Month: May 2021
Isn’t all beef in the UK grass-fed?
When telling people that I sell grass fed meat a common response is; ‘isn’t all UK beef grass fed? They tend to get this look…..
In the UK we have a wide diversity of livestock farms that have a wide range of rearing systems and we do indeed have a lot of grass.
It is true that in the UK, we may not see the huge concentrated animal feeding operations of the USA. However, the vast majority of farms do use grains in one form or another to ‘finish’ their cattle, lambs and mutton ewes.
Why does that matter?
We cover why eating grass fed meat makes so much sense elsewhere in great detail but in short the main reasons are;
It’s good for the environment. Grass-fed cattle grazed in regenerative systems promote the sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere into the soil. Buy not using grains farmers avoid using cereals and soya sourced from unsustainable farming systems.
It’s good for the animals. Cattle are designed to eat pasture and graze in open fields. Pasture/grass-fed livestock tend to have higher welfare and spend their time doing what cows are supposed to do. Their mixed natural diet promotes robust health so grass-fed animals suffer from less disease and require fewer health interventions including the need for antibiotics.
It’s better for your health. Grass fed meat has a healthy fat profile, is a powerhouse of nutrients and even contains concentrations of beneficial plant nutrients!
There are no specific labelling laws governing the term grass-fed so the term is widely used to cover a broad spectrum of animal rearing systems. ‘Grass-fed could be used to cover animals who have had a very short time on pasture and are then cereal fed until slaughter, right through to those who are fortunate enough to graze naturally for the whole of their lives.
I am not suggesting that farmers who use grains are ‘bad’, or even that the taste or texture of the meat they are producing is poor, but, it certainly does not guarantee that the nutrient density is what we expect from ‘grass-fed’ meat.
It seems that the critical period for the animals to be grass-fed is in the 80-90 days prior to slaughter which would fall within most UK livestock’s ‘finishing’ period – when farmers are fattening the animals in order to get a good confirmation of carcass and a favourable price. The majority of UK farms will feed cereals for this period, and many will bring the animals indoors in order to do this efficiently.
An Australian study into the ‘Effect of feeding systems on omega-3 fatty acids, conjugated linoleic acid and trans fatty acids in Australian beef cuts: potential impact on human health’ (Ponnampalam, E.N., 2006), showed that all of the previously gained omega-3 and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) of grass-fed beef was destroyed in just 80 days of grain feeding to the degree that it no longer qualified as being a meaningful dietary source by the New Zealand and Australian Food Standards Agency.
There are very few farmers in the UK finishing their animals exclusively on pasture which includes nutrient-dense pasture crops like red clover, lucerne and a variety of wildflowers along with grass.
The only recognised certification program for ‘grass-fed or ‘pasture-fed’ meat is operated by the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association and they are working hard to get more farmers on board to sell under their label ‘pasture for life’. The chances are if it is not certified your local farmer will, in fact, be finishing his ‘local grass-fed meat’ on grains!
It’s also worth noting that the term ‘grass-fed’ is really only relevant to ruminant animals that would naturally have a pasture-based diet. Omnivores such as fowl and pigs can eat some grass and love to scratch and root in the pasture, however, it is very unlikely these animals will be grass-finished at any commercial scale in the UK.
So really the term ‘grass-fed’ is pretty meaningless unless you dig a bit deeper. Unfortunately, the widespread use of the term ‘grass-fed’ also undermines the efforts of those trying to encourage more farmers to exclusively rear on grass. Rearing animals purely on pasture is an incredibly sustainable way to produce meat but it takes a deep understanding of organic farming, eco-systems and holistic animal health management.
If you want to be sure of the potential nutrient quality of the meat you are buying then you need to buy ‘pasture for life’ certified meat, or ask the following questions of your supplier:
Are the animals grazed outside on pasture?
Do the animals receive ANY grains?
What feed is used to ‘finish’ the livestock?
The answer to these questions should give you some insight into where, on the wide scale of nutrient quality, your ‘grass-fed meat’ may fall.
I am delighted to say that Primal Meats only sells beef and lamb that is Pasture for life certified. We work with a small and trusted group of farmers who rear their animals to the very highest standards of welfare and have farming systems that positively impact the planet.
