Brix and Quality Meat
by Ridge Shinn

We at Bakewell have spent a lot of energy finding the right cattle genetics for grass-fed production. The Rotokawa Devons and other subsets of English breeds produce great quality beef on a grass-only diet in various different environments. These cattle do better on some farms than others.

In an effort to figure out why cattle with the same genetic potential do better on certain farms, we have begun to measure the quality of forage on various farms. Doug Gunnink from MN conducted a seminar for Bakewell in July and started us down this fascinating learning track.

Brix is a measurement of nutrient density. A ruminant, of course, is defined by its rumen. A rumen is a unique part of a bovine digestive system that actually ferments forage and transforms it. It is really equivalent to a compost pile — although it is an anaerobic pile in that this takes place without a lot of air. The rumen works optimally when it has the right balance of ingredients just like a compost pile: the right Carbon Nitrogen ratio, the right pH, and the right amount of protein and energy. The quality and make up of the forage that the bovine eats becomes quite important as we focus on how to optimize rumen function.

Forage can be tested in a laboratory for the various elements that are present and Doug Gunnink suggests that this is more important than the soil test since if it’s not in the forage it never gets to the rumen. Actually he says, “Once the cattle start eating dirt, we will start testing soil.”

Another method of spot testing forage quality is with a refractometer or Brix meter. This is used for a field assay of “nutrient density.” It is a measure that is used often in the fruit business and especially in the wine industry to measure the sugar content of wine grapes. We find we can use it to measure the quality of forage. To change the quality of forage requires a forage analysis and then a prescription to change the mineral and sugar content of the forage (which we will address in a later bog article). To learn more about forage quality testing, read this series of articles explaining Brix, meters and optimal values for various crops:

USING A REFRACTOMETER TO TEST THE QUALITY OF FRUITS & VEGETABLES by Rex Harrill

Devon/Angus Beef Proves to Be Tasty & Tender
by Ridge Shinn

The data are in. The Devon/Angus calves that Hardwick Beef is harvesting are tender and tasty!

This isn’t really a surprise, because we had heard reports from customers that our 100% grass-fed Devon/Angus beef was both tender and tasty. Comments from friends and neighbors, our meat processor (with years of meat-eating experience), our customers and our vendors have all been overwhelmingly positive. In addition, a national Whole Foods representative says it’s the best beef he has tasted in America!

So we decided it was time to test our hypothesis that the Rotokawa® Devon bulls stamp their progeny with the characteristics of high-quality meat. We would do this by analyzing a random sample of ½ Rotokawa® Devon steers as they were harvested. We cut two adjacent rib eye steaks from the 12^th and 13^th rib of 25 steers.

Some of these steers were calves that were born and raised in Montana. They were fed hay and alfalfa, combined with a mineral supplement, for their first winter. Then the calves were grazed on ryegrass on irrigated land. When they were 15 to 17 months old and fat, weighing between 1,100 and 1,250 pounds, they were harvested. The cattle were killed in Montana and the primal were “wet-aged” for 14 days before the rib eye steaks were cut 1” thick and then frozen. Other steers were raised in the Northeast on perennial pasture, hay and haylage; carcasses were dry-aged before samples were harvested.

Samples Evaluated

The samples were shipped to grass-fed meat researcher Dr. Susan Duckett at Clemson University to be evaluated for fatty-acid values as well as tenderness values as measured with the Warner-Bratzler shear force test.

Preliminary findings are very exciting; the first eight samples show consistent high quality. Total fat values were equivalent to USDA low choice values; the Omega 6 Omega 3 ratio was a near perfect 1.26 to 1; and the Warner-Bratzler Shear values averaged 3.6 -- below the 4.1 level, which is the generally accepted range where 98% of people feel the meat is quite tender and of restaurant quality.

Highly acceptable taste and tenderness values are essential for the consumer to fully embrace a 100% grass-fed and finished beef program. The story about the health benefits of this product for the consumer, the animal, the farmer/rancher and the environment have been trumpeted in the press and are no longer even debated.

More and more 100% grass-fed producers and vendors are bringing beef to market and the overall quality has improved. Marian Burros, influential food writer for the New York Times, reports that nearly 75% of the samples she tried recently were good, whereas three years ago 75% were either “bad” or not tasty and tender. (August 30, 2006; read it by clicking here.)

