Is eating grass-fed beef the most vegan diet?

[just Warren]

This hippyish anti-vegan type thinks so.

The whole article is full of Gaia loving phrases and ideas but he does make a good point that if you want to reduce animal deaths over all than eating grass-fed beef is better than eating row-grown crops.

In any event it's a great article to rile up any foaming-at-the-mouth "sustainable" or "ethical" eater folks.

And this comment is gold.

Yay, kind of expected a lot of agricultural illiteracy from vegans in the comments section, and wasn’t disappointed. So to address some of these other comments, lets first realize that grass fed and finished cattle don’t eat any corn or soy. They eat grasses and forbs. Grain finished cattle in feedlot eat different portions of corn. This article isn’t about grain finished cattle. Though needless to say, corn isn’y solely grown for feedlot cattle. Heck on a simple basis nearly 45% goes to ethanol, and another 20% goes to industrial uses and processed foods. Looking at this more closely, different parts of corn go to different uses. Cattle often eats the plant portions of corn (silage) and distilled grains from ethanol and alcohol protection.

Beef cattle don’t eat much soy. Almost all soy beans are pressed for cooking oil, industrial solvents, and biofuels. The left over soy meal is primarily fed to chickens, then pigs, and then dairy cows. None of those animals are beef cattle. So again, the vegans commenting here are just regurgitating talking points.

And no, most land wasn’t once forest. A lot of land was and is grasslands that never succeeded to forest because of keystone species, control burns by indigenous people (including in Oz) and wild ruminants that co-evolved with grasslands. Forest also was taken down for fuel (wood to burn), and to clear land for crops. Crops need sunshine. Cattle can actually be ran in silvo-pastures and savanna, so the land doesn’t have to be entirely cleared like it does for crop production.

Oh and the 32x comment about land issue is pretty amusing. Livestock do not use 32 times the land. The ratio is more like 66% to 33% with most ruminants being in integrated systems. Here the simple reality is that most vegans can’t obviously conceive is that there is a lot more land suitable for grazing than is arable for crop production. Vegans always seem to believe that all land is interchangeable. It isn’t. Crop land can support livestock, but a lot of grazing land can’t be used for crops, Why? Topography, wind, soil conditions, and water availability. Most crops can’t be dry farmed, whereas grasses can especially long rooted perennial grasses. Crops take more BLUE water than grasses. Blue water is what’s critical. Cattle primarily use GREEN water for their forages.

Anyway, obviously vegans are too oblivious of their own sanctimony to understand the larger point of this article, and that is that FEWER animals die when you eat foods from pastured perennial systems than when you eat food from annual cropping systems. Those perennial pastured systems provide a lot of life whereas the annual cropped systems are dead zones devoid of life. So different animals died for your food, and those foxes, moles, vols, birds, frogs, snakes, insects, worms, fawns, mice, rats, etc rotted in the fields when those fields were converted, and every time the land was repeatedly cultivated, protected, pollinated, irrigated, and harvested.

[Hawkmoon]

But ... but ... but ...

Meat = EVIL! Don't try to obscure that TRUTH with facts.

[RoadKingLarry]

Personally, I think the whole "grass fed" shtick is a BS marketing scam.
Feed 'em on grass/hay for most of their life sure, but finish them on grain.
 

[MechAg94]

Personally, I think the whole "grass fed" shtick is a BS marketing scam.
Feed 'em on grass/hay for most of their life sure, but finish them on grain.
 

Doesn't really matter.  It is still better to eat the cows than what the cows eat. 

[Sindawe]

I smell a communist plot to reduce the human population.  As I understand it, one can get more net calories per acre of cultivated cereal crops than one can in the same land used for pasture of prey animals.  Only so much land to go around for growing anything, and even if most of the arable land is used for grass to feed prey animals there still would not be enough food do feed the current population of 7,500,000,000 (and growing) hungry mouths. 

Hungry people tend to get angry when they and their kids see others well feed, and you know that only the upper echelons of society would be well feed. That can lead to riots.  Enough riots can lead to governments getting to bickering.  Bickering leads to fighting.  Fighting leads to warring.  Warring leads to lots of dying on all sides.  Thereby reducing the human population to a more manageable level, allowing this scheme to successfully implemented.

Or maybe I've just been hanging around too many conspiracy related sites and forums.

Oh, and Alex Jones is actually Bill Hicks.

[Jim147]

Living in grass fes beef county I can tell you when you cut it fresh off the cow and toss it on the grill it beats anything you can get at the store.

My daughter agrees.

[zahc]

He has a fair point. Crop farming takes a toll; many many small animals are killed in the process. I noted a long time ago that eating wheat, corn or soy means you are supporting these deaths. So far, I haven't seen a movement to address this collateral damage, but I can image there being a "rabbit safe wheat", sort of like there's dolphin safe tuna.

[Kingcreek]

I live in the middle of corn country and I think most of it goes right to the ethanol production plants. I'm not sure how that figures in to the vegan beef thing. Granted I understand some of the ethanol byproduct is later used in meat animal feed.
As beef goes, I like grass fed beef with some grain finish. My cousin raises ours on real good quality grass pasture and grows his own non GMO corn (and some oats and sorghum) for finishing. Not certified organic but as close as he can get without jumping through all the hoops.
Hey that is some drool-inducing beef. Problem has been finding a locker that will age the way we want it.

[RoadKingLarry]

He has a fair point. Crop farming takes a toll; many many small animals are killed in the process. I noted a long time ago that eating wheat, corn or soy means you are supporting these deaths. So far, I haven't seen a movement to address this collateral damage, but I can image there being a "rabbit safe wheat", sort of like there's dolphin safe tuna.

I quit eating tuna after they took the dolphin out, just didn't taste the same.

[Perd Hapley]

I quit eating tuna after they took the dolphin out, just didn't taste the same.

And besides, why are we saving the dolphin, but not the tuna? The tuna never raped anyone. Danged mammalian privilege...

[griz]

I've been eating venison for most of my life.  Guess I am an environmentalist early adopter.