HISTORICALLY, FARMING WAS always an uncertain proposition, with the constant risk of uneven harvests due to droughts, floods, and locusts. But in the 1940s and "50s, the second-oldest profession became much more predictable. Farmers achieved more reliable crops and vastly bigger yields with three key technologies: chemicals, laborsaving equipment, and breeding. Genetic experts designed highly productive, disease-resistant plants and animals, from corn to beef cattle, which mature quickly and efficiently. With these new methods, farms overflowed with cheap food.
Conjuring up images of bursting grain silos to feed the world"s hungry, the masters of this technological boom called it the Green Revolution. It"s a flattering moniker, but misleading, because the side effects were nasty. Chemicals employed to achieve huge yields included powerful pesticides, nitrogen fertilizers derived from World War II bombs, synthetic growth hormones, and antibiotics. Like traditional factories belching out smoke, factory farms also produce unsavory waste: noxious manure lagoons, pesticide drift, and nitrogen runoff polluting rivers and streams. It was as if the methods of the Industrial Revolution had been applied to farming.
Before long, the Industrial Farming Revolution begat a counterrevolution. In my view, this was a truly green revolution- environmentally sound, humane, and healthy. In the 1970s, food co-ops and health food shops in Berkeley, California, started selling organic and whole foods, and chefs like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse and Nora Pouillon in Washington, D.C, started to buy local and seasonal foods. Small farmers like us, using ecological methods, began to sell directly to a newly conscious public at farm stands and farmers" markets.
At first, this new market was mostly for fruits and vegetables. Although some farmers (like my family) kept a cow or chickens for home use, most of us were growing fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers for local markets and chefs- not meat and dairy. That was partly because processing, transporting, and selling foods such as beef and b.u.t.ter is more costly and complicated than taking cuc.u.mbers to market.
But there were also cultural reasons, I think, for the emphasis on produce. In the early 1970s, vegetarians claimed the nutritional and environmental high ground. As my friend Joann wrote in 1990, "So vigorously has the vegetarian movement pursued the twin themes of whole food and rejection of animal products that in the minds of most people, to be committed to whole foods or organic gardening without being a vegetarian takes some explaining."
Fans of organic and local foods have sometimes been outright hostile to meat. In 1982, we started a farmers" market in Takoma Park, Maryland, and it soon grew popular. When we invited Forrest Pritchard, a young Virginia beef farmer, to the farmers" market in 2001, a few customers objected- loudly. Letters to the editor were heated. The farmers" market was for vegetarians, they protested. (Er . . . we thought it was for farmers.) But times change. Today Forrest does a brisk trade in gra.s.s-fed beef and pastured poultry, and in 2004, members of the Takoma Park food co-op, after an emotional debate, voted to start selling natural meat.
No one- vegetarian or omnivore- who cares about farming, nutrition, or ecology can afford to ignore animals. Animal products account for the majority (51 percent) of American agriculture, about one hundred billion dollars in annual farm sales. The average American eats 186 pounds of meat annually, including beef, poultry, lamb, pork, and veal, and almost 600 pounds of milk, cheese, and ice cream. Unfortunately, most of these foods are produced on large industrial farms with methods that degrade the environment and diminish nutrition. The question is not whether one should be able to buy meat at farmers" markets, but what kind of meat.
Today many farmers like Forrest raise animals with humane and ecological methods for local and national markets. Farmers" markets, food co-ops, and specialty shops sell beef, lamb, pork, game, poultry, eggs, milk, b.u.t.ter, and cheese to go with the seasonal produce. In supermarkets and casual restaurant chains, Niman Ranch represents five hundred independent family farms raising beef, pork, and lamb the traditional way. In the market for organic foods, demand for meat and dairy is growing fastest.
Not long ago, the food world was splintered. There were vegetarians and meat lovers, gourmands and environmentalists. Often they had little in common, but today we all rally around slow and local foods- slocal foods, as I call them. (Slow Food is the very American name of a group born in Italy as a protest against fast food. Dedicated to traditional foods, Slow Food has chapters all over the world.) Today, vegetarians who learned about heirloom tomatoes twenty years ago are discovering raw milk cheese, health-conscious people are asking how pastured eggs have more omega3 fats than industrial eggs, and steak lovers are listening to animal rights advocates who decry factory farms.
As I pondered this cultural shift, I discovered something curious about animals. Every ecological farm- even a vegetable farm- needs them. When I was little, it never occurred to me that we imported horse manure from local stables for soil fertility. Our own cow and chickens simply left their manure on pasture; we didn"t compost it for the zucchini. Much later, I learned that the ideal farm builds soil fertility from its own resources- a bedrock principle of organic and biodynamic farming.
