Beef - it's what's for dinner?

[bae]

A friend of mine who raises cattle (and pigs, and fishes salmon/crab, and grows oyster seed, and farms clams/oysters, and makes sausage, and ...) recently gave a presentation to our local food coop on the economics of cattle raising - here's a summary our newsletter just put up:

http://www.orcasfood.coop/economic_realities_of_grass_fed_beef?utm_campaign= pastured_meat&utm_medium=email&utm_source=orcasislandcommunityfoodcoop

----------------------------

On Sunday January 25th Nick & Sara Jones of Jones Family Farm brought their whole family over from Lopez to talk with Co-op members about the realities of Grass Fed Cattle Ranching. Thank you to those who attended and participated. For those of you who were unable to make it here is a quick recap of the information shared.

There was not a lot of discussion on the tremendous health benefits of grass fed beef over feedlot beef because attendees were well versed on this topic. But there was a lot of discussion on why grass fed beef costs more than Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (feed lot) Beef or CAFO Beef. Here are the main points discussed.

CAFO Beef generates an average profit of $15 per cow, that is just over ¢1 of profit per pound. They make up for this incredibly low profit margin with government subsidies and extremely high volume. Industrial scaled farm conglomerates process up to 1,000,000 head of CAFO beef each year. Jones Family Farm is the largest fresh, direct market, pastured beef producer in San Juan County and one of the largest in Western Washington. They processed less than 50 head of beef last year.
The average cost of bringing a cow to market (slaughter, cut & wrap) for CAFO producers is $50 per cow. The average cost for a small farm like the Jones’s is $650. The 1300% difference in the cost of getting a live animal to packaged steaks is due to hefty government subsidies (paid for by tax dollars) and the utilization of a poorly paid and unskilled labor force.


CAFO Beef farming is a high capital low labor endeavor. Considerable money is spent on technology and machinery. This enables CAFO’s to operate with a very small, low paid and unskilled work force. Up until the 1970’s meat cutting and packing was one of the lowest turnover industrial jobs in America on par with the automobile industry. It was hard dangerous work, but it was well paid, stable and provided full health benefits. In the 70’s with the upgrades in available technology and automated equipment CAFO producers were able to break the unions, reduce wages and dissolve most benefit packages. Today meat packing runs at an average turnover rate of 90-100% annually and is considered by Labor & Industries to be the most dangerous job in America.


Raising animals on natural pasture is a high labor endeavor that requires a skilled labor force to manage. The meat processing plants utilized by small farming operations still employ a stable work force of skilled staff.


Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations require 1 acre per 100 head of cattle. This means that a 1000+ pound grazing animal lives a substantial portion of its life in only 200-300 square feet with the remaining space being utilized for fencing, troughs, alleyways and feed roads. Pastured beef requires 1½-2 acres of land per cow (shared 2 to 1 between grazing land and hay/alfalfa production).


CAFO Beef require approximately 6 lbs of fuel to produce 1 lb of meat. Pasture raising beef requires approximately 8 ounces of fuel to produce 1 lb of meat.

On the super market shelf, commodity beef appears to be the better deal. Those low sticker prices are misleading. There are a multitude of hidden costs that affect all of us fiscally, economically, socially and environmentally that must be taken into consideration when making our purchasing choices.

Stay tuned for an upcoming article discussing the many benefits of pastured beef in “The Dirt”.

[JaneV2.0]

I buy more pastured beef as it becomes available. I don't mind paying more for quality when it's warranted. Grazing can do wonders for the soil.

[catherine]

Thanks for this.

For Christmas I asked for ANY book published by Chelsea Green Publishing (http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore), and my son gave me a book that I at first thought was an odd choice for a 90% vegetarian: Defending Beef (http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/defending_beef:paperback). But actually, it's a fantastic book for anyone who really wants the facts and figures on how cattle raising, when done the right way, can benefit the environment and provide invaluable nutrition. Interestingly, the author is an environmental lawyer and vegetarian--her work is really well research and written.

Your article is also great because every time I pay money for the grassfed beef that I DO eat, DH shakes his head, rants about how ridiculous it is and talks about how Charlie the cattleman is "laughing all the way to the bank."--So, you've given GREAT ammunition for the next debate :)

[SteveinMN]

Yes, thanks, bae.

It has long really bugged me that, while farmers (at least here in the upper Midwest) are a red-state lot, they're more than happy to accept government money (subsidies, government assumption of costs for their labor, etc.) themselves. It also has long really bugged me that the government takes such a parochial approach to what is still sold as "the family farm" (price floors, etc.) when, in fact, so few are and few other small businesses get that kind of protection. And that we spend so many tax dollars both encouraging wasteful production practices and discouraging consumption for ostensible medical reasons.