Consistent Quality

Consistent quality of product is the goal of any long-term market success. Numerous 100% grass-fed beef companies rely on sorting cattle for quality using the ultrasound method. Live cattle can be evaluated for quality parameters and can then be harvested if they meet the quality standard set by the meat company. Other meat programs are based on a production protocol like “organic”; the protocol and “purity” or adherence to a particular standard is the prerequisite for participation in such programs, but there is less emphasis on consistent quality of the meat.

One reason for the extreme variability of meat today is the adherence to cross-breeding programs by the cattle industry, and some companies actually market “composite” bulls that are generally a three-way cross. The resulting variability that we see in the industry is the enemy of producing meat of a consistent quality.

At Hardwick Beef, we use sorting methods, including ultrasound, to select cattle for harvest. We admit this is a short term crutch. How many producers will allow a meat company to cut their herd and “cherry pick” their good cattle every year? A better approach is to breed high-quality herds using condensed, high-quality bulls, and that is what we at Bakewell Repro Center are doing to create a consistent meat product.

It takes a long perspective and patience to wait for a return on investment to create 100% grass-fed bulls. We at Hardwick Beef and Bakewell Repro Center believe that using artificial insemination (AI) with semen from the right bulls is an investment that allows a producer to breed a consistent group of high-quality calves with the overwhelming majority fitting the profile of high-quality grass-fed beef.

We at Bakewell have evaluated numerous breeds of cattle and subsets of these breeds around the world to find bulls suitable for this job. The breed that excels in this arena is the Devon.

In spite of the mountains of press criticizing animal fats over the past decades, the consumer is now beginning to distinguish between good fats and bad fats. Essential fatty acids are just that -- essential for many aspects of health. Conjugated linoleic acids, which are produced in the rumen of bovines (one of the few places these are manufactured), have numerous health benefits including creating lean muscle mass and stopping tumor growth in mammalian experiments. The omega 6/omega 3 ratio is critical in determining how these essential fatty acids benefit human health, rather than harm it.

High levels of good fat and tenderness in meat are essential for palatability of 100% grass fed beef. The consumer’s acceptance and embrace of this product depends on experiencing quality consistently.

The recent data are excellent indicators that Devon are the ultimate grass cattle. They have always been an easy fleshing breed on grass and were also known historically as the “butcher’s breed” for the quality and volume of meat. We at Bakewell believe that artificial insemination using proven Devon bulls is the fastest and best way to introduce consistent quality to your 100% grass-fed beef program.

Click here to download the data: http://www.bakewellrepro.com/bulls/RotokawaDevonsdata.pdf

Some Harsh Facts About E. Coli
by Ridge Shinn

E. coli is a naturally occurring bacterium that lives in the lower intestines of mammals, and most strains are not harmful to people. However, there is a particularly virulent strain (E. coli O157:H7) that is dangerous to human health.

We all have heard about meat recalls and outbreaks that actually kill people, including the recent media reports concerning tainted spinach. Some people are theorizing that this spinach was infected with E. coli by exposure to animal manure or human manure (for example, feces from farm workers).

E. coli outbreaks are often linked to meats or meat products that are improperly cooked. Meat can be accidentally contaminated by E. coli in the slaughter process or by contamination of meat by manure from harvested animals that contains the E. coli.

What is the biology of this syndrome? Although E. coli naturally lives in the gut of all bovines, it needs an acidic environment to proliferate. The normal pH of a healthy rumen (digestive tract of the bovine) is basic in a range from 6.2 to 6.5.

However, most cattle in this country spend their final days in feedlots eating food that includes substantial amounts of grain. This diet causes an acid environment in the rumen called acidosis, which becomes a challenge to combat. Feedlots incorporate baking soda into cattle’s feed in an attempt to counteract the negative pH. In layman’s terms, the high grain diet causes indigestion and provides an environment in which E. coli proliferates. Is there any way to reduce this threat to human health and safety?

CORNELL RESEARCH
Cornell University suggests there are ways to curtail this problem. Although the research was reported in 1998, the findings are even more appropriate today: “A simple change in cattle diets in the days before slaughter may reduce the risk of Escherichia coli (E. coli) infections in humans, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Cornell University microbiologists have discovered.”

