Grassfed beef?
Beef Baloney
The good news: You might start seeing beef labeled “grassfed” in your local grocer’s meat section.
The bad news: Don’t believe it.
The new math
Have government regulators lost their minds? (That’s rhetorical, of course. The answer is obvious.)
For instance
There are two reasons we’re seeing so many products with the promise “zero trans-fats” printed on the labels:
- Trans-fats are very unhealthy
- The FDA now allows any product that contains less than 0.5 grams of trans-fats per serving to make the “zero” claim. That’s right: 0.499999999999 = zero, according to the math geniuses at the FDA. Eat a couple of 0.49 servings and your zero trans-fat intake quickly stops being zero.
Don’t you want to just throttle these guys!
Apparently the folks over at the U.S. Department of Agriculture got wind of the trans-fat scam and figured they’d pull the same trick.
With more and more people realizing that grassfed cows produce far more nutritious and safer meat, the USDA has proposed a new rule for using the word “grassfed” on meat products. Here’s how Dr. Patricia Whisnant, president of the American Grassfed Association (AGA) describes the doubletalk: “The USDA proposal would allow animals to be kept in confinement, fed harvested forage, corn silage and other grains that have not been separated from their stalks. If this proposed claim passes into regulation you could see feedlot beef fed antibiotics, hormones and legally be labeled grassfed.”
Orwell at the USDA
A recent New York Times report on the USDA proposal noted that agency officials asked the AGA for input on the new rule. The AGA response defined a grassfed animal as one that’s fed in pastures (except in emergencies) and is not given antibiotics or growth hormones.
I wonder what part of “fed in pastures” the USDA guys didn’t understand.
What’s really infuriating is WHY the animals need antibiotics. This past June, when Eric Schlosser, the author of “Fast Food Nation,” addressed an AGA conference, he explained that a few decades ago the government came up with a plan for surplus corn. They convinced ranchers and farmers to feed the corn to cows. Great idea! Just one little problem.
As quoted in the Denver Post, Mr. Schlosser continued: “Cows don’t normally eat corn. They can’t digest it. So we had to feed them antibiotics because they were using up valuable energy to process corn, resulting in weakened immune systems.”
Incredible! Years ago some government bureaucrats solved an excess corn problem, and in the process transformed the beef supply. Which, in turn, also transformed nutrition for millions of people over most of the 20th Century, lowering overall intake of omega-3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid, while increasing antibiotic intake.
And NOW some government bureaucrats want to redefine “grassfed” to dupe consumers into believing we’re getting the kind of nutrition we should have been getting all along!
It’s enough to make you want to put them out to pasture!
Sources:
Open letter from Dr. Patricia Whisnant, president of the American Grassfed Association, 7/26/06, americangrassfed.org
“USDA Rule Proposal Stirs Definitive Dispute” Marian Burros, The New York Times, 7/26/06, nytimes.com
“Grassfed Cows may Yield Healthier Meat” Ellen Sweets, The Denver Post, 8/2/06, azstarnet.com