The mixed farm is best. In addition to fertilizer, animals provide meat, milk, and eggs, and- amazingly- require very little in return. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of animals- grazers and omnivores- and each has its place on the farm. Grazers, such as cattle, sheep, and goats, live on gra.s.s and other vegetation. With four stomachs, a special system of fermentation, and help from beneficial bacteria, ruminants convert forage that is literally indigestible to humans (gra.s.s is mostly cellulose) into high-quality fat and protein. Ruminants work this magic even on marginal land, where the soil is poor or cannot be tilled because it is hilly, rocky, or marshy.
Omnivores such as pigs and chickens can also convert plants to protein and fat, but they need more nutrients- namely, complete protein- than pasture has. Along with gra.s.s, they eat kitchen sc.r.a.ps, field stubble, and wild foods. The adaptable pig will eat almost anything, from acorns to whey to coconut. Poultry, too, are clean-up animals, eating grain, gra.s.s, insects, worms, and leftovers including eggsh.e.l.ls and sour milk.
On ecological farms, animals also provide labor. By labor, I don"t mean animals trained to serve, such as border collies herding sheep or draft horses at the plow, but when animals intended for market- that is, to be eaten- do useful farmwork. Pigs, for example, like to root; they clear brush and trees like bulldozers. They will snuffle happily for corn the farmer buries in cattle bedding, and, as they forage, the pigs aerate the straw and manure, creating rich compost. Cattle improve poor pastures by grazing, which increases plant diversity, and goats will clean up a th.o.r.n.y hedgerow. Geese and turkeys roaming a vineyard keep weeds down, eat insect pests, and build soil fertility with manure- three economic benefits to the farmer before she so much as collects an egg, sells a turkey breast, or bottles the wine.
Fertilizer, weed and pest control, improving pasture, turning whey and old sweet corn into bacon and eggs- these are some of the virtues of keeping animals. Even if the farmer never slaughters her cow or chickens, they will work without instruction or complaint- grazing and pecking are instincts, after all- and there will be b.u.t.ter and eggs for the vegetarians. Animals even benefit the farm ledger. Farmers who raise cows and chickens on pasture save money on feed, fertilizer, and vet bills.
It"s too bad that industrial agriculture has no use for the traditional role of animals. When hyperproduction became the chief goal of agriculture, we took animals off lush rolling fields and into dark and crowded factories, stuffing them on grain sprayed with chemicals. As we"ll see, the consequences for animal health and happiness, the environment, and the quality of the meat, poultry, and eggs we eat are unhappy, indeed.
How Factory Farms Wreck the Natural Order.
DOWN ON THE FACTORY FARM, the idea is to bring animals to market weight quickly and cheaply. To that end, traditional animal husbandry has been replaced by industrial methods: cheap, often unnatural food, fattening diets, antibiotics, steroids. The less s.p.a.ce for animals to move around, the better; exercise wastes precious feed calories, and that costs money. Whether the farmer keeps cattle, pigs, or poultry, the motto on industrial farms is the same: sit down, shut up, and eat.
Fans of the species Bos taurus make the enthusiastic, but not unreasonable, claim that cows changed the world. "The history of what we think of as civilization is, with very few exceptions, a story intertwined with cattle, a narrative pulled along by oxen, a growth nurtured with b.u.t.ter and cheese," writes M. R. Montgomery in A Cow"s Life. Whether raised for labor, milk, or meat, the genus Bos shares a long history with humankind. From the aurochs to the Aberdeen Angus, many Bos species have made themselves useful and (not by accident) have also been successful at spreading progeny. Except for small pockets- above the Arctic Circle, some tropical spots- Bos covers the globe.
This comes as no surprise because keeping cattle is easy. All a ruminant needs is gra.s.s. From Ireland to Argentina to New Zealand, cattle are traditionally raised on pasture, and until recently U.S. cattle were raised chiefly on gra.s.s and hay, too. In the 1950s, however, beef farming changed sharply, thanks to a surplus of cheap corn and soybeans. Ranchers saw that cattle gained weight faster on grain, and unlike gra.s.s, grain is available all year. Today most industrial cattle are fattened on grain- a dramatic change in evolutionary terms.1 With more marbling (intramuscular fat) than gra.s.s-fed beef, "corn-fed" beef was promoted as tender and soon regarded as superior. Gra.s.s-fed beef is as lean as a skinless chicken breast, while feedlot cattle are about 30 percent fat by weight- technically obese. Indeed that"s the goal. To win the label USDA Prime, beef needs a certain amount of intramuscular fat between the twelfth and thirteenth ribs. To achieve this, a steer must wear a layer of fat, an inch or more deep, beneath the skin. Later, this excess fat is usually trimmed away by butchers and cooks in search of the lean meat we demand. We"ve made cattle too fat for our own taste.
The new grain diet had unforeseen consequences. Grains give cattle an acid stomach. When calves are weaned and begin eating grain instead of gra.s.s, they become ill. The more acid gut of grain-fed cattle increases the risk of illness from E. coli in people. Finally, grain-fed beef is less nutritious than gra.s.s-fed beef, which has more omega-3 fats, vitamin E, and beta-carotene.
