Food with Free Range Chicken/Meat?

Well in this article he cites sources for the opposing argument, yet cites not one source to back up his own argument.  I would like to see a reference with data showing that the organic matter in the soil that is produced by managed pasture offsets the greenhouse gasses (not to mention the enormous water consumption, disease and creation of strains of antiobiotic-resistant bacteria) created by feedlots, and that the net resource usage is less than that of an equivalent vegetarian diet.

 He also makes several assumptions himself.  He assumes that vegetarians are replacing meat with soy which is not true.  He cites a blog which advocates replacing meat with soy, while there are plenty of blogs and articles out there discussing vegetarianism which hardly mention soy.  I only eat soy occasionally, and not nearly in the same quanity as meat when I was a meat eater. Also, the soy that requring deforestation in the Amazon basin is grown almost entirely for feeding livestock, not humans.

As for purely pasture-raised livestock, does the low fossil fuel input offset the methane produced by the animals?  I'm also not sure what you mean by "mass horticulture".  If you are talking about fruits and vegetables, there really is not a necessary increase in fruit and vegetable production by vegetarians, as they would not be replacements for meat since they are not sources of protein.  Vegetarians do eat more grains, seeds, nuts and beans, and since these are nutrient dense I can't imagine it would take more acreage to grow that it would take to raise the same amout of beef and dairy.  Not to mention, these sources of nutrients would be much healthier, being pretty much completely free of cholesterol, and lower in fat, that subsisting on the fat and cholesterol-laden red meat and dairy products produced by your example of the calf and his milk-producing mother.  Sure, red meat can be lean, but what percentage of the cuts of meat provided by the cow are lean? 

Some of these questions I'm asking you honestly, because I don't claim to be an expert, only offering the info I've read from credible sources, and I find debates like this to be a learning opportunity.

In reverse order:

Americans tend to eat only prime cuts.  Just like with dogs, it's far healthier to eat the whole animal over time, plus the effect of red meat on cholesterol depends on how it's raised. I don't have studies on hand but pasture-raised animals are not only lower in the factors that tend to raise LDL, but they also are higher in factors that either support HDL or lower LDL.

I won't argue that a vegetarian lifestyle is healthier - of course it is.  But it's not for everyone.  It's an expensive lifestyle unless you are resigned to great lack of variety such as is faced in a subsistence lifestyle (and that lack of variety is unhealthy for growing kids).  Animal products are a much cheaper and more nutritionally complete source of energy as a supplement to a basic cereal diet.  Not huge chunks of meat like we Americans eat without blinking.  My best friend was Japanese and I picked up her family's sensible moderation of meat consumption. 

It does take more acreage to grow the amount of legumes, oilseeds, and grains required to feed a family of four, versus a cow/calf unit.  Not to mention a small flock of sheep, which can use (and IMPROVE) land which is unsuitable for anything else.  And those acreages involve tillage, which increase greenhouse gasses.

The science behind carbon fixing is firm and well-documented among agriculturalists.  It's something we have to take into account - I live and breathe organic matter - I dream of more and spend all my time hoarding it and scheming of ways to increase it in my soil.  Grasses and forbs (ie, pasture plants) intake carbon at a tremendous rate.  The carbon is transferred to the roots for the sake of growth.  My sheep eat the tops of the plants, and the roots die back, decomposing into rich organic matter and transferring the carbon directly to the soil.  Soil rich in carbon can now fix nitrogen more easily, and also encourages the population of soil organisms, both macrobiology like earthworms, and also microorganisms like the anaerobic bacteria required for - guess what - root function! 

Roots require these bacteria to uptake minerals from the soil.  Without them, the plants grown in these environments (such as grains, legumes, and vegetables grown in commercial operations) are low in mineral content.

Commercial row crop operations make up for these deficiencies by shipping in soil conditioners - whether "organic" or chemical - but they cannot make up for the double whammy of the tilling of the soil, releasing carbon into the atmosphere, and soil nutrient depletion. You can't just "put it back."  It's a cycle that takes far more than a single growing season to reestablish.

