Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
These chickens are being transported from a chicken house for slaughtering. They were extremely crowded
and as I followed behind the truck I could see that many were already dead. I followed this truck for more
than 50 miles on the highway—extremely stressful and traumatic miles for the chickens.
One benefit that is harder to quantify is the potential savings in medical costs and health bills for
your family. Often, positive eating habits mean fewer trips to the doctor!
A study published by the
British Journal of Nutrition
showed that red meat from grass-finished
animals tested with much higher levels of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids than grain-fed feed
lot animals (the meat that is typically available in grocery stores). It also showed, in what may
be the first human study on the subject, that consumers who ate the grass-finished meat showed
higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids (the good kind of fat!) in their blood work. This meat also has
higher levels of vitamin A, CLA (the good cholesterol), and vitamin E precursors, according to a
2011 article written in
Mother Earth News
. Precursors are the nutrients in food your body uses to
create vitamins, and vitamin E precursors are important for cancer-fighting properties and helping
to prevent diabetes.
thOrny MatterS
As consumers begin to educate themselves about the health benefits of pasture-raised beef over com-
mercial feed lot operations, labels are becoming more confusing. One of the things you might see on a
label is the term “grass-fed,” which you might think would mean the cow was raised only on sunny grass
fields. Unfortunately, the term is often used when the cow is raised on a pasture early in life, and then
spends several weeks in a crowded feed lot. When looking for healthier meats that haven't been finished
on concentrated grains in a feed lot, look for the term “grass-finished.” This means that instead of being
sent to a feed lot for the last weeks of life, the cow goes straight from pasture to table.