The insults to beef cattle don"t stop there. To prevent illness and speed weight gain, industrial cattle are fed antibiotics. Antibiotic use in farm animals has increased ten- or twentyfold since the 1950s.2 Overuse of antibiotics leads to drug resistance. For farmers, that means using ever-stronger drugs to fight pathogens. For doctors, it means that common antibiotics no longer work on human patients. The Campaign to End Antibiotics Overuse says that "antibiotic resistance is reaching crisis proportions, resulting in infections that are difficult, or impossible, to treat." The American Medical a.s.sociation opposes the use of human antibiotics for nontherapeutic use in animal farming, and the European Union bans human antibiotics in animals as growth promoters.
Industrial cattle are treated with growth hormones (also called steroids) to fatten them faster. The natural hormones estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone and synthetic hormones zeranol and trenbolone acetate are typically implanted in the ear. Environmental estrogens (as opposed to those made in the body) are called endocrine disruptors because they alter the body"s natural hormonal balance. Excess estrogen is linked to reproductive cancers including breast, prostate, and testicular cancer, and since 1950, such cancers have risen sharply. Breast cancer is up 55 percent, testicular cancer up 120 percent, and prostate cancer up 230 percent. According to Dr. Samuel Epstein, a professor of environmental medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health and the founder of the Cancer Prevention Coalition, "the risk of breast and other cancers only increases with the uncontrolled use of hormones in meat."
A grave risk from eating industrial beef is mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Again the culprit may be what factory farmers force these herbivores to eat. In addition to grain, cattle may be fed less wholesome things: rendered poultry and pork, chicken litter containing feathers and manure, and- most disturbing- parts of other cattle unfit for humans.
Turning cattle into carnivores and cannibals could prove ruinous. In Britain, where mad cow disease devastated the beef industry, cattle probably contracted BSE from eating infected cattle or sheep with sc.r.a.pie, the ovine version of the disease. Mad cow disease, which appears in similar form in many species including deer and cats, is caused by deformed proteins that leave spongy holes in the brain. The result is drooling, dementia, paralysis, and death. The rare human version, called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, is similarly grisly and always fatal.
In 1997, the United States banned the feeding of cattle meat and bone meal- the parts most likely to carry BSE- to other cattle. Only two months before the first U.S. case of BSE surfaced in 2003, the FDA reported three hundred violations of the feed ban and the General Accounting Office estimated many more. Even if it were perfectly enforced, the feed rule- like the brain of a mad cow victim- is full of holes. In 2005, bovine fat and blood were still permitted, along with restaurant leftovers, or "plate waste," which means cattle eat the beef with broccoli someone didn"t finish. Ground-up pigs and chickens were also still permitted as cattle feed. Because pigs and poultry are themselves fed cattle parts, that means infected cattle matter can end up in cattle feed. In Britain, BSE was brought under control only after a total ban on feeding mammals to cattle.
No one knows how many American cattle have BSE, but many observers fear it is already common. j.a.pan tests every market-bound animal for BSE, and Britain tests every animal older than twenty-four months. In 2005, the United States tested thirty-seven thousand of thirty-seven million cattle slaughtered: 1 percent.3 mad cow disease worries you, choose gra.s.s-fed, organic, or bio-dynamic beef.
Humans have been raising pigs for at least ten thousand years and hunting wild boar for much longer. Despite being shunned by two great religions, pork is the world"s most popular meat. The pig has the distinction of being the only mammal whose skin we eat. "Who can resist the crackling from roast pork?" asks the food writer Anne Dolamore.4 Crackling! The word is sure to make southerners wistful about Grandma"s Sunday dinners. Perhaps more than any other animal, the pig is a.s.sociated with its fat. Irish legend tells that Saint Martin created the pig from a piece of fat, and lard is traditional in many cuisines, from Europe to China to Indonesia. On the island of Borneo, pork, lard, and rice make up the typical dinner, and the fat of wild boar- only its fat, not lean meat- is considered the unique source of physical, s.e.xual, and spiritual vitality. In nineteenth-century America, lard was the fat of choice for frying and baking. Well into the twentieth century, "lard ruled the kitchen and the palate," says the culinary historian Bruce Kraig.5 Unlike other animal fats, lard makes a dish on its own. A Tuscan specialty, lardo, is nothing more than a ribbon-thin square of lard, cured with salt and rosemary.
That people love pork is no mystery- it"s delicious. Pigs are popular with farmers, too: they eat anything, fatten easily, breed quickly, and work hard. Indeed most farms have more pig labor than pig tasks, and the working pig is happy rummaging through forests, old orchards, and hedgerows.
