Wonder where cheap imported grass fed beef and fast food beef originate? There’s a region of the world where large-scale beef production is relatively new and “grass fed” remains a disparaging term: the equatorial lands of Brazil and Australia where only Bos Indicus cattle breeds like Zebu can endure high heat, humidity, insect pressure and drought cycles to gain some very lean, tough weight over a 3-4 year harvest interval. Australia exported 2.5 million metric tonnes -predominately this type of beef- valued at $8.285 billion in 2015/2016. That works out to $1.19 USD per pound. Cheap Australian grass fed beef can easily undercut the market.
Here’s what the Aussie’s have to say about its quality and destined usage: “Australia’s beef exports are globally competitive, but are generally low-value exports (grass fed for ground beef) rather than high-value products (grain-fed for high value sale). According to Meat & Livestock Australia, in 2016, 75% of Australian beef exports to the US were low-value manufacturing or hamburger beef (MLA). The US cattle herd has been near historic lows, fueling increased demand for imported beef.”
With the US as it’s major export destination a whole bunch of this beef most likely makes it’s way into the head of the fast food beef industry pipeline via Lopez Foods in Oklahoma, distributed as preformed, precooked, frozen patties.
Brazil’s deforested Amazon basin is a much larger producer of this type of beef but had long been barred from export to the US due to Foot and Mouth Disease outbreaks. They also have a long history of being demonized for rainforest destruction so are compromised in the arena of health food marketing. Only recently has this ban on Brazilian imports been dropped.
Some of this ground beef marketed in retail packages is labeled USDA Organic- a label whose meaning is being increasingly challenged such as in this Dec 2017 Washington Post story: “What was the organic movement has lost control of the National Organic Program (NOP)- the pirates have taken over the ship,” said Dave Chapman, a Vermont farmer who has farmed organically for 37 years.”
At it’s essence Organic is only the certified absence of forbidden synthesized inputs: fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and drugs. Even that basic requirement is somehow overlooked by current administration of the NOP according to audit results. Virtuous, feel-good niceties like holism, species diversity, integrated pest management, etc. are relegated to window dressing by the caveat “where possible”. Perversely, it is possible to merely deplete a natural environment with the Organic blessing (UNCTAD p24). Organic or not, rough, dry-land ranching has always been a brutal business with no lack of adversaries; real (drought) and perceived : kangaroo
I bought a couple pound bricks of Australian (AU) grass fed ground beef to try out for eating quality. Cooked them “sous vide” for 60 minutes (sealed in zip lock plastic bag and immersed in temperature-controlled circulating water bath) in quarter pound segments cut direct from the brick alongside the same of my own Hay Creek ground beef. The samples cooked ‘”rare” (126 deg F) had the most pronounced difference with the AU sample have a chewy texture like rubber bands that slowly disappeared as chewing progressed. The “medium” (142 deg F) and “medium well” (157 deg F) AU samples were also more rubbery-chewy but not so distinctly as the “rare”. Flavor was comparable between my own and the AU samples. Samples of both presented to farm dogs were wolfed down so quickly that the hundredth-second stopwatch differential could easily be attributed to operator reaction time.
This is not a bad quality product but why the completely opaque source labeling with only a whole huge continent of widely varying climate and environment as the “country of origin”? No state or territory or farm name. The USDA labeling laws don’t preclude more information but they do help obscure those that desire to remain so.
Don’t be reeled-in by colorful, cheery labels with no real information. Can you tell if you are buying from small farms or mysterious corporate entities or brokers? Where -as in on the map-is the beef raised? Practically speaking Organic means different things in different settings and practices, particularly when imported. In tropical native grassland grazing it can mean next to nothing or even be a force for land clearing or other forms of environmental degradation.
Reinforcing this madness; cheap ($38USD/acre), raw, previously un-farmed land is actually favored by the NOP in that it does not require the 3 year transition to Organic of lands with a history of conventional farming.