King Corn Movie Says A Lot About Grassfed Beef

It started when I looked at Christine's blog where she talked about her first experience of grassfed beef.

She tried it after receiving an inadvertent advert in favor of certified grassfed beef from the movie"King Corn", where she learned that most corn produced in the US is fed to cattle, with detrimental effects on cattle and humans alike.

Reviewing the movie in the New York Times, Matt Zoller Seitz describes "King Corn" as a cultural and scientific history of the crop. Their film is a gentle, meandering entry in the Truth-Seeking Comic Hero genre, as practiced by Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock." (Remember "Supersize Me?") Read the full review here.

You need to watch the movie if you want to know what turned Christine onto certified grassfed beef. P.S. That there in the photo is Curt Ellis, one of the co-presenters of the picture, sliding down a pile of corn near Des Moines, Iowa.

Grass Fed Beef Gets Thumbs Up From Park Slope

Not all food nuts are equal. The 14 000 members of the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn, NY, are certainly not your average chow mutts.

This 35 year old co-op has standards that are way high, their discipline legendary.

If members fail to give their 2 hours and 45 minutes every four weeks to working at the co-op, nothing short of a disciplinary hearing follows. In the past they have refused to market foodstuffs from Chile and South Africa for political reasons.

Their political conscience have not weakened over time. Consider the recent issue of the Bottled Water. Following a massive internal debate, the co-op decided it was not correct to market bottled water (for more information about that spat go here) and they discontinued the sale of designer bottled water forthwith.

So if your product is marketed through the Park Slope Food Co-op you know that it has the mark of authority. Here's the thing: the only red meat marketed at Park Slope is grassfed beef that is locally raised.

Surely grassfed beef has never received such a worthy compliment!

Cool, Authoritative Article On FoodPrints

Jo-Ann Heslin, MA RD CDN has written a dynamite article here about FoodPrints and how to reduce them through the choices you make. In case you have no time to read the full text, she quotes the five steps suggested by the Cool Food Campaign to reduce your FoodPrints:

• Buy organic and look for the USDA organic label.
• Limit your consumption of conventional meat and dairy foods and farmed seafood. (I take this to mean eat more grassfed beef!)
  
• Do your best to avoid processed foods all together.
• Choose locally produced foods or foods grown as close to your home as possible.
• Avoid excessively packaged food.

These steps are not easy to achieve, especially on a limited budget. But you have to start taking steps in the right direction until finally we are all eating Cool Food, nothing else.

The Latest Ethanol Industry Trends Are Great For Grassfed Beef Industry

Until recently the livestock of this country were fed primarily corn and this has done on feedlots. That means hundreds of cattle standing in a confined space being fed corn to fatten them quickly for the market. The rise of the ethanol industry is changing all that and we are pretty pleased about it. You can read hand-wringing articles such as this one, bemoaning the fact that there just is not enough corn left over for the cattle because it's all being used for ethanol production.

This development is having two or three fantastic results for all Americans. The one is that due to the rocketing price of corn, the price of feedlot-raised beef is catching up with the price of grassfed beef. This means that making the healthy choice i.e. selecting grassfed above ordinary beef, is going to be a lot easier for consumers. It also means that cattle farmers are seriously looking at forage as a viable farming method.

These farmers may take longer to get their cattle to the point where they’re large and meaty enough to start the long process to your dinner plate. But they also say they save on things like fertilizer and other expenses corn-feeders incur. And grass-fed cattle are healthier, and healthier for you too, the ranchers also say. That's good for health-conscious folk who love eating red meat, and good news for cattle who naturally prefer being out there on the range grazing or eating grass-based feed than standing in a feedlot being fast- fattened with corn for the market.

Another great result is that with the increase in domestic ethanol production Americans are becoming less dependent on imported fossil fuels. We just do not see any downside to the run on corn for ethanol.

Take The Farm Bill Seriously

Browsing through that great website EarthBeatRadio out of Portland, Oregon, I came across a reference to Dan Imhoff's book on the upcoming Farm Bill entitled Food Fight: A Citizen's Guide To The Farm Bill which you can read about here.

I really respect the writer's assertion that each and every American needs to know and help formulate the details of the Bill, which is renewed every five years.

As Michael Pollan puts it so well in the foreword to the book, “Today, because so few realize that we citizens have a dog in this fight, our legislators feel free to leave the debate over the Farm Bill to the farm states, very often trading their votes on agricultural policy for votes on issues that matter more to their constituents. But nothing could do more to reform America’s food system, and by doing so, improve the condition of America’s environment and public health, than if the rest of us were to weigh in.”

Farm policies ultimately determine the nutrition we receive. Making informed choices at the "pull" end -- by demanding grassfed beef above other kinds for instance-- and getting involved in "push" factors -- like making sure the Farm Bill is environmentally friendly -- are the only ways individuals can meaningfully change the way we in the United States look at farming, and determine how the land is used and what practices are in place.

Demand for Raw Milk Exploding

According to David E. Gumpert , the demand for raw milk is exploding. As a result, he says, the government is changing its tactics. "For many years, the federal and local authorities relied on stoking the public's fear of disease to keep people away from raw milk putting a damper on the demand side of the equation. "

"But as increasing numbers of people learn how remote the risks associated with drinking raw milk really are in today's world, consumers are ignoring the authorities. Indeed, the government warnings seem only to stimulate further demand." He quotes an attorney for the Weston Price Foundation, Pete Kennedy, as saying "So instead of trying to control the demand, the government is trying to control the supply by harassing farmers so they'll hopefully become discouraged and go back to the pasteurization routine."

Another Study Showing Organic is Better

I just read about another study, this one done by a professor in the UK using products he and his students grew on their own 725 acre farm. The products included grain, vegetables, meat and milk. This was not a study of items bought at Wal-Mart and just labeled "organic". It was a study of what most people think about when they think of "organic". Check it out here.