Sadly, this is not the picture of pigs on factory farms. Raised indoors in crowded pens, they cannot pursue their natural impulse to root. Concrete or slatted floors allow for easy removal of manure, but they also cause arthritis and deformed feet. Factory pigs are deficient in vitamin E and selenium, antioxidants found in pasture.6 Confined pigs are subject to infections, including a fatal form of gastroenteritis; to stave off illness, farmers feed them antibiotics. A strain of salmonella found in swine is resistant to an important antibiotic, fluoroquinolone. 7(Growth hormones may not be used in pigs.) Under the stress of crowded conditions, pigs bite each other"s tails and cause infections. To preempt tail biting, factory farmers snip off the tails with wire cutters (without anesthetic), leaving a hypersensitive stump which pigs work to keep away from the teeth of other pigs. This is called avoidance behavior. That"s the theory, anyway, but a British study in 2003 found that tail docking increases tail biting.8 A happy chicken is up with the dawn, lays an egg in the late morning, and when the farmer opens the little chicken house door, she heads outside to hunt for insects in the gra.s.s. The occasional dust bath- rolling around in dry soil, fluffing the dust under her feathers- keeps her free of pests. At dusk, the hen goes inside on her own, safe from predators, to her dinner of grain and oyster sh.e.l.l. That"s how our chickens live at the farm. Their contented cooing as they settle for the night is one of my favorite sounds.
Not long ago I was in a battery chicken house. It is not a memory likely to fade quickly. Dark and dusty, the barn smelled of ammonia- the sharp, unmistakable odor of uncomposted chicken manure. Stacked in long rows, the wire cages were shorter than my arm and half as deep. Three hens cowered in each cage, with no room to move around. "These cages were built for nine hens," said the farmer, with some pride.
Because they never see the light of day, factory hens lose the natural rhythm essential to egg laying. Instead of sunlight, artificial lights tell their bodies when to lay eggs. With no room to move, nest, or forage, a hen has nothing to do but eat, drink, and drop an egg through the wire on a narrow tray or conveyor belt.
Chickens require complete protein, and a good source is insects, grubs, and worms. Factory chicken feed often includes protein from less savory sources: poultry parts and feathers, rendered cats and dogs, beef fat, and cattle bone meal. In crowded battery egg operations, pathogens thrive. Salmonella can make its way into factory eggs, usually via cracked sh.e.l.ls, but occasionally before being laid. If the flock is known to be infected, eggs go to the "breakers" market rather than being sold whole. Breakers are pasteurized and made into liquid egg products for restaurants.
Chickens raised for meat- broilers- are also crammed in dark barns. A typical factory chicken barn is eighteen thousand square feet with twenty to forty thousand birds. At the lower density of twenty thousand birds, that"s less than one square foot per bird. Crowded like this, chickens become aggressive and peck each other, so farmers cut their beaks off when they"re chicks. Birds are confined and the temperature is kept warm because exercise and generating body heat burn calories, and speedy weight gain is the goal.
To combat rampant campylobacter, salmonella, and E. coli, farmers feed broilers antibiotics like fluoroquinolone, with now familiar effects on antibiotic resistance. Strains of E. coli and salmonella no longer respond to tetracycline, and some campylobacter bacteria are resistant to Cipro, the antibiotic of choice for food-borne illness. In 1989, researchers showed that more antibiotic-resistant strains are found in confinement hens than in free-range birds.9 In 2000, the FDA proposed to ban fluoroquinolone for use on poultry, but the effort has been stalled by drug companies.
Meanwhile, two large chicken producers (Tyson and Perdue) stopped using fluoroquinolone voluntarily. If a bird does happen to carry pathogens, the meat can be contaminated (usually from stray fecal matter) on high-speed evisceration lines. Industrial agriculture, of course, has the answer: your chicken breast is bleached with chlorine.
FACTORY CHICKEN AND CAMPYLOBACTER.
Researchers tested four chicken brands- two conventional (Tyson, Perdue) and two antibiotic-free (Bell & Evans, Eberly)- for strains of campylobacter resistant to the antibiotic fluoroquinolone. Tyson and Perdue had stopped using fluoroquinolone a year before the test, showing that strains persist.
% of Chickens Carrying Drug-Resistant Campylobacter Bacteria Source: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2005.
Apologists for industrial farming repeat one argument like a mantra: this food is cheap, and people want it that way. But the real costs are seldom reckoned. According to Environmental Health Perspectives, "Industrial agriculture depends on expensive inputs from off the farm . . . many of which generate wastes that harm the environment; it uses large quant.i.ties of nonrenewable fossil fuels; and it tends toward concentration of production, driving out small producers and undermining rural communities."10 Small and independent farms are disappearing. The beef, pork, and poultry industries, once made up of thousands of family farms, are increasingly concentrated. In Iowa, the number of hog farms dropped from 64,500 in 1980 to 10,500 in 2000, while the number of hogs- about 15 million- stayed level. Cornell University says that New York State will lose 6,000 dairy farms in the next fifteen years.