As reported in the Sept. 11 issue of the journal Science, the research indicates that E. coli in the bovine digestive tract could be substantially reduced by removing the grain ration from finishing cattle and feeding them hay for about five days before slaughter. This allows the rumen to revert to its normal pH, which in turn makes a very unattractive environment for nasty strains of E. coli O157:H7 bacterium.

Here are the important points:

“In studies performed at Cornell, beef cattle fed grain-based rations typical of commercial feedlots had 1 million acid-resistant E. coli, per gram of feces, and dairy cattle fed only 60 percent grain also had high numbers of acid-resistant bacteria. In each case, the high counts could be explained by grain fermentation in the intestines. By comparison, cattle fed hay or grass had only acid-sensitive E. coli, and these bacteria were destroyed by an “acid shock” that mimicked the human stomach.”

“… acid-resistant strains of bacteria have evolved to overcome the protective barrier of the gastric stomach. The ongoing process of natural selection allows organisms with the appropriate genes to survive and multiply where others cannot. Because cattle have been fed high-grain, growth-promoting diets for more than 40 years, he says, there has been ample opportunity to select acid-resistant forms.”

• Follow this link for the whole story: http://http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Sept98/acid.relief.hrs.html

• Additional research on this topic is summarized at Jo Robinson’s EatWild.com site: http://www.eatwild.com/foodsafety.html

Once again we can see that changing how we raise cattle, moving them from their natural grass diet to a man-made diet of grain, has serious consequences for our food supply and our health. Raising 100% grass-fed and finished beef is just good sense.

NBC's Today Show's Tips for Buying Beef

On Aug. 23, NBC's Today Show's food editor Phil Lempert shared his advice on buying beef. In summary, his advice is:

1. "When buying fresh meat, always look at the package carefully."
2. "Buy the select grade and marinate the meat."
3. "For the best-tasting beef, think grass fed and organic."
4. "If you want to be 100 percent sure that the ground beef you are buying does not contain any carbon monoxide, buy ground beef in a "chub" package."

Check it out online here:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14477703/

Book Review

By Susan Beal, DVM

Alternative Treatments for Ruminant Animals
by Paul Dettloff, DVM, ISBN 0-911311-77-7
AcresUSA, 2003, $28.00

This is a practical and straightforward book, simply written and easy to understand, and valuable to readers with all levels of experience. It is long on experience and practicality and short on nonsense. It's easy to tell that Dr Paul Dettloff has spent some time in the trenches working with cattle and other production animals, just as it's easy to tell that Doc takes his responsibility for contributing to a healthy source of food very seriously.

Doc writes in his first chapter, To The Reader, "I do not want to treat an animal with anything that I wouldn't eat or drink myself or inject into any one of my six children." He takes this vow seriously, as do I (though I don't have six children!), and challenges his producers, the folks who reference this book and students at his "cow camp" practical workshops to that same level of commitment to the quality of the food in the food chain and the stewardship of the livestock.

While the body of the text includes lots of useful information, much of the heart and soul of the book is to be found in the introductory To The Reader section as well as in his chapter outlining the timeline of his sixty years of dairying experience. Equally good reading will be found in the Introduction.

The rest of the book is arranged by organ systems, with each chapter addressing a major system. Within each chapter the common (and some not so common) ailments are arranged alphabetically by diagnosis.

In each subsection, Doc discusses the presentation, some of the contributing factors to the conditions, and then offers some treatment advice. The treatment advice is sound and ranges from herbal remedies, homeopathic medicines, naturopathic treatments (hydrotherapy, massage, nutritional and special needs supplements, for example) and topical and supportive treatments. Doc Dettloff continually emphasizes the need for species appropriate nutrition and husbandry as well and is clear that the conventional industrial agriculture system does not always provide that.

Some of the diagnoses may be a little difficult to find when you look at the chapters. For instance, nutritional diseases such as iodine deficiency and copper toxicity are found in the chapter on endocrine diseases, as is pregnancy toxemia. Many readers might initially hunt for those things in different places, such as digestive system or reproductive system chapters. This minor fault is offset by the extensive index that helps in referencing the contents of this book.

There are additional chapters addressing the immune system and nosodes. The Immune System chapter contains good information on stray voltage and ley lines - again, not topics one might immediately associate with the title of the chapter but things which commonly influence the health, production and behaviour of stock.

