Matthew Chayes/Chicago Tribune | Posted: Saturday, June 10, 2006 7:00 pm
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is proposing to allow people who feed their beef cattle exclusively on grass in Nebraska and other states to apply a special “grass-fed” label to their meat.
Nutrition activists and government officials say these labels would help consumers be sure that what’s called grass-fed actually comes from animals with exclusively grass diets and not some mixture.
To be eligible for the new label, a cattle’s energy source would have to be 99 percent grass or other forages under rules proposed this month.
That proposal was a pleasant surprise even for the department’s regular critics.
“It’s important because it’s a high enough standard that it will not allow folks who are doing something kind of halfway — they will not be able to use the grass-fed label,” said Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
As it stands now, any producer can label beef grass-fed. Even once the regulations are finalized, producers would be able to label their beef grass-fed, but the new regulations will cover labels with the imprimatur of the USDA.
Nutrition activists were disappointed with rules proposed in 2002 that would have allowed the grass-fed label for animals whose diet consisted of 80 percent grass.
That, the activists say, could have permitted large commercial producers to market as grass-fed beef from cattle with diets barely different from the ordinary, which the beef industry says, is about 75 percent grass.
“That would have been a disaster, because it would have not allowed the truly grass-fed products to differentiate themselves in the market,” Mellon said.
Added Michael Hall, a professor and beef cattle specialist at California Polytechnic State University: “Eighty percent — that really doesn’t mean much. They needed to tighten the guidelines.”
Most of the beef Americans eat comes from animals who spend the twilight of their lives in feedlots to be “finished” — fattened up with feed consisting largely of corn — before being slaughtered and shipped to America’s markets and restaurants. Grass-fed advocates call this process unnatural for the animal and say it leads to fatty, less healthful meat.
Some in the scientific establishment say there are few if any tangible health benefits to eating cattle that have spent their whole lives eating only grass. “Scientifically, I just don’t think there’s enough data,” Hall said.
Hall said he’s glad the government is proposing a strong national standard, but he predicted that grass-fed beef will prove to be just, well, a flavor of a week.
“Personally, I think it’s a little faddish,” he said.
Mellon, the food activist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, disagreed. “In my view, it’s not a fad. It’s the beginning of an important new sector in American agriculture,” she said.
Gary Weber, chief scientist and director of regulatory affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said the group is evaluating the proposed regulations, but he’s concerned that nutritional claims about grass-fed beef might not be scientifically sound.
“Whatever we do, we want to be science-based, we want to be factual, and we don’t want to contribute to consumers being exploited in any way when people market beef or any food product,” Weber said.
The specialized beef market has benefited from negative publicity about mad-cow disease and about how traditionally raised beef cattle spend their last days in huge feedlots after being pumped with antibiotics that are only necessary, activists say, because cows aren’t built to eat feed grain that way.
The grass-fed standard is different from beef labeled organic, which requires adherence to a long list of other government regulations. Beef can be organic without being grass-fed and vice versa.
Specialized beef’s supporters concede it’s pricey. But as supply grows with increased demand, they predict, prices will fall.
“I acknowledge that it’s more expensive right now in a lot of cases,” Mellon said. “I really hope that over time it won’t be.”
Mellon predicted the market for grass-fed beef will grow because consumers are increasingly concerned about animals’ health as well as their own.
As grass-fed beef becomes more common, Mellon said, research could show more conclusively that the specialized beef is healthier.
At the very least, she said, it’s less fatty.
And researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said last month that one of the components in grass-fed beef — omega-3 fatty acids — shows promise for treating Alzheimer’s disease.
But some in the scientific establishment aren’t ready to shutter the feedlots.
“There needs to be more research,” Hall said.