The anti-grazer movement?

[near horse]

Somehow I seem to trip over stuff that just “torques my shorts!” And this little diddy from Iowa, particularly from their land grant university – Iowa State, has ruined another pair of my underwear. Read the story below from The Stockman Grass Farmer” and Allan Nation:

Pro-Grassfed Statement Creates Controversy at Iowa State Thursday, 02 December 2010

Apparently thinking that cattle should eat grass can cost you your job at Iowa State University. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Ricardo Salvador, who was thought to be the front-runner for the directorship of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State, made an off-the-cuff remark that seemed to endorse grassfed beef. He said that he was in favor of beef “produced in the natural way that meat should be produced, which is on lands suitable for grasses and perennial crops.” This apparently brought the wrath of the Iowa Farm Bureau down on him and he was passed over for the post. The president of Iowa State said he thought it was important for the center’s director to “walk the middle ground” and not antagonize conventional agriculture interests. When the Dean of the school of agriculture was asked by The Chronicle whether or not she thought cattle were evolved to eat grass, she replied, “I don’t have an opinion on that statement.” Dennis Keeney, the Leopold Center’s first director, said he firmly believed that cows should eat grass but said the real point of the matter was whether or not the Leopold Center has the independence, not only to criticize conventional agriculture if necessary, but also to state facts about crops are grown and livestock is raised. Pressure from outside groups, and from supporters of conventional agriculture within the university, may make it so that “the center can’t be governed anymore.” Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau, said the organization “must aggressively respond to extremists who want to drag agriculture back to the day of 40 acres and a mule.”

I had to add this one as well – shows how much clout conventional ag has with our search for “the truth” at some of our universities. Money is power.

Texas A&M Refuses To Produce Grassfed Beef Study
Friday, 23 July 2010
Requests for a copy of the original study cited in a recent press release from Texas A&M Agrilife Research pooh-poohing the health benefits of grassfed beef have gone unanswered. The study reputedly showed that eating five grassfed beef hamburgers a week for five weeks did not lower the cholesterol of the participants and was widely bandied about by pro-feedlot agribusiness. The study was paid for by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association whose primary support comes from feedlots. Andrew Gunther of Animal Welfare Approved Beef wrote in the American Grassfed Association newspaper Open Pastures that his requests for a copy of the study to Dr. Stephen Smith, the author of the paper; the dean of Texas A&M’s School of Agriculture and the NCBA had produced no results. Gunther said the British research cited only concerned ten individuals whose diet was totally unsupervised and all of whom had high cholesterol levels before the study began. The Texas study admittedly only covered 27 people who ate five burgers a week for only five weeks at a time. Again, the rest of their diet was totally unsupervised. “What other food did they eat?” Gunther asked. “And what about the health status and initial cholesterol results of the volunteers? We just don’t know.” A form letter from Dr. Smith said the study was currently under peer review for possible academic publishing but several nutritional researchers told Gunther that the study group was way too small to produce any meaningful results. “Sorry guys, but it is time to put up or shut up if you want consumers to believe your science,” Gunther said. “Based upon what is already published we know that the science shows that grassfed products are far healthier than grainfed as grassfed products contain higher levels of vitamin E and omega 3. Grass beef is unlikely to be carrying E coli 157 – sadly not something you can say of all grainfed, feedlot beef.”

I’m not picking sides on the health benefits of grassfed beef but at least present the data Aggies!

[Tim Harrigan]

@near horse 25295 wrote:

Dennis Keeney, the Leopold Center’s first director, said he firmly believed that cows should eat grass but said the real point of the matter was whether or not the Leopold Center has the independence, not only to criticize conventional agriculture if necessary, but also to state facts about crops are grown and livestock is raised. Pressure from outside groups, and from supporters of conventional agriculture within the university, may make it so that “the center can’t be governed anymore.”

This does seem to be the heart of the matter. It seems there are always organizations that encourage discussion and diversity of opinion, and organizations that see discussion and diversity of opinion as a threat to the party line. At the institutional level it takes courage on the part of upper-level administrators to protect your culture and values. Sometimes you see it.

[near horse]

Tim,

I agree and I hope you don’t think I was indicting all of academia but those large producer groups carry a lot of clout with both the university administrators and the state legislature that provides monies for the university. It’s just unfortunate that economics has overshadowed our quest to find the “truth” and in the end, it doesn’t really change facts but distorts or conceals them.

[Tim Harrigan]

I don’t see this getting any better in the current and foreseeable political climate.