The material on nosodes is presented as an alternative to vaccination – and while reducing dependence on vaccination is of real concern, over the years I have found that simply replacing the use of vaccination by the rote use of nosodes often creates health problems down the road. Oft times is it better to reduce or eliminate the use of vaccines and concentrate on bolstering the health of the individual and herd through proper nutrition and attention to the subtle signs of chronic illness than it is to rely on nosodes.

Dr Dettloff a real advocate of using the team approach to health care, realizing that there are some things the herdsman is able to do, while other things require the expertise of a veterinary professional. Doc also discusses management with an eye to prevention as well.

His advice is practical – ranging from how to administer medicines to how to roll a cow with a DA (displaced abomasum) (as well as when not to roll a cow with a DA!) to how to replace a prolapsed uterus. The photographs in the text are clear and illustrate his points well. Tales of practice and real life situations are rampant and help make the material in this book all the more real and easy to integrate into the day to day.

This book reminds me a little of the old Humphrey's patent medicine books common near the turn of the last century in that many of the treatment suggestions are for products formulated and sold by the author.

It is possible to use this book without using the particular patent medicine suggested by the author, but that requires a little more work and understanding of herbal medicines on the part of the reader. And, unlike the Humphrey's remedies, which were only identified by number, Dr Dettloff does list the basic ingredients of the medicines in the Resources section provided at the close of this text.

Alternative Treatment for Ruminant Animals is a primer of alternative treatments to common conditions in ruminant animals (goats and sheep as well as cattle). It is written from the perspective of a clinician offering care in a system that does not use conventional medicines, whether the producer is officially certified or not. This is a great resource for the herdsman or the hobby-type farmer as well as for veterinary professionals who may not have extensive experience in organic herds or in managing illness with other than conventional medical approaches. It is a resource that all herdsmen should have – and not stuck somewhere on a shelf looking pretty, and staying clean, but out in the barn or truck or medicine box, being used.

Susan Beal, DVM
Big Run Healing Arts

Book Review

By Lynne Pledger

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan, Penguin Press, 2006

This book is by one of our favorite authors who is also a long-time friend of the Bakewell Repro Center. As fans of Michael Pollan know, he brings a fresh perspective to the often complex topic of what we eat. Below we present our own book review, by Lynne Pledger.

Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma could be a revolution-maker. In one engaging, comprehensive volume, Pollan reveals more than any of us knew about the way industrial agriculture, backed by government policies, erodes our health, environment, and quality of life. But he also addresses alternatives — notably the grass-fed meat movement — leaving us with hope that the situation can be righted

In light of the abundance of food, varieties of food and conflicting advice about food in our culture, the book asks, What should we eat? and then follows with a critical companion question, What are we eating now?

In a disarmingly earnest quest, Pollan leads us up and down the food chain to consider all the implications — health, environmental, ethical — of food he consumes as we read. These meals include take-out from McDonald's, a chicken dinner from Joel Salatin’s family farm, and a “personal” meal that the author hunts, gathers, grows and prepares himself. In the hands of a lesser writer -- or less thoughtful human being — this documentation might be a tedious tome or an evangelical diatribe. But Pollan is provocative, moving, and humorous, serving up fresh insight with every page.

Appropriately, the book starts with a beleaguered American farmer, George Naylor, who we join in his Iowa cornfield where he is planting yet another subsidized crop of that already over-abundant, cheap commodity fertilized by fossil fuels. Following the trail of kernels from cornfield to grain elevator, and then on to a feedlot and a maze of food processing, we end up at a McDonald's, where Pollan and his wife and son purchase three meals to go.

Pollan takes his research down to the level of the atom, utilizing a laboratory spectrometer that identifies the corn atoms, to find out how much of the carbon in McDonald’s various offerings comes from corn. The results: soda , 100% (high fructose corn syrup), milk shake, 78%, salad dressing, 65%, chicken nuggets, 56%, cheeseburger, 52%, French fries, 23%. Even those of us who eschew McDonalds are likely to be corn-fed without realizing it. Corn-derived substances are in many processed foods. And a great deal of corn passes through a steer on its way to being beef at the supermarket or steak house.