Bill's point is not to make a scientific statement.  It is to raise questions about the validity of valuing an ideal meatless society when the assumptions which such a model makes are based on the idea that all meat is raised or must be raised in confinement operations.  Our hope and dream is that confinement operations (ie, concentration camps for animals) go the way of Auschwitz very soon. 

But that won't happen by trying to get Americans to ditch meat eating.  Instead a more constructive approach, which Bill wants to emphasize, is for Americans to rethink their consumption of meat at all levels.  Ask for naturally raised meat.  Support local farmers.  Consider the "whole animal" approach to consumption and moderation. 

A single calf SHOULD be able to support a family of four for a year.  But not if you only want to eat steak, and 14 oz at a time.   Do the math.  Compare to current reported stock levels.  There's SO much waste in the beef processing industry because Americans are ridiculously picky.  Ditto any other livestock.  Ironically, raising a quarter of the livestock, farmers would earn far more for many reasons.  All the middle men eat up their profits currently (speaking of cow/calf operations).  Transportation is a nightmare. 

Less time simply handling stock means more time spent putting in improvements that increase the sustainability, efficiency, and profitability of their operations (conservation-oriented pasture divisions, erosion control, watering systems that retain waste and filter fresh water back in).

I have a friend who used to do contract work for the feedlots - her job was to take calves that weaned too light or unhealthy to withstand life in the lots (!), and be sort of a halfway house.  She fed concentrates (locally sourced feeds, mostly waste from mills or vegetable packing plants), but the cattle stayed on pasture.  Twice a day she'd use her horse and dogs to push the cattle up to the bunks, to teach them to look for feed there.

It was a pretty awful life.  They had to be ready any minute to jump up and unload a truck that came in with another 80 head or so of calves, and sort them and check them for injuries and illness.  Trucks might pull in at 2 am, 4 am, in any weather, Christmas, someone's birthday, with no warning.  Someone always had to be there so no family vacations.  It was rough.  The calves had never seen dogs, or each other for that matter, and only spent maximum of six weeks there.  So just as she'd get a lot working safely and nicely, they'd be gone and replaced with another lot of troublemakers.

Last year their mom, who owned the farm, passed away and left it to them, along with a very hefty inheritance.  First they went on a LONG vacation!!    Then she went on another one out west to see high-sustainability cattle operations and get some ideas to bring home and put into effect.  They spent about $75,000 cash on redoing their fences, with the help of the water and soil conservation people, so that the cattle didn't lounge in the trees and tear them up, and putting in automatic waterers with recyclers so they didn't need access to bodies of water or any watersheds.    

She went to about 75% grass-based and put calves of her very own, in.  The first ones will be ready in April.  She's also getting a processor license and is planning to offer fresh-off-the-farm cuts.  She lives only about an hour from three major NC metro areas. 

Here's an example of just one person who converted her whole system and will easily be able to provide meat with a minimal impact on the environment.  She's just one.   Eventually she'll be able to stock about 500 head of cattle and about 50 goats to follow behind and reduce parasitic load on the pasture.  She can feed 2000 people.  She's got about 100 neighbors with similar sized farms, within a ten-mile-radius.  Most of them run confinement chicken operations, like they did before they went to the cattle.  The life of the chicken farmer is even more awful than the contract cattle farmer, except the risk of injury is lower.

It's not about studies and data - it's about knowing the facts about the business and culture before making assumptions.  Take methane production.  There's much data about how much, etc, but there IS no data that I know of, comparing offsets, whether current or potential, of beneficial processes created by pasture-based livestock farming.  Just offhand, consider the wild state of the North American continent before European settlement.  There were 100 million bison alone - exactly the same number as cattle today, and bison are HUGE - twice to three times  the size of cattle.  This is not to mention the many million pronghorn antelope, plus dozens of other large to medium sized ruminant species that today are gone or greatly reduced.

It's true Bill is speculating, that's the nature of a blog.  I just wanted to show there's more layers raised by this issue than people may think of, who aren't intimate with the agricultural scene.