[J-L]

Interesting topic. It’s really a tough one for me to mull over. Being in the cattle business it hit’s home that there is not an easy way to look at this. I’ve been looking into putting a toe in the water with some organic, grass fed beef. It’s still a small niche for most producers.
Problems for us in the mountain west;

1) Slaughter capabilities for small to medium size herds.
2) Getting that product to the masses.
3) Marketing that beef for a premium in a recession.

Like it or not, the guys who buy my two semi loads of calves are hanging it out in the wind just as much as me, maybe more. I don’t know if I want to incur their risk along with what I already have.
I also look at many places that cattle are raised in the west and don’t see the type of feed necessary to make a good grass fat carcass. I do think I could graze on alfalfa for a couple weeks prior to slaughter and help that aspect of things. That’s feasible.
Still, how many can I market and have processed locally? About 10 head working with local butchers. Sure ain’t going to make a living on that. Shipping them down to Smith’s might be an option (close to SLC) if they could fit it in.
I also wonder how far reaching it would be (if feed lots were eliminated) in regards to grain markets and many farms not matter what the size? That’s a vast amount of grain that we are talking about.
So far I have been using this as a way to market my late calves the following summer for a bit of a premium. Can’t see it changing that much in the near future.
Every way I look at the situation just raises more questions for me.

P.S. Sounds like a very half-assed study you told us about, I have to agree.

[near horse]

Wes,

I know where you’re coming from and I hope it was clear that what I was railing about was the attempt to keep the information – good or bad – from being available. All I ask is that I have a shot at all the info, unbiased, and then I can make an informed decision as to how to proceed with my operation.

Grass-fed, like organic and natural and all that has gotten a lot of hype making a variety of claims that some folks use to market the product. IMHO – what I like about grassfed production is that it allows some of us smaller producers to stay in the game, keep more of the profits and most importantly, continue farming/ranching in a way that is good for our land.

I visited w/ the meat dept manager at the local food co-op yesterday and he still had the same issues that the Safeway manager would have – uniformity of product and a steady supply. Uniformity might not be so much of a challenge as steady supply would. It’s pretty hard for a small guy to provide say 20 carcasses per month all year round.

So, it seems like we’ve got to do some creative thinking in how we both produce and market – and might have to form some cooperative or alliance with other small producers in our area.

Those big plants are dealing in volume, like much of ag today. So small margins. ones small producers can’t come close to tolerating, can still make big money due to sheer numbers. As I’ve mentioned in other posts here, IBP in Pasco WA (now Tyson) kills 2050 per day (not sure if that’s in one shift or two) or was in 1999. That’s a lot of cattle. In the main office there are guys on the phone the whole day selling off the days production – the primary “money cuts” ribeye, tenderloin etc are easy to move and bring a good price and then they start a “fire sale” on the lower value cuts down to burger. It needs to move. Crazy stuff.

At the end of the day, a lot of work (and risk) goes into raising cattle from calves to feeders – work that isn’t compensated well enough in my mind. S**t – you’re the one out feeding and calving in subfreezing weather, you know what I’m saying.

So, have your heifers started calving yet or do you wait longer into early spring due to your weather in WY? At the UI we started in early Feb w/ heifers and then cows came on later and ran into Mar – but we’re warmer than where you are.

[J-L]

I think you’re on the right track with the co-op idea. That would be the only way to make it work. Network of smaller producers that would raise a similar kind of product. The year around availability is a problem for sure.
I have looked into the cow model that will work for a grass fat. They are a smaller framed, fleshy angus cow (some good red angus too). I have been breeding quite a little of that type from a fellow by the name of Tim Ohlde. He actually has been working in other countries with his genetics to make grass fed cattle work. My problem here is altitude. We run into pulmonary problems with many angus bloodlines. It starts showing up at 6000′ or so and we run from 7000′ up. Still there have been bulls that I can and do use.

Funny you ask about the heifers starting. I gathered 15 head and put in the field by the barn and will probably start night checks in the next few days. Ugh! They’re not really due until around the 10th but the low birthweight bulls only cook in the mama about 265 days many times. I feel the sleep deprivation setting in already.
My cows are due around the 25th of March. That’s about as far back into winter as I want to calve here. We freeze enough calves at that time and lose some ears and tails even into April quite a ways.

Never took any offense at your post and I do like to hear other ideas on all this. It will take different perspectives to tackle many of the problems we are going to be faced with. Never hurts to have a different angle. I agree that the info is lacking in that report.

[Author]

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