Safety of Grass Fed Beef

Grass Fed Beef & Safety

Is there a cleaner meat?

You probably don’t want to think about it, but picture what cattle look like. Ok, now picture a hundred or so grain fed cattle on the size of a basketball field. They are standing outside in their feedlot.  What do you see? I bet you are imagining right:  the cattle are standing hoof-deep in manure and they are miserable.

It is pretty safe to say that cleaner meat is safer meat. So, now imagine pasture grazing cattle. What do you imagine now? They are walking around in grass, not cramped into a feed lot. You probably are imagining them being a lot cleaner than the grain fed cattle. You would be right!

The industrialized meat industry tries hard to provide clean and safe meat for customers, and they usually do an excellent job doing this. But accidents do happen, and the cleaner the cows go into the slaughterhouse, the safer their meat is going to be.

Meat Safety Tips:

You are still trying to convince yourself that your ordinary meat from any supermarket is safe for you and your family to eat, right? No one can really say for sure if the three pounds of roast beef you have sitting in the refrigerator are going to make you sick.

Regardless of whether you have natural and delicious grass fed beef or ordinary super market beef sausage to cook, remember these tips:

• Wash your hands with soap and water after handling raw or undercooked meat.
• Make sure to cook your meat long enough (steaks that are still bleeding put you at risk).
• Don’t forget to use a meat thermometer on your meats to ensure that they are cooked at a high enough temperature to kill bacteria.
• Don’t leave your meat out on the counter to defrost.
• Remember, if you aren’t going to use it within a day or two, freeze the uncooked meat now.
• Taste testing meat that was left out overnight (or longer for two hours) to see if it has gone bad yet is a bad idea. Don’t risk getting sick, just throw it out.
• Wash all knives and cutting boards with a bleach and water solution after cutting raw meat and before cutting anything else.

By following these tips, you can help reduce the amount of food borne illness from your meats, and hopefully keep your family safe.

Does My Meat Have E. Coli? Yes, it does.

This isn’t meant to scare you, but your meat from the supermarket has E. coli  (Escherichia coli). In fact, all meat does. There are thousands of E. coli bacteria in your intestines right now. Don’t worry, they usually aren’t harmful to you.

Let’s talk about the steps of E. coli contamination and find out how it can be bad for you.

1. Your body naturally has E. coli in it. It helps keep you alive, and you help keep it alive. Don't worry about this type of E. coli, because it isn’t going to kill you.
2. Beef animals also have E. coli in their stomachs. It's a different strain, and it isn't safe for humans. When an animal is slaughtered, the E. coli in its stomach and intestines is often mixed in with the meat during the meat processing.
3. The meat goes to the supermarket, and you can't see or smell the E. coli bacteria.
4. Here is where you have to be careful. If you don't cook your meat to a high enough temperature for long enough, the E. coli bacteria won't be killed off. You risk getting very sick (and if you are elderly, a small child or have a compromised immune system, you risk very serious illness and a chance of dying).
5. Your body usually can naturally fight off a few of the bad E. coli bacteria if they get into your system, and you won’t even notice they were there. If the meat contains many of the bad E. coli bacteria, you won’t be so lucky.

How do I know if I have E. coli?

E. coli is not a pretty illness to have. It is estimated that every year in the United States alone, 70,000 people become ill and 60 of those will die from dangerous strains of E. coli bacteria. If you get a nasty strain of the E. coli bacteria, you may confuse it with the flu or other illness. Here are some of the symptoms of E. coli. You may experience some or all of the following:

• Stomach cramps.
• Vomiting and nausea.
• Diarrhea.
• Fever..

These symptoms may last from 5 to 10 days. Sometimes however there are some serious complications that arise. Kidney failure and severe dehydration can result if you don’t take care of yourself and get medical attention.

How does Grass Fed Beef Reduce the Risk of E. coli?

Grass fed beef naturally contains less of the bad E. coli bacteria. Why? Because their diet is different from typical grain raised cattle. Grain raised cattle are raised on a pretty unnatural and unhealthy diet of grains, proteins and garbage. Their stomachs have to produce a lot more acids to break down these foods than cattle raised on grass or hay.

We already know that E. coli lives naturally in the stomach and intestines, so this shouldn't be a problem, right? Well, it does become a problem when the extra stomach acids come along. The E. coli in cattle like to live in a neutral pH environment, so at first the acid kills the E. coli, but soon the bacteria gets smarter, and start to become resistant to the stomach acids. In other words, the surviving bacteria mutate and become acid loving. This will soon become the dangerous type of E. coli, because if we ingest this type of bacteria, it won’t be killed off by our stomach acids.

The healthy diet of natural American grass fed cattle ensures that nature stays in check, and that the E. coli bacteria don’t turn into a dangerous strain. There is always going to be bacteria in meat, because bacteria help to keep the animal healthy. The difference is do you want bacteria in your meat that is already resistant to a cattle’s stomach acids or do you want them to be natural and unchanged?

Why so much E. coli?

Why are there so much more E. coli bacteria in grain fed cattle? Because there are E. coli on the animal when they come into the slaughter house. Not only is it in their intestines, but it is also on the outside of their body. Grain fed animals stand in manure all day long in close quarters, and when the go to the slaughter house they are not as clean as grass fed or pasture raised beef animals. Grass fed beef cattle are very clean compared to grain fed animals, because they have more room to roam, and don't have to stand in manure all day.

E. coli is not the only one… the Campylobacter bacteria

There are other dangers of eating grain fed beef. One of these dangers is a serious bacteria: campylobacter.

• 58% of cattle living on the feedlot carried campylobacter, while only 2% of pasture raised beef animals had it.
• Like E. coli, campylobacter is a food borne disease, and can be prevented by cooking the meat to a hot enough temperature.
• The symptoms begin two to ten days after eating the infected meat.
• Symptoms include nausea, abdominal pain, vomiting, fever, headache, and muscle pain.

The Hidden Cost

There is no question, that grass fed beef is a safer alternative. The choice is yours. It seems more expensive, but there are hidden costs associated with not eating pasture raised meats. These costs include poor health, environmental damage, higher cost of oil, corn and health care.