It may very well be that grass-fed beef is sustainable.  As I stated, I don't have the data or the experience as I'm not an expert in farming, I only know of what I read.  But I certainly know that factory farming is not sustainable and it seems like the article was defending factory-farming, or maybe I'm reading it incorrectly.

brookcove

I won't argue that a vegetarian lifestyle is healthier - of course it is.  But it's not for everyone.  It's an expensive lifestyle unless you are resigned to great lack of variety such as is faced in a subsistence lifestyle (and that lack of variety is unhealthy for growing kids).  Animal products are a much cheaper and more nutritionally complete source of energy as a supplement to a basic cereal diet.  Not huge chunks of meat like we Americans eat without blinking.  My best friend was Japanese and I picked up her family's sensible moderation of meat consumption. 

Now this is definitely not true.  A vegetarian lifestyle is only more expensive if you replace meat with processed meat substitues.  A proper vegetarian diet is no more expensive than a meat based diet, and the amount of variety is limitless!  I mean, there are many, many, many more types of vegetarian food options than there are for meat options!    And let's not forget about why meat is so cheap - because of the horrific animal abuse that takes place every day on these feedlots (concentration camps).  Am I willing to create a living nightmare for innocent animals (and for some reason we are appalled when cats and dogs are treated only half has badly but it's perfectly acceptable for farm animals) just so I can have cheap meat?  No thanks, not on my conscience!  I'm honestly not interested in considering the opinions of anyone who defends this type of practice in any way.

Ok, off the soap box now!

I don't think we need to stop eating meat to save the planet, but I do agree that factory farms are devastating to the environment and the "healthfulness" of our food. In addition to so many of the benefits brookcove listed (as a quote from her friend's book), pasture raising livestock produces miniscule amounts of methane in comparison to factory farms - simply because of stocking density. And with beef, as an example, the grain diet at the feedlot is bad for proper digestion and causes bloat. Antibiotics are given as feed additives to combat the bloat and that's how antibiotic resistant illnesses form. This isn't an issue for pasture raised beef, which rarely need antibiotics. When you pasture raise livestock, you're actually raising pasture. You can only support the number of animals the land will allow, so you become a steward of the land. We're lucky to have so many wonderful protein sources and types and there are tons of benefits to adding more vegetables too. I just think it's a matter of balance and there's room for a middle ground somewhere between vegetarianism and an all out artery clogging meat fest.

CaliGrrrl

I don't think we need to stop eating meat to save the planet, but I do agree that factory farms are devastating to the environment and the "healthfulness" of our food. In addition to so many of the benefits brookcove listed (as a quote from her friend's book), pasture raising livestock produces miniscule amounts of methane in comparison to factory farms - simply because of stocking density. And with beef, as an example, the grain diet at the feedlot is bad for proper digestion and causes bloat. Antibiotics are given as feed additives to combat the bloat and that's how antibiotic resistant illnesses form. This isn't an issue for pasture raised beef, which rarely need antibiotics. When you pasture raise livestock, you're actually raising pasture. You can only support the number of animals the land will allow, so you become a steward of the land. We're lucky to have so many wonderful protein sources and types and there are tons of benefits to adding more vegetables too. I just think it's a matter of balance and there's room for a middle ground somewhere between vegetarianism and an all out artery clogging meat fest.

See, my problem with switching over from factory farms to pasture-raised, is that, with the exception of those who raise their own meat,  pasture-raised is still a for-profit business.  This means corners wiill be cut, and profits will always be priority over the well-being of the animals.  It's just the way it goes.  That is why I forgo it altogether, even pasture-raised.

 

Why does everyone think being a vegetarian is so expensive? Vegetables are pretty cheap. I buy dried beans for $2 a bag and the bag lasts for months. I rarely eat grains personally, but grains are incredibly cheap as well.

Defending factory farming is the last thing on Bill's agenda.  He'd become vegan himself if he thought there was no alternative to responsible production of meat. 

Why are beans $2 a bag?  What if we extended sustainable farming requirements to crop farmers and those beans went up to $9 a bag?  The price of crops and the price/availability of meat go hand in hand.  Livestock is raised where crops cannot be grown in large amounts, so many times farms will have both crop and livestock operations.  Often the livestock is used to recondition and rest the land from crop farming, but still allow the farmer to earn money off that land.