When counted honestly, the financial costs of industrial agriculture mount quickly. Every American foots the bill to clean up water polluted by manure lagoons. The EPA says that waste water from farms contains nitrogen, pathogens, heavy metals, hormones, and antibiotics. Excess nitrogen has created a "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey. Eighty percent of the American grain crop, which requires heavy doses of nitrogen and pesticides, is fed to livestock, even though they could be eating gra.s.s. Industrial cattle eat corn, wheat, soy, and cottonseed oil because this feed is subsidized. From 1995 to 2004, taxpayers spent ninety-one billion dollars on these four crops alone.
The dismaying fact is that industrial farming is a net loss. As Richard Manning writes in Against the Grain, in 1940, the average American farm used one calorie in fossil fuels to raise 2.3 calories of food. By 1974 (the most recent figures available), the ratio was 1:1, before adding the cost of processing food or transportation. Today a farmer spends thirty-five calories in fossil fuels to produce just one calorie of feedlot beef and sixty-eight calories for a calorie of pork.
No, Virginia- this food ain"t cheap.
Why Gra.s.s Is Best (and I Don"t Mean for Tennis).
All flesh is gra.s.s.
-Isaiah.
JOEL SALATIN is AN irrepressible evangelist for traditional animal husbandry. Salatin believes the a.s.sembly-line logic of industrial agriculture has turned farmers from independent yeomen into "serfs," slaving for food industry masters to produce cheap food, fast. A strapping man with charisma to spare, Salatin surprises no one when he rejects the role of serf. He prefers to raise beef, poultry, and eggs as G.o.d intended. An enthusiastic Christian, capitalist, libertarian, - Isaiah and environmentalist, he likes to count former vegetarians among his customers. When I"m on his farm, or at a farmers" market where I can buy his meat, I"m one of them.
A born sloganeer, Salatin calls his product salad bar beef. He knows the term makes you do a double take. It"s the cattle, of course, who eat at the salad bar, a mix of fescue, orchard gra.s.s, red clover, bluegra.s.s- whatever grows in Swoope, Virginia. Salatin"s definition of salad bar beef, however, goes well beyond grazing. Salad bar beef is never fed any grain, corn, soybeans, antibiotics, or hormones. It"s lean, tender, and tasty- never bland or gamey. It"s nutritionally superior to beef fattened on grain, with more omega-3 fats, beta-carotene, and vitamin E. It"s seasonal, too. Industrial beef is bred year-round, but on Salatin"s farm, calves are born in late spring, amid the dandelions, as he likes to say- never in icy January.
Last but not least, salad bar beef is slaughtered, butchered, and sold locally. Even when food lovers in far-off cities call the farm to order meat, having read about Salatin"s farm in Gourmet or the New York Times, he refuses to ship his food. Salatin is a purist, to be sure. Fine- the world needs purists. If everyone raised salad bar beef, Salatin says, "City folks could enjoy beef without a guilty conscience."
Farmers who raise animals on pasture (being modest types) call themselves gra.s.s farmers, because "all they do" is grow gra.s.s. The method is ingeniously simple: instead of taking feed to animals, gra.s.s farmers let animals go to the feed. The most nutritious pasture is fast-growing, adolescent gra.s.s. When the animals have trimmed the best of the new growth, farmers move them to fresh pasture. It"s called rotational grazing, and it works, says one farmer, because "gra.s.s doesn"t like to walk around, and cows do."
Nature is their inspiration. Wild herbivores like zebras travel in herds and move frequently for fresh forage, leaving yesterday"s manure behind- just what gra.s.s farmers do with animals. In the wild, flocks of birds follow the zebras, while gra.s.s farmers send poultry in after livestock. As the gra.s.s recovers from being grazed by ruminants, poultry scratch at cow pats and aerate the manure (so it decomposes) while they grow fat or lay eggs eating protein-rich fly larvae.
Gra.s.s farming is profitable. Farmers save on labor, repairs, fuel, oil, seed, fertilizer, pesticides, and vet bills. Grazing makes use of marginal land and produces excellent yields, directly related to pasture health and how often animals move. Cattle digestion is complex, but this general rule applies: cattle gain weight on grain; they make more milk and cream eating roughage, that is, gra.s.s and hay. For beef farmers, then, gra.s.s means a slower return- cattle fatten much faster on grain- but the farmer also has lower feed costs, more nutritious beef, and a higher price in the right markets. For dairy farmers, gra.s.s farming is remarkably efficient. Cream from gra.s.s-fed cows contains more omega-3 fats and vitamin A, and spring and fall gra.s.s yields significantly more cream. In one survey, Vermont graziers earned more per cow than even the most profitable confinement dairies.