Now it really bugs me that the local supermarket offers CAFO stew beef and chuck steaks for $4.99 a pound when my co-op offers pasture-raised stew been and chuck steaks for less than twice that. We don't buy a lot of beef because of the price and CAFO practices. Still....

[Packy]

Don't get me started on this one.

[creaker]

Gave up beef years ago - all mammals actually. I really don't miss it, except for maybe a little bit of salami or prosciutto on the holidays.

It bothers me to see the arm-in-arm relationship of government and these large scale operations, from the subsidies to pushing legislation that will makes it even more costly for smaller operations.

[bae]

Now it really bugs me that the local supermarket offers CAFO stew beef and chuck steaks for $4.99 a pound when my co-op offers pasture-raised stew been and chuck steaks for less than twice that. We don't buy a lot of beef because of the price and CAFO practices. Still....

For reference, a beeve I bought a couple of months ago from a friend who raised it entirely on his own land with no subsidy (other than his land being in the agricultural tax use classification here) and very little supplemental feed cost me $3.50/pound hanging weight, and $0.75/pound cutting/processing from the butcher here. So $4.25/pound, hanging weight.

Hanging weight is about 60% of the live weight of the animal.

Now, yield after cutting/processing is about 60% of the hanging weight. So that $4.25/pound hanging becomes $7.08/pound finished. I do a bit better than that as I ask for a lot of the bones for stock making, and I have the butcher do some creative old-school cuts to the meat to reduce the amount of ground beef/stew meat. Still, $7/pound is a great deal for the steaks/roasts you get, but very expensive for the ground beef/stew meat portion of the animal. Compared to the nearly-free CAFO beef the grocery store has on offer. My butchering costs alone are almost what they charge for commercial ground beef for goodness sake, and I have near-zero transportation/distribution costs.

The cow never travelled more than a mile from where it was born until I brought it home as beef, which involved a several mile boat ride between my friend's island and mine.

[rosarugosa]

Bae: Those are some interesting facts; thanks for sharing. Most of my animal protein is seafood, so the prices for sustainable beef sound reasonable to me in comparison.
Creaker: I'm not quite there, but mammals have become a very small part of my diet at this point.
Packy: I am bitterly disappointed! Come on! Get started!

[Gregg]

So that $4.25/pound hanging becomes $7.08/pound finished.

Slightly lower costs in our area, but that is mainly due to the overall lower costs of living here. Our costs are further reduced because many of the cuts that other customers refuse end up going home with us for free once the butcher's freezer is full (nothing awful about offal in our house).

Over the last few years we've cut probably 75% of the meat out of our diets. We still buy a cow raised and processed as in bae's example when we get low, but most of that meat ends up being served at backyard parties. What's interesting about that is all the comments regarding how good that steak was or how that's the best burger they've had in a long time. People are generally much more willing to assign credit to my (perceived) culinary skills than to the quality of the ingredients. That opinion probably has something to do with living in feedlot cattle country, faithfully supplying the supermarkets of the first world since the industrial revolution.

[catherine]

What's interesting about that is all the comments regarding how good that steak was or how that's the best burger they've had in a long time. People are generally much more willing to assign credit to my (perceived) culinary skills than to the quality of the ingredients. That opinion probably has something to do with living in feedlot cattle country, faithfully supplying the supermarkets of the first world since the industrial revolution.

Unfortunately my DH has the wrong perception--he jumps to the conclusion that grassfed does NOT taste as good because there's less fat. I've tried to explain that it's just a different kind of fat, (and that you have to adjust your cooking method accordingly) but he believes strongly that taste is a function of how much fat, salt and sugar is in food.

[JaneV2.0]

Unfortunately my DH has the wrong perception--he jumps to the conclusion that grassfed does NOT taste as good because there's less fat. I've tried to explain that it's just a different kind of fat, (and that you have to adjust your cooking method accordingly) but he believes strongly that taste is a function of how much fat, salt and sugar is in food.

You can buy grassfed tallow (and lard, and goose fat) now. Maybe if the grassfed beef was cooked in some, it would taste more to his liking? A lot of knowledgeable people think the proscriptions against salt were misguided...That's two out of three. Thank me. ;)

[catherine]

You can buy grassfed tallow (and lard, and goose fat) now. Maybe if the grassfed beef was cooked in some, it would taste more to his liking? A lot of knowledgeable people think the proscriptions against salt were misguided...That's two out of three. Thank me. ;)

In our new grassfed beef broth making adventures, we have been very loathe to throw out that wonderful layer of fat that appears once the broth has been chilled, so we've been saving it to cook with--so I agree with your suggestion, Jane. I think his perceptions are based on politics as much as anything else--"If a liberal treehugger likes it, I can't possibly like it, too." We are definitely a James Carville/Mary Matalin couple.

