Grassfed Beef
Better for the Environment
It
should come as no surprise that animals raised in their natural
environment are better for the environment.
Animals raised on pasture:
Enhance
soil and stream conservation
Increase wetlands
Stimulate more vigorous native plant growth
Increase perennial grasses
Slow global
warming -
Grazed land store
more carbon than any other source (row crop, wood lot,
un-grazed grass).
Pastured animals
return nutrients directly to the soil
by self-fertilizing,
thus reducing the need for chemical fertilizers. In
contrast, all the feed given to cattle in a feedlot must be
grown elsewhere. The nutrients which are removed from the
soil at harvest time, must be replaced with either chemical
fertilizers or other animal waste. In the Midwest,
this practice has resulted in large quantities of nitrogen
run-off flowing down the Mississippi river and eventually
into the Gulf of Mexico. There is now a thousand mile
dead zone in the Gulf where all forms of life are absent.
Feedlots are a
serious environmental issue
because of the water
and waste that comes from them. These feedlot
"by-products" contain hormones and
antibiotics that find
their way into our environment. Downstream from
feedlots, researchers are discovering fish with odd sexual
characteristics.
Grassfed cattle
require limited use of fossil fuels
for production and
feed delivery. Twenty percent of our imported
petroleum is used in agriculture. It currently
requires over 250 gallons of fossil fuel to finish one
American Steer, that calculates out to a 1/2 gallon of fuel
to produce 1 pound of beef. Grain feeding turns beef
cattle into fossil fuel guzzlers. In contrast,
grassfed beef runs almost entirely on solar energy.
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