The environment benefits from grazing, too. Industrial grain and soybeans for cattle feed are grown with fertilizer and pesticides, but gra.s.s and hay are easily grown without chemicals. Well-grazed pastures have more diverse plants than fallow land. The constant cutting and regrowth of grazing stimulates dense root growth, improving soil fertility and preventing erosion, and because cows walk around, manure is spread evenly, reducing nitrogen runoff.
Livestock and poultry that feed on gra.s.s are healthier for several reasons. Fresh air and ample room prevent infection and disease. Instead of standing in their own manure, pastured animals move away from it, preventing the spread of manure-borne diseases. Poultry that follow sheep and cattle eat fly larvae in manure before they hatch, reducing fly-borne illness. Pasture contains many nutrients for animal health, including beta-carotene, selenium, and vitamin E.
In one study, 58 percent of feedlot cattle and only 2 percent of pastured cattle had campylobacter.11 The Journal of Dairy Science reported that 30 to 80 percent of conventional cattle carry E. coli in their stomachs, but when cattle were switched from a high-corn diet to hay, E. coli declined a thousandfold in only five days.12 In other words, a mere five days of feeding gra.s.s and hay to beef cattle before slaughter will restore the stomach to its normal acidity and kill E. coli, which would prevent many cases of contamination in the slaughterhouse. Unfortunately, this sensible, inexpensive practice has not been widely adopted by feedlots.
GRAIN-FED BEEF AND E. COLI.
E. coli is much feared and misunderstood. Large numbers of the bacteria dwell in the colons of healthy cows and humans, where they are quite harmless. Contamination in the slaughterhouse (usually from fecal matter) is how E. coli finds its way into food. If we do eat E. coli, our stomach acid usually kills it. But a new, dangerous form, E. coli 0157, has evolved in the unnaturally acidic gut of grain-fed cattle. Highly resistant to acid, it can survive in our stomachs, so it"s more likely to make us sick. E. coli 0157 is not found in gra.s.s-fed cattle.
Farmers, animals, and the environment all benefit from gra.s.s farming. What"s in it for steak lovers? Gra.s.s-fed beef contains less fat, more CLA, and more omega-3 fats than grain-fed beef. Like game, gra.s.s-fed meat has the right ratio of the omega-3 to omega6 fats (about 1:1), while grain-fed meat is too rich in omega-6 fats. Traditional beef contains more vitamin A and E and more of the antioxidants lutein, zeaxanthin, and beta-carotene. It contains alpha-lipoic acid, an antioxidant essential for cell metabolism, which also lowers blood sugar and improves sensitivity to insulin. Other foods from pastured animals, including bison, lamb, pork, poultry, eggs, and milk, also contain more omega-3 fats, vitamins, and antioxidants than their industrial counterparts. (For more information, see www.eatwild.com.) Let"s take a closer look at the polyunsaturated omega-6 fat CLA mentioned in chapter 2. Though there is some CLA in pork and poultry, this fat is all but unique to the fat- not the muscle- of ruminants raised on gra.s.s; that means beef fat and b.u.t.ter. I"ve touted gra.s.s-fed beef and milk for being rich in omega-3 fats and said that grain-fed beef has too many omega-6 fats. CLA is an exceptional omega-6 fat, in that it tends to act like an omega-3 fat. CLA reduces triglyceride and atherosclerosis.13 It also aids weight loss, reduces body fat, and increases lean muscle, apparently by its effects on lipase, the enzyme used to digest fat.14 Other omega-6 fats (mostly in polyunsaturated vegetable oils such as corn oil) promote tumors, but CLA, an antioxidant two hundred times more powerful than beta-carotene, prevents cancer.15 CLA slows the growth of tumors of the skin, breast, prostate, and colon.16 In 1991, Cancer Research reported that CLA is "more powerful than any other fatty acid in modulating tumor development."17 In 2003, researchers who found a link between cured meat and cancer noted that gra.s.s-fed beef and b.u.t.ter were "almost the only sources" of CLA, the only natural fatty acid the National Academy of Sciences regards as showing "consistent" ant.i.tumor effects.18 Nutrition and Cancer reported that "a diet composed of CLA-rich foods, particularly cheese, may protect against breast cancer."19 THE GREAT AMERICAN BURGER IS GOOD FOR YOU.
Made with gra.s.s-fed beef and raw milk cheddar, served on a whole wheat bun with ketchup and a traditional fermented dill pickle.
Beef.
Alpha-lipoic acid, essential for metabolism; lowers blood sugar and improves insulin sensitivity CLA, an omega-6 fat that fights cancer and builds lean muscle tissue Omega-3 fats, which prevent obesity, diabetes, and heart disease Stearic acid, a saturated fat that lowers LDL.
Vitamins E and A.
Bun.
Fiber, folk acid, and B vitamins.
Ketchup.
Lycopene, an anticancer agent.
Cheese.
Omega-3 fats and vitamin A.