We have a superb range of pasture for life certified beef cuts available all year round – something that is extremely hard to achieve – and at times also offer ‘cow shares’ where you can buy a share in a specific animal reared on a very special farm.
Check out our beef selection HERE.
Regenerative Agriculture, the Solution to Climate Change.
Part Two: Methane & The Meat Tax
In Part 1 of this series, we established the importance of distinguishing between ‘ancient’ and ‘current’ carbon when considering whether a farming system is contributing to an overall rise in atmospheric carbon. It is always essential to ask, is the system being pumped full of ‘ancient carbon’ or, as with 100% grass-fed systems, does it rely largely on ‘current carbon’ being cycled between the atmosphere and farm ecosystem?
We also look at the vital role of healthy grasslands in drawing down carbon, and locking it into the soil. Grazing lands across the world, managed under regenerative principles, is the best available option for rapid global carbon sequestration.
Meat Tax and Measuring Methane
Any animal gut is an anaerobic-digester, all of which produce methane. We don’t have to go too far back in history to find atmospheric methane (CH4) stable at 700 parts per billion, which was the case for at least 10 million years, when there were many millions of large herbivores on the planet.
The science and thinking that has led to the demonisation of meat as contributor to climate change, is not just to do with the lack of understanding the role grazing animals play in cycling carbon into the soil; and the lack of distinction between ‘ancient’ and ‘current’ carbon; but also the outdated techniques being used to measure global warming gases.
Semantics too are essential in this discussion, nothing is simple, linear, good or bad. We can’t talk about Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and the greenhouse effect being bad, because we have depended on the greenhouse effect for millions of years to provide us with a warm stable climate.
Up until recently the scientific world has used Global Warming Potential 100 (GWP100) as its benchmark measure for the gases that create the greenhouse effect. GWP100 means that any gas, be it CO2 from a power station burning fossil fuels, or methane from cows, within an intensive or indeed grass-fed system, are measured by simply working out what their ‘Carbon Dioxide Equivalence’ in warming potential is, then extrapolates that over 100 years. Methane is understood to have 28x the warm equivalence of CO2, so is calculated as 28 x 100.
However the problem is, this does not account for the fact that Methane is a short lived gas, and in fact will break down within a decade. Whereas the CO2 from a coal fired power station, will perpetuate in the atmosphere for 1-2 centuries.
The misleading nature of GWP100 has led to understandable alarm about the potential contribution that livestock make to climate change. But this is the red-herring that detracts from the fact that the two biggest causal factors with climate change are the combustion of fossil fuels and the degeneration and desertification of land across the world, the latter of which we will cover more in part three.
Back to measuring methane, researchers at Oxford University, have recently created Global Warming Potential * (GWP*), which does take into account the lifespan of gases, and the results give a much closer correlation to what is actually being measured in the atmosphere. This means that ‘pollutants’ can now be linked far more accurately to their actual warming potential. Figure 1. show the comparison of GWP100 and GWP* against atmospheric measurements. It is clear that GWP* is far more accurate.
Meat Tax
There is a strong drive in Britain and Europe to introduce a meat tax, to take into account the methane contribution made by the meat industry. Our concern is that this does not distinguish between different production systems, those that are pump-primed with ‘ancient carbon’ and those that are not. Intensive beef systems use huge amounts of fossil carbon in their systems.
The meat tax will detract from the essential role played by herbivores in helping grasslands sequester massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. 100% grass-fed systems would do far more to offset global heating, than the methane the animals in such a system produce. But economics is always driving farm production towards intensification, and a meat tax will be no different, as farmers battle for ever decreasing profit margins.
Upsurge in Methane
Since 2007 there has been a global upsurge in Methane, and scientists still don’t fully understand where it is coming from. For one thing it turns out that extraction and leakage of fossil fuels, in particular in natural gas and shale extraction, contributes far more methane to the atmosphere than previously understood.
It is in fact possible to distinguish between methane that comes from fossil sources and current biological activity because they vary in isotopes concentrations. What is baffling scientists is that there has been an upsurge in methane from biological activity, mostly in the tropics. This could be from a myriad of sources from the enteric bacteria in the intestines of animals, to increased bacterial activity in wetlands and rice paddies due to higher temperatures, to landfill sites and anaerobic lagoons of pig manure.
