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So what's the beef against grain-fed beef?

I think the flavor of the meat purveyor have a personal and vested interest in the quality of the product is what alot of people are seeking. Grain or grass fed having someone stand behind it speaks to the care taken before it hits your BBQ.
 
Whitewing said:
Okay, I understand that some believe grass-fed animals don't have the taste that corn-fed finishing provides, but what's the beef against using corn or other grains to finish the animals?

Is this nothing more than some environmental issue related to the production of grains?
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In my opinion, the foundation for quality beef is a stress free animal from birth to slaughter...with probably, the most important factor, being optimum feed from birth to slaughter. Think about how many times we stress our animals in the conventional commodity beef system. My cattle are stressed the day they are born...the shock of being out of the womb and I tag, tattoo, and dehorn them. Hopefully, the next time they are stressed is when I unload them at the processor.

When customers ask me about flavor, I tell them it will be different. Your palate and brain have become accustom to a particular "taste" that has been developed with grainfed product. When you first eat grassfed, that taste experience will be "different" and it will take time to get accustom to the new taste. I tell people to compare ground beef from the store to my grassfed ground beef for the most dramatic difference. My wife would get nauseated browning ground beef from the store...with grassfed, she eats it out of the pan while cooking.

Nothing wrong with grain finishing as long as the cattle don't have to be kept healthy with antibiotics. There is a place for both...we need both...but the consumer perception of both will determine if the beef industry can grow and re-capture lost market share...which should be the goal of all producers.
 
Ben H said:
Justin said:
grass fed-grain fed......lets just call it a personal preference. :wink: :)
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I prefer to call it brainwashing, same goes for CAB.
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Typical statement from a hereford breeder. Why not just say it as it is a very good marketing plan. I've had both CAB and CHB both were very good. It's the spin off's rideing the CAB that have taken some of the meriy from the CAB. It's also a marketing plan that has been ongoing for more than 30 years.
 
Denny said:
Ben H said:
Justin said:
grass fed-grain fed......lets just call it a personal preference. :wink: :)
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I prefer to call it brainwashing, same goes for CAB.
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Typical statement from a hereford breeder. Why not just say it as it is a very good marketing plan. I've had both CAB and CHB both were very good. It's the spin off's rideing the CAB that have taken some of the meriy from the CAB. It's also a marketing plan that has been ongoing for more than 30 years.
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I prefer neither purebred, I like my Hereford/Red Angus crosses. As far as brainwashing goes, what I mean is that I question if we would really be grain feeding as much as we do if the grain wasn't subsidized. I see it as really just adding value to the subsidized product and marketing to do so.
 
Justin said:
grass fed-grain fed......lets just call it a personal preference. :wink: :)
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Can't argue with that! :-)

Though it is difficult for the average consumer to express a preference until they actually try both. The outcome of that comparison were it widely available will depend on a lot of factors.

Over 15 years of raising and eating our own grass finished beef and grass finished beef from other producers and grain finished beef from other producers I would say two things. The questionable quality of commercially available grain finished beef has more to do with the production, processing, distributuion, and storage system than the fact of being grain finished.
I have eaten excellent home raised, local abattoir processed and dry aged grain finished beef over the years. The second thing is that there is is significant variability in the quality of grass finished beef of the small amount that is available. My experience is that it can range from the toughest leanest meat available to the absolute best meat you will ever get. Tender, rich, juicy, with a full rich beef flavor, and the fat that is crisped just right off a rib or strip loin can be even more enjoyable to eat than the meat.

So it all depends.
 
Maybe I already mentioned this, but there are too many people buying their first cows and wanting to get into grassfed beef right away. You need to become an expert at grazing and get your fields up to excellent quality first, or else you'll make a product that gives it a bad name.
 
How much of an expert one needs to be depends on a number of factors, age of cattle being fattened to kill, breed and type, size of land base being managed relative to number of stock being run, species of forage you are managing, length of growing season, quality of forage after freeze up etc,etc.

One thing for sure though if you or whoever is handling the animals at the processors doesn't know what they are doing they can undo all the best management that went into getting the animal ready to kill.

Killing a fat open 2 or open 3 off of native grass in our country even in a dry year and getting an excellent eating beef does not take a heap of skill or expertise from my experience.

Making money on that carcass and making a successful business of it on a bunch of animals, now that is a different story.
 

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