Enzymes and beneficial bacteria.
Pickle.
Vitamins B and C and enzymes.
Gra.s.s farming is nothing new, of course. Some thirty thousand years ago- before we settled down to farm- we were proto-shepherds, corralling and herding flocks for meat and milk. The patron saint of modern gra.s.s farmers is Andre Voisin, a French dairy farmer and biochemist who wrote the cla.s.sic work Gra.s.s Productivity in 1957. The sequel, So/7, Gra.s.s and Cancer, is a compelling treatise on gra.s.s and health. His chapter t.i.tles are all poetry, yet each one is also a scientific gem. "The Soil Makes the Animal and the Man" sums up his philosophy of soil fertility, animal health, and good food, while "The Estrogens of Gra.s.s" explains why spring gra.s.s boosts milk yields.
In a lament called "No Attention Is Paid to the Origin of Milk Used in Experiments," Voisin reminds us that many studies are useless without knowing, say, how putting cows on quality clover affects the nutritional quality of the milk. His own research showed that good Gruyere, a hard cheese made high in the Swiss Alps since 1100, depends on milk from gra.s.s-fed cows. Leave it to the Cartesian French to define precisely what makes a great cheese.
The Virtues of Beef, Pork, and Poultry Fat.
LET CHEFS AND FOOD CRITICS gush over the sensual pleasures of b.u.t.ter and cream; they are much more eloquent than I am. This chapter is devoted to their unsung health benefits.
All natural fats- polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, saturated- perform important roles in the body. The popular fable, in which saturated fats are the villain, is mistaken. We"ll look at these taboo fats again later, but for now, these are the headlines: saturated fats fight infections, aid digestion, and extend the use of the critically important omega-3 fats. Without saturated fats, the body cannot absorb calcium or build cell walls.
You wouldn"t learn any of this from reading government advice about what to eat. Lean meat and unsaturated oils are king and queen of the official dietary kingdom. In 2005, the U.S. government revised its dietary guidelines, and among the key recommendations were these: "Most meat and poultry choices should be lean or low-fat" and "most of the fats you eat should be polyunsaturated or monounsaturated."
Fat is verboten. Indeed the word fat itself seldom appears in official advice, except in the terms low fat and nonfat. The section on fats and oils on the USDA dietary guideline Web site is now simply t.i.tled "Oils." The USDA"s selective exclusions of "fat" are not only misleading; they are a willful rewriting of dietary history. Of the "common" oils listed- canola, corn, cottonseed, olive, safflower, soybean, sunflower- all but one (olive) is a modern oil with a brief history in the diet. These oils have been "common" for perhaps one hundred years- if that long- while we"ve eaten animal fat for three million years.
"After several decades of vilifying fat and cholesterol, it is now realized that life is not so simple," writes Nichola Fletcher in "Hunting for Fat, Searching for Lean," an essay for the 2002 Oxford Food Symposium, a prestigious gathering of food thinkers. From the Stone Age until recently, fat was the measure of good eating. Fletcher quotes a wistful seventeenth-century peasant: "If I were a king I would drink nothing but fat."
By the middle of the twentieth century, all that had changed, and fats were considered dangerous. Then something curious happened. Just as we began to cast a suspicious eye on fat, we made farm animals- particularly beef cattle- fatter by feeding them grain. Moreover, by depriving cattle of the gra.s.s that gave their meat omega-3 fats and CLA, we changed the kind of fat attached to our steak. The result was beef with more fat, and more saturated fat- the very things medical wisdom now considered killers.
The experts are right: fats are important to health. But we"ve pointed the finger at innocent fats and overlooked the culprits. The industrial diet contains fewer omega-3 fats, less CLA, more refined vegetable oils, and (infinitely) more trans fats than our ancestors ever ate- a perfect recipe for diabetes and heart disease. Fletcher concludes that the traditional fats in fish, wild game, and gra.s.s-fed beef and dairy are best: "Old fat fine," she says simply. "New fat nasty."
In a moment we"ll take a brief tour of the fats found in beef, pork, and poultry. Before we do, it"s helpful to understand two things. First, all fats are a blend of three fatty acids: polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, and saturated. But for convenience we describe the fats by the predominant fatty acid. Thus we call beef fat saturated, even though it also contains a good amount of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. Second, the more saturated the fat, the firmer it tends to be, and the better for cooking. Chemically, saturated fats are more stable when heated than monounsaturated fats, and polyunsaturated oils are the least stable, and thus easily damaged. This is important, because damaged fats are unhealthy. With those things in mind, here"s a fresh look at the benefits of the old-fashioned farmhouse fats.
Not long ago, fast-food restaurants made french fries in beef fat, because it"s mostly saturated and monounsaturated and thus stable when heated. For health, beef fat was better than the polyunsaturated vegetable oils they use now, which are easily damaged by heat, becoming rancid and carcinogenic, especially when used repeatedly. A few food lovers remember the superior, savory flavor of french fries made with beef fat.