Due to the urbanisation and increased wealth of global populations, there has been an increase in intensive meat production. But we can say with some confidence that enteric methane from livestock alone is not responsible for this rise in atmospheric methane, as the changes in livestock numbers through this reference period were gradual. Ruminant numbers have increased in less industrialised societies, and have stabilised or reduced in the industrial world. Cattle numbers saw their steepest global increase between 2000 and 2006, when methane levels were flat.Even though scientists are unsure of the source of increased atmospheric methane, all this focus of CO2 and CH4 means that the conversation about carbon sequestration by soils never gets to take the main stage. It is imperative that it does because with ever increasing temperatures we are seeing the rapid-thawing of permafrost in the arctic, which releases CO2 and CH4 as microbial activity kicks in. This source of atmospheric carbon, which will release ever more rapidly, possesses by far the greatest threat yet to global climate stability.
What happens to methane in the atmosphere?
Atmospheric methane levels are checked by hydroxyl radicals (OH), which are responsible for the short lifespan of CH4. One of the key ways that OH forms is when atmospheric water droplets are exposed to sunlight. OH creates a chain reaction breaking methane down into water (H2O) and CO2, and cycling OH radicals back into the system. So OH radicals are the air-cleaner that keeps on giving.
Through evapotranspiration from leaves, a healthy pasture will produce 100x the OH radicals required to break down methane produced by the animals grazing that pasture.
We know that healthy ecosystems support the OH cycle, what we don’t know so well is what the consequences of poor land management and desertification have on the atmosphere’s ability to clean itself. Could the loss of forests and healthy ecosystems be causing the atmosphere’s cleaning systems to falter and therefore atmospheric methane to increase?
Assessing the impact of land management is challenging at global level, due to the vastly different contexts, but it can be achieved effectively and objectively on a farm by farm basis.
Methodologies such as Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV), developed by the Savory institute, take a systems science approach to monitoring ecosystem health. EOV offers a way of measuring the complexity of nature, through empirical and tangible outcomes, which in turn provide the farmer with ongoing feedback from which to make better management decisions. EOV measures and trends key indicators of ecosystem function, which in aggregate, indicate positive or negative trends in the overall health of a landscape. Healthier landscapes = a healthier climate.
A word on Nitrous oxide (N2O)
Nitrous oxide has also been under scrutiny in recent years for its role in climate warming. Nitrous oxide is 300x more potent than CO2’s warming potential, and stays in the atmosphere for an average of 114 years, before being removed by a natural sink or destroyed through chemical reactions in the atmosphere. It is important that we look at this too, especially because its major source is from the land.
Nitrous oxide has been heralded as another reason that we should introduce a meat tax, and while we are in total agreement that meat from industrial sources is a problem, this again is a tricky issue, because N2O is part of the natural circulation of nitrogen between the atmosphere, plants, animals, and microorganisms that live in soil and water. Nitrogen takes on a variety of chemical forms throughout the nitrogen cycle, including N2O. Natural emissions of N2O are mainly from bacteria breaking down nitrogen in soils and the oceans.
N2O is removed from the atmosphere when it is absorbed by certain types of bacteria or destroyed by ultraviolet radiation or chemical reactions. But it is important to maintain things in context, agriculture in Europe, according to the European Environmental Agency, still only contributes 10% of global warming gases.
If we look more closely at how N2O is produced in farming, what is clear is that although it is a natural bi-product of biological processes, the use of chemical nitrogen fertiliser, the mis-management of animal manure (created in intensive systems), and poor soil management are the main drivers behind why N2O emissions from agriculture have increased. Again, a shift to extensive, regenerative system would mitigate this rise, as well as drawing down CO2 into the soil.
For every gram of excess (not taken up by plants) nitrogen fertiliser added to the soil, 30g of carbon is oxidised from the soil to the atmosphere in the processing of that nitrogen.
Conclusion
- It is easy to use and misuse statistics to support any arguments when it comes to climate change.
