The Difference With Grass-Fed Vs. Feed-Lot Beef

If asked, most people could not tell you where the meat on their plate came from. In fact, if they wanted to know, it would be darned difficult – if not impossible – to find out. On the other hand, while they may imagine that the beef cow they are eating was once frolicking on lush green pastures, the average American today would NOT want to meet their dinner while it was still standing. No, Virginia, not all cows eat grass. That lovely image of a herd of cattle happily munching away and contentedly chewing their cud is mostly a figment of your imagination. Over the last 70 years, the beef industry has evolved into an intense, industrial enterprise designed to put as much weight on animals as fast as possible and get the resulting meat to market as quickly as possible. To do that, beef cattle – who are by nature ruminants (grass eaters) – are hustled off the pasture where they spent their first six months of life to spend the next six to eight months packed into confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) with no green pasture in sight. In those feedlots, they are fed grain – lots of grain – to bring them up to the target weight for slaughter.



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