Yup, I said earn money.  Farmers raise animals and we pay for them and eat them.  If one doesn't want to participate that is fine, but please don't try to make the livestock farmer, who has been around since the dawn of human sentience, soley responsible for the ills of American mishandling of the environment, and try to make us go away. 

We won't.  I believe in this lifestyle, that it's sustainable and responsible, and that it doesn't cause suffering to my charges.  ME maybe, like today when I had to go out in a snowstorm to feed and carry warm water out for the mama sheep and lambs to drink.  Let's talk about suffering when I was on my hands and knees in nearly a foot of snow, reaching into a creep feeder, and dumped a pan of half-melted snow on myself, so I could put fresh feed out for the lambs.  That's what I signed up for, though. 

Then I had lamb chops for lunch.  One two ounce tender little shoulder chop with brown rice and chutney, and mineola.  The most expensive thing on my plate was the mineola, because I'd grown the lamb myself - $60 put that lamb in the freezer, all 50 pounds of him.  Before that he romped on sixty acres at my place, went on field trips across the pond to the neighbor's hayfield (sometimes legit, sometimes not!), played king of the mountain, then ate a lot of grass, grew into a 90 pound pain in the rear.

Meanwhile, he converted  (along with thirty of his closest friends) a back pasture which was soured from laying dormant and unused, into grass so thick and lush that our landlord, who never had good things to say about our sheep, commented on it.  We converted all his pasture this way, and now he has some high-dollar renters who brought horses. 

Please don't mix up the efforts of pasture farmers with the evils of confinement operations.  Meat production is absolutely possible outside that paradigm.  The UK has always done it, as has NZ and Aus and Canada.  I don't think Argentina raises meat off pasture either. Equating us is like saying a puppymill and someone like Gina are no different. 

I'm interested in hearing from vegetarians who have gone animal product free AND soya protein free AND raised kids in this lifestyle AND did it on a shoestring budget.  Let's say at current prices, less than $60 a week, which is what my mom has to feed the six adults who live in her house at the moment.

Let's see those menus.

And back on topic, if there are no meat farmers, what will our dogs eat?  We'll all have to start hunting, I guess.  Oh, wait. 

Why do I suddenly feel like I'm channeling Ron?
 

 

Ohhh, I am definitely not arguing against grass-fed meat. Without it, my dogs would have to be vegetarians! I still don't like the idea of having to kill the animals for their food, especially because I hear so many horror stories about torture in slaughterhouses, but I figure the places I buy meat from aren't going to use large-scale slaughterhouses that would most likely create a lot of suffering for the animals. For myself personally there's just no reason to eat meat but I can't bring myself to do it to the dogs. Even if  the price of meat dropped to ten cents a pound and vegetables sky rocketed, I'd still not eat meat. I don't mind paying extra for organic or for locally grown items, or to be a vegetarian over eating meat. It's not about money. It's not even about sustainability. It's just about ethics. So for my dogs I choose the lesser of two evils, as I put it. But I am always going around trying to get my friends to buy grass-fed meat, eggs and dairy for themselves. If factory farms disappeared and every animal lived free roamingbefore they were slaughtered, I'd be thrilled beyond words. I especially have loads of respect for people that can actually do the killing (the humane way) themselves, especially since most of the people who support factory farms by buying their meat really don't want to know or hear about where their meat comes from. I'm really not good at regurgitating information, but John Robbins' book "A Food Revolution" provides a really great argument regarding how beef negatively affects the rainforests and global warming, and I believe what he says, but that's not the issue for me anyway. It's just about the animals. I really hope no one would ever lump grass-fed productions with factory farms. They are like night and day.

 I'm not sure where you live but where I live the price of fruits and vegetables is so outrageously high I can barely afford them which makes being a vegetarian extremely costly. Therefore I live on a limited diet of fruits and veggies and LOTS of grains and pasta .'

 

Back to the OP's question. Check out ACANA foods by Champion Petfoods ...makers of Orijen.  Everything they use is free-range and wild caught and says so expressly on their packaging.