A central point is that cattle are ruminants, and ruminants have evolved to eat grass, not corn, which makes them sick, requiring medication to live long enough to be slaughtered. For those who think feedlots are an advance of modern agriculture, Pollan offers this chilling analogy:

“A feedlot is very much a premodern city …teeming and filthy and stinking, with open sewers, unpaved roads, and choking air rendered visible by dust…. As in fourteenth-century London, say, the workings of the metropolitan digestion remain vividly on display, the foodstuffs coming in, the streams of waste going out. The crowding into tight quarters of recent arrivals from all over, together with the lack of sanitation has always been a recipe for disease. The only reason contemporary animal cities aren’t as plague-ridden or pestilential as their medieval human counterparts is a single historical anomaly: the modern antibiotic.”

In Chapter 9, Big Organic, Pollan buys an organic TV dinner at Whole Foods. The meal turns out to be,

“… a highly industrialized organic product, involving a choreography of thirty-one ingredients assembled from far-flung farms, laboratories, and processing plants scattered over a half-dozen states and two countries, and containing such mysteries of modern food technology as high-oleic safflower oil, guar and zanthan gum, soy lecithin, carrageenan, and ‘natural grill flavor’… Several of these ingredients are synthetic additives permitted under federal organic rules. So much for ‘whole’ foods.”

He also purchases a “free-range” chicken and subsequently investigates its provenance:

“The last stop on my tour of California industrial organic farming took me to Petuluma, where I tried without success to find the picturesque farmstead, with its red barn, cornfield, and farmhouse, depicted on the package in which the organic roasting chicken I bought at Whole Foods had been wrapped.”

Instead he finds the chickens crowded into “barracks,” with fans on either end; not caged, but not ranging freely either.

Pollan’s week at Joel Salatin’s “beyond organic” grass-based operation is the author’s crucible for testing the wisdom of organic agriculture’s heroes such as Sir Albert Howard, who wrote (in 1943), “Mother earth never attempts to farm without live stock; she always raises mixed crops; great pains are taken to preserve the soil and to prevent erosion …” At Salatin’s Polyface farm, Pollan finds that both the theories and the food can take the heat.

A key observation of the book is that while agriculture has always been the business of capturing free solar energy for human use by growing plants or raising plant-eating animals, industrial agriculture has made a fundamental shift in this relationship by relying on a finite resource—fossil fuel-- for fertilizing, processing, and transporting food. The products may have a cheap price tag, but the cost to our society is incalculable.

Fed up with the system? Buy The Omnivore’s Dilemma for your family, friends, and elected representatives. Better yet: buy grass-fed meat and dairy, and pastured pork, poultry and eggs — and vote with your food.

Lynne Pledger

Pricing & Parity
by Ridge Shinn

Establishing a fair price for our meat and milk is critical to establish a thriving, sustainable rural economy. But what determines a fair price?

Most of us are old enough to attest that prices in general have skyrocketed in our lifetime. But have the prices of meat and milk risen in accordance with the price of other everyday items? To clarify, Randy Cook of the National Organization for Raw Materials (NORM) provides the following calculations. Compare the price of a postage stamp in 1947--$.02—to the price of a postage stamp today--$.37. This ratio of almost 20 to 1 is reflected in many prices today in comparison to prices in 1947.

But look closely at the price comparison for milk and meat: the average price from 1947-1949 for milk was $4.37/hundredweight (cwt), and for beef was $20.13/cwt; the average market price as of January 2005 was $14.70/cwt for milk and $89.44/cwt for beef. Using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) of the base period 1947-1949 as 100, the value for 2004 would be 807.6. Therefore, to produce buying power equivalent to that in 1947-49, milk today should be priced at $35.29/cwt and beef should be priced at $162.57/cwt. At these prices, most farmers could make a living.

The year 1947 was not selected for this calculation arbitrarily. NORM, under the leadership of Carl Wilken and working with the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA), determined that the years 1947 to 1949 mark a period in American history when prices paid to farmers actually reflected the cost of production: in other words parity prices (“parity” meaning equal or similar). This was because an Act of Congress established a government-backed loan program for commodities at the level of 90% of parity; this created a period of nearly full parity. After the War Price Stabilization Act ran out in 1951, it was not renewed; supports for parity pricing disappeared and pricing for agricultural commodities started a rapid descent.

Importance of Parity Pricing
A compelling description of the importance of parity prices is found in NORM’s summation of 60 years of analysis of the nation’s economic records.