Grass-fed "free-range" beef cattle worse for the environment and no healthier?

[JohnOfSheffield]

Good God people; Net CO2 pails in comparison to Methane as a green house gas.

Yes and as they both stay in the atmosphere just as long... oh wait, your theory fails based on basic science....

Third grade science, you just failed.

 

[Fern]

I see we can all get together around the dinner table hahahaha

Food trumps politics in my book.

Fern

 

[JS80]

Food trumps politics in my book.

Fern

Did you just find the secret to world peace?

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

Food trumps politics in my book.

Fern

A shared meal was how our ancestors dealt with their problems, they could be right or wrong, they shared a meal and they were fine.

It became a long lasting tradition which is still in use in most parts of the world, even down to us commoners, if you buy your enemy a meal, chances are, you'll finish that meal as friends.

Unfortunantly it's hard to ask people who are shooting at you so i rarely get the opportunity.

 

[theeedude]

I'd rather eat free range meat, even if it takes longer to grow. You are free to buy what you want for yourself.

 

[Zorkorist]

It is all about the animal, IMHO. I appreciate that at the end I plan on eating them, but to design their life to be as horrific as possible, so I can eat them sooner, or cheaper is immoral, IMHO.

I see little difference between a cow, pig, dog or cat.

A little basic humanity is due to each of those animals. Not much more, but at least basic humanity.

Maybe we could stop feeding dogs and cats, and give pigs and cows and chickens a better life.

-John

 

[DrPizza]

I'm not sure how corn fed is better for the environment than grass fed. I have friends and relatives who raise them. And, I'll probably be picking up a couple of calves this spring to raise for beef. Grass fed = effortless except for making sure the fencing stays in good shape. They can free range all they want, at least until the snow is blowing. They can drink from the stream. No difference between them walking around & deer walking around.

 

[Turin39789]

Fair enough, but John Stossel isn't the most honest guy out there either. He's pushing a libertarian agenda, and from what I've read & watched of his he relies heavily on anecdotes and the selective use of data.

John Stossel is Amused?

It's not a bad thing.

I've seen this issue before and have always been amazed that some people prefer grass-fed. I've never before, in this country or the others I've lived in, seen grass fed beef prized above corn fed.

I find it amazing. What was once widely considered lowly is now prized.

For those paying extra (that thought makes me shake my head) for grass fed, be careful. Not even in FL can you depend on grass all year round. They've gotta be fed something else during the Winter months. Might be hay (dried grass), might not.

Fern

I sure loved me some grass fed beef in Argentina. Steak twice a day!

 

[manimal]

I spent lots of time in south america on business and I have to say beef-grass fed beef-with no hormones in argentina and chile are the BEST in the world...seriously you have not had meat till you have an argentian lomo rare.....


omg I could fap to argentinian lomo...

 

[Turin39789]

I spent lots of time in south america on business and I have to say beef-grass fed beef-with no hormones in argentina and chile are the BEST in the world...seriously you have not had meat till you have an argentian lomo rare.....


omg I could fap to argentinian lomo...

om nom nom nom

 

[manimal]

om nom nom nom

so you have tasted the tasty meat?


when the wife and I went last year we stayed at a 4 star hotel for 70 bucks a night-exchange was GREAT at the time- and went to the TOP steak house in Buenos Aires and shared a 6 lb lomo with two bottles of reserve 10 year old malbec for 80 bucks...omg argentinia is good bargain to vacation...

sei italiano torino?

thats are you italian turin in italian ^^

 

[zephyrprime]

The bolded statement isn't meaningful in terms of net contribution to atmospheric CO2. Yes, if a cow lives twice as long it emits (say) twice as much CO2 in the form of methane.

Methane is not CO2. The cow would emit more CO2 because it would be breathing longer.

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

I spent lots of time in south america on business and I have to say beef-grass fed beef-with no hormones in argentina and chile are the BEST in the world...seriously you have not had meat till you have an argentian lomo rare.....


omg I could fap to argentinian lomo...