Beef fat is typically 50 to 55 percent saturated and about 40 percent monounsaturated oleic acid, the same fatty acid found in olive oil, which lowers LDL while leaving HDL level. Much of the saturated fat is stearic acid, which also lowers LDL. As we"ve seen, the fat of gra.s.s-fed beef is a rare source of the anticancer omega-6 fat CLA, which also builds lean muscle. Beef from cattle raised on gra.s.s also contains significantly more polyunsaturated omega-3 fats than industrial grain-fed beef.
We once regarded lard as an economical health food. Americans remember eating lard sandwiches with fried onions on homemade bread during the Depression. In lean times, Asians ate a soup of lard (rich in vitamin D) and soy sauce (made of fermented soybeans rich in B vitamins). Like all hardship dishes, it"s almost nutritionally complete.
Lard is about 50 percent monounsaturated, 40 percent saturated, and 10 percent polyunsaturated, which makes it mostly (60 percent) wnsaturated. As with beef, the amounts vary with the diet of the pig, which is not a fussy eater. In the tropics, for example, where pigs eat coconut, pork is a source of lauric acid, a powerfully antimicrobial saturated fat all but unique to coconut oil. Lard contains about 44 percent monounsaturated oleic acid and 12 percent saturated stearic acid, which lowers LDL.
One of the traditional American cooking fats, lard has a neutral flavor to suit any dish, sweet or savory. (Those who don"t eat pork tend to cook with beef and poultry fat.) Lard makes superb, flaky pie crust and biscuits. Because it"s mostly unsaturated, lard is relatively soft at room temperature, and it melts and mixes more easily than the more saturated beef fat. To make it firmer and to extend its shelf life, most commercial lard is hydrogenated, the same process used to make solid margarine from liquid vegetable oils. Like all hydrogenated fats, hydrogenated lard contains unhealthy trans fats.
HOMEMADE LARD IS EASY.
Making lard is quick and easy, and it keeps for months in the refrigerator. First, find a farmer or butcher who sells "leaf lard" (the abdominal fat that surrounds the kidneys), which has superior, finer texture for baking. Cut the lard in pieces and run it through a food processor. In a heavy pan, melt it over low heat or bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit until the fat has melted, about twenty minutes. Strain the fat into a gla.s.s jar and chill rapidly to keep it clear. The crispy bits are delicious; Italians call them ciccioli and eat them with bread or polenta. If you don"t fancy making your own, ask farmers and butchers for unhydrogenated lard. Niman Ranch and some shops sell lardo, a Tuscan specialty of cured fat from the thickest part of the fatback. Use it for sauteing and to flavor sauces.
Poultry fat is as diverse as poultry and the foods they eat. Mostly monounsaturated- and thus fairly heat-stable- poultry fat is also suitable for cooking. Duck and goose fat are traditional in Jewish kitchens and justly honored by French cooks, especially for roasted potatoes. Chicken fat- schmaltz, the Yiddish word for fat- is a staple in Jewish recipes, including chopped liver and crispy gribenes (chicken skin fried in chicken fat). I once met a man who grew up eating homemade gribenes at the movies. (Think of them as kosher pork rinds.) Poultry fats also contain a few saturated and polyunsaturated fats; again, the diet of the bird affects the composition of the fat. Pastured chickens and poultry fed fish oil or flaxseed oil have more polyunsaturated omega-3 fats, while tropical chickens, like pigs, eat saturated fats in coconut oil. Typically, chicken fat is about 40 percent monounsaturated oleic acid, which lowers LDL. Goose fat is mostly monounsaturated, too (56 percent), as is duck fat (46 percent). Turkey fat contains 38 percent oleic acid, 22 percent polyunsaturated fats, and 22 percent saturated palmitic acid, which lowers total cholesterol and LDL.20 We have seen that saturated fats fight infections. All poultry fats, particularly chicken fat, also contain palmitoleic acid, an antimicrobial monounsaturated fat. That"s why chicken soup- not skinless chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s- is known as the Jewish penicillin: those pale yellow droplets in chicken broth boost your immunity.
So the next time someone eating a poached skinless chicken breast tells you that your choice of beef, bacon, or roast chicken with the skin will send you to an early grave, this is your reply. First, explain that beef contains stearic acid, which lowers LDL, and that pork and poultry fat are mostly monounsaturated, just like olive oil. Second, say that natural saturated fats- as opposed to industrial saturated fats, or trans fats- are good for you anyway. In the heat of a dinner party debate, you will probably remember only one good thing about saturated fats. Make it this one: they are powerful immune boosters. Once upon a time, I used only olive oil. When I added b.u.t.ter and other saturated fats to my diet, I stopped getting sick. And yes, the chefs and food critics are right: my cooking was much tastier, too.