We
chose pasture-based farming at Painted Hand Farm for a number of reasons. First
and foremost is our dedication to raising the best possible livestock for our
customers. In addition to healthier livestock for our customers, pastured-based
farming is good for the environment.
Healthier
for You Grass-fed
livestock and poultry is not only better for the animals, it's healthier for you
as a consumer. Meat, eggs, and dairy products from grass-fed animals contain
more health-promoting omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin E, and beta carotene. What's
more, they have less total fat and omega-6 fatty acids, a type of fat that has
been linked with a number of disorders. Grass-fed livestock such as beef, goat
and lamb also have from two to five times more CLA, a newly discovered
cancer-fighting fat.
Lower in
Fat and Calories There are
significant nutritional differences between grass-fed and factory-farmed
animals. First, meat from grass-fed beef, goat, lamb and poultry is lower in
total fat. For example, a sirloin steak from pasture-raised beef has about one
half to one third as much fat as a similar cut from a feed-lot steer. In fact,
grass-fed meat has about the same fat content as skinless chicken breast. When
meat is this lean, it actually lowers your LDL cholesterol levels.
Because
grass-fed meat is so lean, it is also lower in calories. It’s simple--fat has
9 calories per gram, compared with only 4 calories for protein and
carbohydrates. The greater the fat content, the greater the number of calories.
Meat and dairy
products from grass-fed ruminants are the richest known source of another type
of fat—conjugated linoleic acid (CLA)—a good fat. When livestock are raised
on fresh pasture alone, their products contain from three to five times more CLA
than products from feedlot animals. CLA has been scientifically associated with
lowering susceptibility to cancer.
Premium
Poultry When poultry is housed indoors and deprived of greens, their meat
and eggs also become artificially low in omega-3s and extremely high in fat.
Eggs from pastured hens can contain as much as 10 times more omega-3s than eggs
from factory hens.
Factory-farmed
poultry also subjects the animals to abhorrent conditions. Tens of thousands of
birds live in crowded and filthy environments. This concentration of birds
pollute the local air and water with their wastes. Factory farmed birds are fed
the cheap protein such as diseased animal remains and fecal matter in addition
to antibiotics, chemical wormers and synthetic vitamins to maintain low
production costs and loss. Because the birds are kept in a high stress
environment all of their lives the quality of the meat and eggs is profoundly
effected. Factory farms are controlled by very large corporations despite being
paraded as ‘family-owned’ to get around local ordinances preventing
corporate farming. The industrial scale of production dehumanizes workers and
allows cruelty to the birds.
Compare
that to pastured poultry which live their lives outdoors with ample room to
roam, eat grass and bugs. Living in the sunshine and moving to fresh pasture
regularly means antibiotics, synthetic vitamins and chemical wormers are not
needed. The birds’ add to the fertility of the pasture alleviating the
farm’s dependency on chemical fertilizers and insecticides thus reducing
agricultural pollution from nutrient run-off into the water supply.
Pasture-based versus Factory Farming Facts
In
the United States, most ruminants (beef, lamb, goat) are only raised on pasture
for the first months of their lives. Then they are loaded on double-decker
tractor trailers and transported sometimes thousands of miles to large-scale
feedlots where they are raised in confinement and fed a diet of grain, chemical
wormers, synthetic vitamins, growth hormones and antibiotics. To save money,
their diet frequently includes unsavory ingredients such as chicken manure,
stale and rotten grocery products. When they are ready for slaughter, they are
again trucked to distant large-scale meat processing plants that handle
thousands of carcasses a day.
Commercially raised poultry suffer a far worse fate than their four-legged counterparts. Packed into small cages, debeaked and declawed, they spend their entire lives without access to sunlight and green grass. They live in a constant haze of fecal particulates and must be fed antibiotics and dusted with insecticides in order to control diseases and parasites that are rampant in indoor poultry houses. To speed their time to market, they are fed synthetic growth promoters to accelerate their growth.
Laying hens are exposed to tightly
controlled lighting to increase their laying capacity. The artificial increase
in egg production severely taxes the hens’ bodies causing osteoporosis, fatty
liver disease and egg bound fatigue which occurs when the hen is too weak to lay
eggs. All these maladies result in death. The life expectancy of a production
layer is one year. Due to the poor quality of their meat, they are usually
ground up and fed back to the next batch of laying hens.
Pastured-based
farming is better for the environment, too. In a factory farming environment,
animals deposit huge amounts of manure in a small amount of space. Manure must
be collected and transported away from the area which costs money. To keep costs
low, the waste material is spread as close to the factory farm as possible,
causing nutrient overload and run-off which contaminates ground and surface
water. Grass-fed animals
‘unload’ their manure over a relatively large tract of land without the aide
of specialized equipment and at the same time naturally fertilizing the pastures
instead of creating a waste-management problem.
Additionally,
grazed livestock harvest their own food so grass-based farms have little use for
expensive, specialized, gas-guzzling farm equipment. Due to the extensive amount
of equipment used by factory farms, commercially produced livestock and poultry
require as much as ten times more petroleum products in order to raise the same
number of animals compared to pastured production.
Learn more about Factory Farming