Nonononono.... listen to Spidey, he knows better, corn fed and shot full of hormones and antibiotics while standing around all their life is the best way to produce juicy tasty meat AND it's better to force feed them corn via high production farming than to use vast fields of slower growing co2 consuming grass too.

Mostly because... well some "professor" said so and if they agree with what a "professor" says they are all sciency and shit too so you gotta believe them.

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

Methane is not CO2. The cow would emit more CO2 because it would be breathing longer.

You... you can't possibly be serious? No one is that stupid, not even you.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Methane (CH4) also contains carbon...

But it is a much stronger green house gas, despite is much lower molecular mass;

1 ton of methane > 1 ton of co2 vis a vis the green house effect.

Yes and as they both stay in the atmosphere just as long... oh wait, your theory fails based on basic science....

A new article in The Ecologist shines a light on methane, the often-ignored greenhouse gas that is produced from both natural and human sources. Methane’s contribution to the greenhouse effect is estimated to be about 18% compared to CO2′s 63%. Yet it is also 20-30 times more potent than CO2 and has only one tenth the atmospheric life span. This means that methane emission reduction could have a significantly more immediate effect on curbing climate change than cutting CO2, which hasn’t happened yet on a global level anyway.

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/415289/methane_the_quick_fix_for_global_warming.html

Hopefully we can have a respectful conversation about modern science, instead of trying to use 3rd grade science-books to argue from.

 

[Zorba]

The bolded statement isn't meaningful in terms of net contribution to atmospheric CO2. Yes, if a cow lives twice as long it emits (say) twice as much CO2 in the form of methane. But it consumes twice as much grass, and that grass captured twice as much carbon from the atmosphere. This is an equilibrium state. This would be true even if a grass-fed cow were NEVER slaughtered and lived to a ripe old age.

Injecting "new" carbon into the atmosphere can occur only if fossil fuels stored in the earth are burned (or to a very small extent, if volcanoes erupt) and/or if the CO2 held in living things decreases (for example, if rain forests are turned into deserts).

Using corn for cattle feed depends on burning fossil fuels, which breaks the equilibrium, so corn-fed cattle are not as carbon friendly as grass-fed cattle. (Edit: This assumes "natural" grass grazing in situ. That is, this assumes that the grass used as cattle feed isn't grown as a commodity and shipped to cow-producing areas.)

FYI,

Methane (AKA natural gas) = CH4, not CO2, they are two completely different gases. Methane has a much higher green house effect than CO2. As far as I know grasses do not absorb methane from the atmosphere, so farts are not "green-house effect" neutral, which is what people really mean when they say "carbon neutral."

The assumption that a grass fed cow and corn feed cow produce the same amount of CH4 per day is probably a bad assumption, though.

 

[xenolith]

I sometimes like many of Stossel's libertarian views, but he can go off the deep end with shit like this. Doesn't he also want heroin and crack to be legalized too?

He looked very bias in this report. He brought in some corporate spokesman of the food industrial complex to shill their talking points without any real counter-spokesman.

Was the corporate spokesman actually trying to convince us that stressed, corn-fed, feed-lot cows that are juiced up on synthetic bST and antibiotics while standing in their own e. coli infested feces a food product equal to that of natural grass-fed cows free to roam on sun-laden fields like God intended? It was truly unbelievable... especially when these large, powerful, secretive food corporations present their products with this illusion that it's being raised in a wholesome family farm settings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqQVll-MP3I&feature=related

And I got a real kick out of how the corporate shill kept saying it's FDA approved this... and it's FDA approved that... as if the FDA, the food industrial complex, and the drug industrial complex are not all the same greedy, profit-first driven entity working in concert.

hah hahahahaha

This, while Stossel brought in two of the most inarticulate organic food representatives I had ever seen. They couldn't string a single thought together in their defense. They sounded like they had the same pathetic I.Q. as that of Alvin Green, combined.

Stossel advises that we should all stop waisting our money on "organic food". But isn't Stossel all for the free-market? Isn't his mantra, "let the free-market decide what products are good or bad for us, and which businesses should succeed or fail"?

This certainly makes me look at Stossel in a whole new (disappointing) light.