- Methane levels have increased alarmingly in the atmosphere, but this cannot be blamed on enteric methane from livestock. Of much more concern is the methane leakage from gas, and fracking industry, and the warming of the arctic where permafrosts are emitting CO2 and CH4 at increasing rates as the climate warms.
- If we focus on N2O we become alarmed by the fact it has a far greater warming potential than CO2, however it is still a small player in the bigger picture, and N2O is a natural part of the nitrogen cycle, so can detract from more important issues.
- If we take in the whole picture we can see that there are two primary casualties in climate change:
- The use and leakage of fossil fuels.
- Poor land management creating bare soils – this topic will be the focus of part three where we will take an in-depth look at this through the water cycle.
- It is essential that we disentangle regenerative agriculture from the climate change blame game, because it offers the greatest opportunity available for warming mitigation, through carbon drawdown into soil sinks.
References
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/pdfscache/1180.pdf
Methane & GWP
https://www.faifarms.com/podcasts/ruminant-methane-gwp-global-warming/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0026-8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwEToq05L2k
Meat Tax
Hydroxyl Radicals
http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/djj/book/bookchap11.html
https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-clarify-recycling-mechanism-for-hydroxyl-radicals/
Rise in Methane
https://e360.yale.edu/features/methane_riddle_what_is_causing_the_rise_in_emissions
https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/16/3033/2019/
http://www.fao.org/3/y4252e/y4252e07a.htm#TopOfPage
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146978/methane-emissions-continue-to-rise
https://www.wired.com/story/atmospheric-methane-levels-are-going-up-and-no-one-knows-why/
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GB006009
https://lachefnet.wordpress.com/2018/05/04/ruminations-methane-math-and-context/
Nitrous Oxide
https://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0
http://www.icopal-noxite.co.uk/nox-problem/nox-pollution.aspx
https://www.aeroqual.com/meet-the-nitrogen-oxide-family
https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2134/csa2017.62.0413
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/7/2/024005/meta
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/9/10/105012/meta
Soil carbon and water cycle
Primal Living
Primal Meats is more than a meat company; we represent a movement for regenerating human and ecological health.
What we choose to eat every day is probably the most crucial decision we can make. Every ‘micro’ choice compounds into either a healthy life, able to do the things we want or a life plagued by disease and disability.
In Dr Mark Hyman’s excellent new book, the ‘Pegan Diet’, he shockingly highlights that our modern western diet is currently the biggest killer on the planet, exceeding smoking and every other cause. Conservatively our modern diet rich in processed foods, sugar and vegetable oils and lacking in protective healing whole foods kills 11 million people a year. He suggests this is a gross underestimate!
At Primal Meats, we have always supported using evolutionary and ancestral wisdom to understand better what to eat and which foods need to be politely escorted from our cupboards straight into the bin. We believe that human and planetary health and thoroughly intertwined.
You may choose to follow a paleo or pegan diet, a gut healing protocol such as GAPs or AIP, the advice of the Western A Price foundation, or simply be guided by sound science-based functional health wisdom from inspirational health leaders such as Dr Chattergee, Dr Mark Hyman or Shawn Stevenson. These approaches share the same principles and reflect the lifestyle that brought our hunter-gatherer forefathers such robust health. 1
Our modern world is at times exciting, convenient and full of mind-bogglingly clever innovations in technology – we have so much to be grateful for. Most of us live in more comfort with more access to helpful resources than a royal family would have enjoyed 100 years ago.
But – and it’s a big but – this has not led to the health and happiness you would expect. We are considerably more depressed, more stressed and less satisfied with life than we were before many of these conveniences became available. The health of the westernised civilisations has plummeted in recent years. 2
As part of our move towards modernity, we have become dependant on science to decide what is good for us and protect us from disease. Although we managed to ‘out evolve’ every other species on the planet without the requirement of a single peer-reviewed scientific study to tell us how to live, nowadays, we give almost no credibility to ancient wisdom, traditional customs or intuitive nutrition.
This could be a big mistake.
Along with junk food comes junk science, and it’s a rapidly growing problem potentially more harmful than any disease. The issue is rapidly gaining attention; a paper published December 16 in PLOS ONE reports that more than 13 percent of peer-reviewed studies in 10 of the top nutrition science journals had connections to the food industry—and of those, more than half reported findings favourable to business interests.