So, first fat, now salt is vindicated as not the dietary evil we thought it was--so in a couple of years are we likely to see Snickers and Slurpee's added to the USDA Dietary Guidelines?

[ApatheticNoMore]

I try to limit myself to eating red meat (lamb or beef) only every other week. I don't always succeed. How much? Oh 1/3 a pound would suffice but sometimes it's more like 1/2 pound, I could cut back some. I pretty much only eat grassfed meat period. I'm thawing some now, it's chunks of a fairly cheap cut, I think it will be long cooked in wine and tomato sauce, a stifado maybe. Grassfed beef tastes great to me. Of course I went from not eating meat at all to grassfed (from vegetarian to seafood only to omnivore) so it's probably been more than a decade and a half since I had corn fed beef, so there is that. Grassfed meat is meat period.

[JaneV2.0]

...
So, first fat, now salt is vindicated as not the dietary evil we thought it was--so in a couple of years are we likely to see Snickers and Slurpee's added to the USDA Dietary Guidelines?

The USDA seems (like everything else) to be heavily influenced by corporate interests, so it wouldn't surprise me.

[kib]

The USDA seems (like everything else) to be heavily influenced by corporate interests, so it wouldn't surprise me.Isn't that how the sainted Whole Grain got in there?

[JaneV2.0]

Isn't that how the sainted Whole Grain got in there?

That, Ancel Keys, and George McGovern. (Read Nina Teicholz' excellent The Big Fat Surprise.)

[SteveinMN]

Still, $7/pound is a great deal for the steaks/roasts you get, but very expensive for the ground beef/stew meat portion of the animal. Compared to the nearly-free CAFO beef the grocery store has on offer.
Ironically, our co-op, with the costs of butchering, the storefront(s), the living wages, and everything else, is the least-expensive place to buy "the good stuff" at retail. For example, ground beef sold bulk goes for $5-7/lb depending on brand and other provenance. Yet at the warehouse supermarkets (not Costco and I have no idea about Sam's, BJ's, etc.) the same ground beef in a retail one-pound pack goes for $8-9. We don't go through enough beef nor do we have a freezer (yet) to store beef purchased in bulk, though it probably would work out cheaper to buy it that way. But I'm feeling much better about spending the money on good beef because the cheap stuff is turning out to be not such a bargain.

[sweetana3]

Wow, last time I bought any hamburger it was $2 per pound. We dont eat 4 legged animals since hubby swears he cannot digest that type of meat. Enough other things to choose from that it does not bother me any longer.

[Packy]

I think I'm going to move to a remote island in Puget Sound, and set up an operation in which we take animal carcasses, such as dead livestock, roadkilled wildlife, companion animal remains from shelters & vet clinics, and unwanted game from trappers and hunters, move 'em in on barges, and then by a proprietary method using a high-temperature and high pressure system of vats and containers, will reprocess and refine and recycle these inputs(as I choose to call them)into a useful substance. I am exploring various options: maybe it will be an edible foodstuff, either a canned food or a dried material, like jerky or a delicious, zingy pizza topping I tentatively call "Uni-Meat".. Or, we may be able to utilize it to distill an environmentally-friendly and economical motor fuel, for your cars and trucks. Another alternative would be to mix the output(as I choose to call it) with the shredded material from old car and truck tires, to be used as a paving material for highways, driveways, and yes---even school playgrounds! Sounds pretty amazing, no? The reason I'm going to establish my refining & processing on a remote, sparsely-populated island in San Juan County Wa., is logistical--close to the Seattle-Tacoma metro area, which will be the source of most of our Inputs; but also, another consideration is environmental concerns about the odiferous emissions from our facility. Waaaay out there, nobody gives a hoot! In fact, after awhile, they will get used to the st--aroma, and even miss it when they leave home! Wish mee luck. Hope that helps you some. You will all be welcome to come out and tour the facility & sample the product, once we are up and running. Thankk Mee.

[Gregg]

I checked Whole Foods yesterday. Organic, grass fed, 85% hamburger was $8.99.lb.

[Rogar]

I picked up some grass fed ground beef on sale at Sprouts at a very good price, only to discover later that it was from South America. In this case I think buying from someplace more local will trump the good price in the future.

[SteveinMN]

I picked up some grass fed ground beef on sale at Sprouts at a very good price, only to discover later that it was from South America.
Trader Joe's typically has very good prices on sustainably-raised ground beef, but the label says it comes from Australia/New Zealand or somesuch. I don't think I need to go all the way to the southern hemisphere for ground beef. :(