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

But it is a much stronger green house gas, despite is much lower molecular mass;

1 ton of methane > 1 ton of co2 vis a vis the green house effect.



A new article in The Ecologist shines a light on methane, the often-ignored greenhouse gas that is produced from both natural and human sources. Methane’s contribution to the greenhouse effect is estimated to be about 18% compared to CO2′s 63%. Yet it is also 20-30 times more potent than CO2 and has only one tenth the atmospheric life span. This means that methane emission reduction could have a significantly more immediate effect on curbing climate change than cutting CO2, which hasn’t happened yet on a global level anyway.

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/415289/methane_the_quick_fix_for_global_warming.html

Hopefully we can have a respectful conversation about modern science, instead of trying to use 3rd grade science-books to argue from.

Are you retarded? One tenth of the lifespan means the accumulation is almost zero, it's irrelevant for any long term prognosis you daft fuck.

Stop posting things and reading things you obviously don't have the capacity to understand.

The very problem with CO2 is the accumulation of it in our athmosphere, which means that it's built up over a long period of time, methane isn't and less methane get into our athmosphere simply because of that, the level that does is negligable.

You can ask any real scientist in the field of molecular chemistry who is not involved how that works for an unbiased answer.

 

[JMapleton]

I'll bet you dinner you couldn't tell between grass vs corn fed prime in a blind test.

I live in the midwest where cornfed is king and I've ventured out and had grass fed and Texas longhorn cattle. It takes like sh!t.

 

[IamDavid]

After reading the post in this thread I am truely impressed with Anandtech members knowledge of beef.

I've been involved with many blind test test panels trying t determine which "beef" if prefered. Prime/Choice... Grass fed/Grain.. N.A/oher countries..
In the end most people would be suprised by the restults..
Grain fed, upper choice from the midwest wins a vast majority of the time. No panel members ever have a true reason behind why beside "it taste better'. lol

Grass fed cattle from other parts of the world ALWAYS gets beat out. Grass fed has a stange twangy taste.

 

[Codewiz]

I'll bet you dinner you couldn't tell between grass vs corn fed prime in a blind test.

I guarantee you can. My wife's father had no idea I was feeding him anything other than a supermarket steak. I was however feeding him a grass fed steak.

After taking one bite, he asked what and where I got the steak because the texture and taste was so different.

Now whether you think grass fed tastes better, that is a whole different argument. Grass fed has MUCH MUCH less fat. So cuts like ribeyes are totally different.

 

[manimal]

I guarantee you can. My wife's father had no idea I was feeding him anything other than a supermarket steak. I was however feeding him a grass fed steak.

After taking one bite, he asked what and where I got the steak because the texture and taste was so different.

Now whether you think grass fed tastes better, that is a whole different argument. Grass fed has MUCH MUCH less fat. So cuts like ribeyes are totally different.

Texture is very different. So is taste...

Its alot like Coke sold in the US vs Coke sold in the rest of the world....the fake sugar stuff is much sweeter and has become what people expect and thus like..


http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/hormones/

Ya I know the site is totally granola but you get the picture..

 

[shira]

After reading the post in this thread I am truely impressed with Anandtech members knowledge of beef.

I've been involved with many blind test test panels trying t determine which "beef" if prefered. Prime/Choice... Grass fed/Grain.. N.A/oher countries..
In the end most people would be suprised by the restults..
Grain fed, upper choice from the midwest wins a vast majority of the time. No panel members ever have a true reason behind why beside "it taste better'. lol

Grass fed cattle from other parts of the world ALWAYS gets beat out. Grass fed has a stange twangy taste.

I have no doubt you're correct. Lot's of people prefer the taste of French or sourdough bread to whole wheat bread, too. But there are criteria other than just taste for choosing the foods we eat.

 

[Hacp]

Who the fuck cares about how the cows feel? I just want a nice tasty slab of steak for the cheapest price possible. GIMME MY STEAK! For cheap.

 

[MooseNSquirrel]

How many of you actually readthe damn paper?

NO mention of fertilizers, antibiotics, etc.

It certainly takes less energy to write a paper which ignores certain facts.