Conducting good science is an expensive business – the corporations with enough money to fund such research are highly unlikely to be the same ones selling nutrient-dense whole foods!
Evolution has proved that there’s simply no doubt that basing our diets on real whole foods such as grass-fed nutrient-dense meats, organic vegetables grown on healthy soils, wild foods, and eliminating refined sugar, processed foods and vegetable/seed oils is a HUGE piece of the health puzzle. But there’s a lot more to health than what we eat.
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes now account for 90 per cent of deaths each year in the UK.
These so-called ‘lifestyle’ conditions are a well-known problem in the west. Much less understood is that they now account for the majority (53 per cent) of deaths and disabilities in the developing world – taking 31 million lives a year.
NCDs are not driven by infections and viruses but by behaviours such as poor diet, smoking, moving too little, alcohol and drugs. 3
Along with the murderous modern western diet comes the modern western lifestyle. The direct impact of losing connection with our roots is pretty hard to accurately measure scientifically – as it inevitably comes hand in hand with modern junk based diets, but it seems it matters a great deal.
You could have the best diet in the world. Still, if your sleep is disturbed, you spend more time on Facebook than you see family face to face, you sit all day at a computer, have a lily-white complexion from avoiding the sun, and generally see more nature on your TV than actually spending time in wild places. Your risk of disease is going to increase significantly.
Research has found that people who sleep less than six hours per night have a higher risk of death from any cause, and one large-scale study found that people with short sleep have a significantly increased risk of cancer and stroke.
An analysis of 13 studies of sitting time and activity levels found that those who sat for more than eight hours a day with no physical activity had a risk of dying similar to the risks of dying posed by obesity and smoking. 4
Loneliness was associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide. Loneliness among heart failure patients was associated with a nearly four times increased risk of death, 68% increased risk of hospitalisation, and 57% increased risk of emergency room visits. 5
Over the last two decades, we have even been convinced into thinking we should be afraid of the sun! Once again, questionable science funded by the very companies hoping to profit from the result. A new study published in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA found that several active ingredients in different sunscreens enter the bloodstream at levels that far exceed the FDA’s recommended threshold.
A huge and growing amount of research has now shown that avoiding sun exposure has created an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency. Current estimates are that at least 50% of the general population and 80% in infants are deficient in vitamin D. Low levels of D3 are now known to play a major role in the development in many of the chronic degenerative diseases. In fact, vitamin D deficiency may be the most common medical condition in the world and vitamin D supplementation may be the most cost effective strategy in improving health, reducing disease, and living longer. Those deficient in vitamin D have twice the rate of death and a doubling of risk for many diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma and autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. – Dr. Michael Murray 6
Our hunter-gatherer forefathers had a tough and uncomfortable life of extremes – sometimes leading to traumatic death – but living in close communities, waking and sleeping with the sunrise and sunset, moving throughout the day, experiencing periods of hunger, and being exposed to the sun clearly has its health benefits. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
It appears that our lifestyles and reliance on scientists to guide our health decisions are not serving us that well after all. It is time for common sense, critical thinking, ancestral wisdom and high-quality, independent research to prevail. 15
In our Primal Living series, we’re going to bring together wisdom and stories from healthy nature-based peoples – past and present, along with research and top tips from scientific studies and health professionals to inspire you to regenerate your health.
We’ll be covering everything from how to optimise your sleep, the importance of functional movement and why digital distraction is making us stressed, depressed and ineffective, to why spending time in nature is not only a nice thing to do but can actually change your physiology for the better.
We’ll be diving in cold water, walking in the wilds, drinking from natural springs, cooking with wild food and setting you mini ‘rewild yourself’ challenges.
We’ll be exploring the microscopic world of gut health and the incredible disease suppressing world of phytochemicals in our wild plants.
Before you know it, you’ll be dropping your I phone and picking up a book, ditching the TV for yoga in the woods, and padding around the garden barefoot.
Follow us on Instagram for our primal living stories, ancestral recipe ideas, and so much more. We have even got a social platform dedicated to regenerative agriculture and primal health – we’re just getting started, so we hope you’ll join us on this regenerative journey back to your healthy roots.
Caroline