.  Glad to be here! 

 Credit for the information in this post is given to Jo Robinson and www.eatwild.com

A major benefit of raising animals on pasture is that their products are healthier for you. For example, compared with feedlot meat, meat from grass-fed beef, bison, lamb and goats has less total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories. It also has more vitamin E, beta-carotene, vitamin C, and a number of health-promoting fats, including omega-3 fatty acids and “conjugated linoleic acid,” or CLA.  Because meat from grass-fed animals is lower in fat than meat from grain-fed animals, it is also lower in calories. (Fat has 9 calories per gram, compared with only 4 calories for protein and carbohydrates. The greater the fat content, the greater the number of calories.) As an example, a 6-ounce steak from a grass-finished steer can have 100 fewer calories than a 6-ounce steak from a grain-fed steer. If you eat a typical amount of beef (66.5 pounds a year), switching to lean grassfed beef will save you 17,733 calories a year—without requiring any willpower or change in your eating habits. If everything else in your diet remains constant, you'll lose about six pounds a year. If all Americans switched to grassfed meat, our national epidemic of obesity might diminish.

In the past few years, producers of grass-fed beef have been looking for ways to increase the amount of marbling in the meat so that consumers will have a more familiar product. But even these fatter cuts of grass-fed beef are lower in fat and calories than beef from grain-fed cattle.

Extra Omega-3s. Meat from grass-fed animals has two to four times more omega-3 fatty acids than meat from grain- fed animals. Omega-3s are called "good fats" because they play a vital role in every cell and system in your body. For example, of all the fats, they are the most heart-friendly. People who have ample amounts of omega-3s in their diet are less likely to have high blood pressure or an irregular heartbeat. Remarkably, they are 50 percent less likely to suffer a heart attack.[3] Omega-3s are essential for your brain as well. People with a diet rich in omega-3s are less likely to suffer from depression, schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder (hyperactivity), or Alzheimer's disease.[4]

Another benefit of omega-3s is that they may reduce your risk of cancer. In animal studies, these essential fats have slowed the growth of a wide array of cancers and also kept them from spreading.[5] Although the human research is in its infancy, researchers have shown that omega-3s can slow or even reverse the extreme weight loss that accompanies advanced cancer and also hasten recovery from surgery.[6,7]

Omega-3s are most abundant in seafood and certain nuts and seeds such as flaxseeds and walnuts, but they are also found in animals raised on pasture. The reason is simple. Omega-3s are formed in the chloroplasts of green leaves and algae. Sixty percent of the fatty acids in grass are omega-3s. When cattle are taken off omega-3 rich grass and shipped to a feedlot to be fattened on omega-3 poor grain, they begin losing their store of this beneficial fat. Each day that an animal spends in the feedlot, its supply of omega-3s is diminished.[8] The graph below illustrates this steady decline.

Carrie wrote:

---

 

........Now that grassfed is becoming more and more popular, the labeling requirements for grassfed by the USDA have allowed some major loopholes.  The grassfed that is being allowed to be labeled grassfed may or may not be what the consumer believes they are buying. Our certification allows the customer/consumer to be assured that what they are buying is 100% grassfed.............

---

We sell a lot more ground grassfed than grass/grain I,d say almost 90% grassfed if not more based on ground alone. This doesnt include burgers though.

The omega 3 info is useful to know and to me seems a better way of explaining how healthier it is rather than just saying its leaner or looks leaner.

Back home in Ireland beef is raised most pasture grass fed and silage and grain supplements in the winter. There's no reason to go buying lots of grain feed as it's an added cost. Which is why I thought the only real difference would be in taste and appearance. In the same way a wild catfish tastes different than a farmed one, what they eat determines how they taste, and in the same way some welsh lamb has a flavour if it is raised on the hills near the sea.

I notice the difference in the taste of ground beef here and indeed I noticed the difference between UK and Irish beef. The grass fed ground here is more like the everyday cheap mince we get back home in appearance and taste but double the price here in the US. maybe if grass fed became more popular its relative price would drop.


Thanks for the info.

welcome aboard... carrie - dont take this post the wrong way, just being honest

if the public adopted only grassfed meats- half my stores would be out of business, and many cutters out of work...the grass fed beef available now is much more expensive, and price is the main sales driver..

i dont mean to be a stickler here,,,but we, as an industry have to be very very careful, parsing different segments out- because even if you dont want to dump on western beef- it certainly does,,and the majority of meatcutters, cut western beef in the northeast


the beef industry gets shyt on daily/weekly by the liberal media and the angry vegans.... they love words and phrases "confinement" raised in feedlots"
these words grind on the average female shopper-thinking regular, traditional, western beef is harmful for their family,,

people are eating less and less beef because of the propaganda in the air-why do i sound like an alarmist? i still have customers asking about pink slime,,,,and many customers stopped buying ground meats altogether because the media scared the hell out of them..
beef prices have jumped alot in the last month,,, which in turn, means less and less beef sold,,

ten yrs ago, i pushed a local producer- native maine beef... cost a little more,,but we put signs all over the red meat sections,,,,of how much better it is,,,and guess what?? the local beef was much more expensive didnt sell much,,,,but because of the signage,,customers thought there was something wrong with the western beef...


there is a place for grass fed beef,,, im all for trying new variety if it promotes the whole industry- maine is a poor state- price drives the market up here


just beware, the messages we put out to the public, if our bread and butter is western beef,, protect that image also..

Carrie wrote:

---

Thanks for the post. I'm glad to be invited to be part of such an important part of our industry.  

Grassfed has a better Omega3 to Omega 6 ratio.  There is loads of data on Jo Robinson's site www.eatwild.com  for the stats on this.
We at AGA don't engage in the "them versus us" debate.  Anything we can do to support American Family Farms and Farmers  we do.   The social and environmental upsides to keeping animals on pasture are a major part of what we focus on. Keeping rural economies healthy by supporting all the industries that help that landscape alive and economically viable is important to us.  If you have a chance, read Dr. Patricia Whisnant's blog on her website as to why they bought their processor when it was going to be shut down. There were butchers there that had been cutting meat for decades, and keeping those jobs in the community was important to them. www.americangrassfedbeef.com

Thanks for the opportunity.  Glad to be here! 

Carrie, 

Welcome to the club, its a great and diverse group here and that is part of what makes it so great, the other part is Leon's insights and humor. 

I have to admit at first when I saw you are with a grass-fed association I was very hesitant and skeptical but was very happy to read in your post above that you do not participate in "them vs us". We are all in this together and we need to be respectful and not throw each other under the bus so to speak. We have an entire world to feed and need to make the most out of every resource we have been entrusted with!

To me this even includes LFTB. When so many others in the industry threw that segment under the bus it hurt us ALL.  That is a proven safe way to reclaim trimmings for burger that would have otherwise been lost. Millions of pounds not being used. That goes in the direct opposite of what whole animal butchery stands for. But enough of a soap box and welcome, glad to have you aboard!!

 

---