When you visit a grocery store, and head to the meat section, you may have an expectation or belief that the ‘fresh’ meat displayed for purchase is local. After all, meat has an expiration date like any other natural product.
Many consumers do believe that every piece of fresh meat in their grocery store is locally sourced. It would be healthier if that was the case, but the truth is that meat (as well as fresh produce) can travel great distances before it even arrives at your grocery store.
We would like to share some of the things we know as a Miami Florida meat processor, with over 100 years of experience in the meat industry. And what we have to share may surprise you, but at Florida Raised, we want to be an important resource for our customers and explain why locally sourced meat is healthier, and worth paying a little extra for in terms of quality.
A Healthy Start for Calves Means Pasture Raised
You may have heard of the term ‘factory farming’ and wondered how it could possibly apply to livestock and meat production. How can use the science of assembly line production methods to grow and raise healthy live animals for human consumption? The truth is that you can’t, but the majority of farms in agricultural beef production do it anyway.
Here’s how it works.
Cattle are generally bred in the summer time, to coordinate the time of Spring births with seasonal weather. Farmers want calves to be born at the end of the winter and beginning of early spring, where microbial infection rates are lower, and when fresh green grass is available for the first few months of the calf’s life. This provides nutritional balance and movement for the calf to help them get a healthy start. It’s a healthy first-step that also helps reduce disease and disorders in cattle raised for consumer meat production.
Many cattle ranches still use natural breeding methods or allowing bulls to live in the pasture with a herd of cows. A portion of ranches use artificial insemination to speed the process, or to ensure a certain percentage of the herd has been impregnated to reach annual production goals. Bulls can be borrowed between cooperating farms (or leased) for this purpose.
A calf is weaned at about the age of seven months, or when it has achieved a body weight of approximately 500 lbs. At that time, they are traditionally auctioned off to other ranches who will continue to raise the calf to an average weight of 1200 to 1400 pounds, in specialized feedlots. Florida Ranchers have had a long tradition of raising calves for market and providing calves to ranches across the country.
The Move from Natural Pasture Raised to Unhealthy Feedlot Production Methods
It takes a lot of hard work, supervision and effort to maintain a cattle herd in pasture land. Not only does the Rancher have to carefully guard cattle against predators, injury and theft, but they must manage the pasture land accordingly. What this means is constantly circulating the herd through different sections of pasture land, allowing some areas to regrow grass and clover, while allowing the cattle to graze in designated and safe areas.
At some point in the early 1970’s there were tremendous numbers of cattle in the United States. So much so, that pasture land and conservatory of rich grasslands became an issue. In some states, severe droughts also impacted the quality of grazing and herds faced issues with inadequate food supply, when rain was scarce.
While America’s demand for beef continued to escalate, farmers were having a hard time keeping up pace and demand for finished cattle. So, they came up with a solution and began to implement feedlots as an alternative to natural pasture raised beef.
Our rich history of cattle raising in the United States to this moment in the 1970’s, was always based on natural grass-fed agricultural practices. When feedlots began to emerge, some members of the agricultural network began to realize that they could reduce costs, and increase the volume of cattle they could raise, if they simply limited their movement and the space required for each animal to graze outdoors.
How Does a Cattle Feedlot Operate?
What happened next really changed both the quality and the care that had always gone into beef production in America. When you crowd a number of cattle in a concrete and factory like setting, where they are limited or restrained from moving, exercising and even socializing outside in a relaxed state with other animals, stress becomes a factor that impacts health.
Animals in the close quarters of modern day factory farms may not ever see the outside of a barn, natural sunlight, or be free to move beyond the restraints that are placed around their necks. Not only is this process distressing for animals, but it creates significant health impacts for the animal. To offset the diseases that large herds were acquiring (and spreading given close proximity to hundreds of other animals), the use of antibiotics increased. Some farmers began to dose their herds with preemptive antibiotics to prevent illnesses before they occurred.
Over time, given the profitability of feedlot raised cattle, some members of the agricultural community learned that growth hormones and antibiotics could rapidly increase the weight and maturation rate of cattle. This would allow farmers to spend less time (and money) feeding and caring for cattle and increase the volume production of beef.
Growth Antibiotics Banned by The Food and Drug Administration (2017)
While the use of growth hormones and antibiotics is regulated at the State and Federal level, and while there are assurances regarding the safety of these chemicals in beef destined for human consumption, the truth is that medical experts really are not sure whether any amount is safe. Or how much of the growth hormones and antibiotics may pass from the meat to impact human health, after consumption.
In 2017, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the use of antibiotics for the sole purpose of promoting rapid growth and weight gain in agricultural meat products. But the practice is still very much alive and well today, with few resources to inspect or ‘catch’ farms that are guilty of overdosing cattle with both growth hormones and antibiotics.
There are simply not enough inspectors and not enough time to intercept or penalize farms that are breaking the law. And there’s no way a consumer (or grocery buyer) can detect a problem without a laboratory sample of each individual product.
And that’s why it’s important to understand the difference between certified grass-fed beef products and more economical alternatives in the frozen or fresh meat sections of your grocery store. We’re conditioned to look for the ‘best deals’ to help us all stretch our grocery budget, but when you understand where some of the most budget friendly meats are coming from, and the production methods used to raise them, we hope it helps you to make a healthier choice for your family.