The Grass is Always Greener

Driving around the Hudson Valley, one is afforded a familiar and reassuring sight: herds of peaceful cattle grazing in verdant fields. It just seems so natural, looks so right. And, in fact, it is. Grass—an umbrella description for the hay, timothy, alfalfa, and weeds that cattle eat in fields—is exactly what cows are designed to eat. They have four stomachs that are ideally suited for processing large quantities of high fiber, low-nutrition grass. They eat lots of it, process it slowly, and generally lead a low-stress country life.

But this type of existence is in sharp contrast to how the vast majority of beef cattle in America are raised. The commercial meat industry sends cattle to feedlots for “finishing”—a super-quick fattening up. At these feedlots, where the cattle are jammed together in a very unherdlike manner, they are fed a diet of nutrient-rich grain and feed supplements (often made from ground up cattle parts), and even hormones to stimulate growth.

It’s a diet that they are ill-designed to digest, and this unnatural situation causes bovine health problems, including ulcers of the liver from the too-rich diet, and various infections that result from the ulcers and the unsanitary conditions created by too much manure in a confined place. So, in addition to hormones for growth, commercially raised cattle are routinely given antibiotics to fight these infections. In fact, these practices are so prevalent that more than half of both the bicarbonate of soda (to neutralize the ulcer-causing acid) and over 60 percent of the antibiotics produced in this country are fed to livestock.

The result is that most of the beef we buy in the supermarket contains lots of things we’d rather not get from our meat. Not to mention mad cow disease (technically known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or bse), which is found in nerve tissues that can find their way into commercially processed ground beef as well as into the supplements fed in feedlots.

What can the meat eaters among us do? Think back to those happily grazing local herds. The good news is that there are a growing number of farmers who raise and sell grass-fed beef. Not only is this pasture-raised meat a solution that’s healthy for the consumer, but it’s healthier for the cows and for the environment too.

Stephen Kaye’s Lithgow Cottage Farm in Millbrook, New York, is a prime example of this new/old type of farming. “We farm in the traditional way rather than on the industrial model,” Kaye explains. “The quality of the animal depends on the quality of the grass and forages that they are fed.” This quality does not go unnoticed; Lithgow Cottage Farm counts approximately 20 restaurants (locally and in New York City) as steady customers. Kaye says that the meat tastes better and smells better, and it seems that the chefs know it. “When I take this meat to the chefs, some of them just handle it and smell it because it’s so different from commercial meat.”