Fear of BSE

[ExtraMSG]

I heard on NPR that prices are dropping about 15% but that beef consumption in the US hasn't dropped at all. It's the bans on imports from other countries causing the drop. Beef producers were complaining that the prices are lower than their costs.

I ate beef several times since I heard about the scare. And I live in Washington.

[suzilightning]

i buy only laura's beef which does not use the ground up stuff that can cause a problem. since we eat so many other things this is a small part of our life and i am willing to pay more for the guarantee of no hormones, etc.

[flybottle]

I slowed down on beef but didn't quit. But now I'm back to normal. Last night I made cheesesteaks, tomorrow I'm having cheeseburgers, and I'll make a pot of chili con beef big enough for the better part of the week.

Here's why I was worried and why I slowed down. Though only 165 or so cases of vCJD have shown up in people since 1985 or so, vCJD apparently doesn't show up for some time after you've been infected. I've heard that it can be as long as 15 or 20 years. What this means is that the feeling of confidence we get from hearing that only 165 cases have shown up in people is potentially a sham. vCJD may not be rare at all. In fact, we could be in the middle of an undetected and undetectable epidemic.

Here's why I'm speeding back up. I love beef.

[Pan]

I've basically done what you've done, flybottle. I've decreased the amount of beef I eat but I haven't eliminated it.

[helenjp]

I decided several years ago that in most cases, eating beef is tantamount to voting to continue current practices in raising, slaughtering, and processing beef. I rarely buy beef, and when I do, I buy grassfed beef. Why don't I buy more beef? Because it seems odd to make such a large animal part of my daily diet. Birds and fish seem on a more normal scale to me! (Not that I've been harvesting in the park recently...)

[Pan]

Helen, are Japanese beef-raising practices similar to American factory farming?

[Katherine]

Why don't I buy more beef? Because it seems odd to make such a large animal part of my daily diet. Birds and fish seem on a more normal scale to me! (Not that I've been harvesting in the park recently...)

Humans and prehumans have hunted large animals in packs, with the help of crude tools. Therefore, I consider beef to be our natural prey, and thus, the perfect food.

Edited February 8, 2004 by Katherine (log)

[helenjp]

Japanese beef-rasing....definitely takes place indoors. Japanese visiting NZ when I used to be an interpreter thought it was cruel that cattle had to stay outside!

Maybe some cattle spend some time in pasture in the summer in the more remote beef regions such as Kyushu or Hokkaido, but it is not common. Certainly they eat pellets, exclusively so in some cases. Expensive "wagyu" is supposedly raised on grains, not animal-protein based feeds, but some cattle had to have been eating all that UK animal-protein-based feed that Japan kept on importing long after UK farmers stopped using it! The average Japanese person thinks that Japanese beef is safe because it's done the Japanese way...but all beef here is not "wagyu".

There was a scandal reported in AERA news magazine and elsewhere about a year ago (??hazy??), after a woman working at an agricultural testing facility in Hokkaido committed suicide after reporting a postive BSE result. Apparently she was heavily criticized for endangering the industry by allowing the result to go through, instead of re-routing the cow as a "downer" and sending it back to the farm to be disposed of quietly etc etc. It came out that farms had been recommended to slaughter cattle early, as younger animals tend to produce false negatives even when infected. To give them credit, Japan now has very strict rules, and downers cannot be processed for human or animal consumption, but are treated much like toxic industrial waste...

Japanese beef 25 years ago was VERY heavily marbled (to my Kiwi eyes, anyway). I think it has become a bit leaner, but definitely not a grass-fed look.

Use of growth hormones etc...I am really unsure about the legality of these in Japan. A farmer in Australia that I knew sold his farm to a Japanese-owned beef cattle operation and stayed on as manager, one of the earliest such operations, about 10 years ago. He was looking forward to it, but a year later he had quit the job. He said that the Japanese owners were trying to force him to use steroids and other practices which he felt were unsafe, unhealthy, and in some cases illegal. I can't say whether that means that such practices are the norm in Japan, whatever the law; or whether the owners thought they could get away with something in Australia that they couldn't get away with in Japan. Wish now that I'd taken notes, collected evidence etc., instead of just hearsay at a party!

As somebody mentioned in some other thread, Angus have long been a popular breed in New Zealand for grassfed beef, but I assume that Charolais and Simmenthal and so forth get supplementary feeding. New Zealand farmers traditionally prepare ensilage as well as hay and root crops for the winter months, and hay was all I used to see in the holding fields at the local abattoir....30 years ago. About 20 years ago, I had the misfortune to interpret for a group of Japanese touring every major abattoir in New Zealand, and did not see protein-based feeds in use then, though we did not examine the holding areas or practices in detail as they were in NZ to observe processing and packing methods...and it's a while ago, anyway. From that experience, I gathered that most of the packers and wholesalers were accustomed to dealing with ready-to-cut packs of frozen or chilled meat portions, and butchers really expected their meat ready to slice and sell - I doubt if that trend has changed.

I don't know much about North American practices, except for what I hear from a friend in Canada who owns a butchery. I do think that NZ practices have been shaped by long years of export-driven business, and by the increasing halal market.

I'm not a big fan of the flavor or texture of grain-fed beef, but of course that's just a matter of what I grew up with.

[helenjp]

Humans and prehumans have hunted large animals in packs, with the help of crude tools

yeah, but every day???

Hope you don't feed your cat beef...it might get the wrong idea about what size mammals to attack!

[Pan]

Thanks for giving such a detailed answer, Helen!

[Pan]

Helen, I've never heard of mouse meat as commercially-sold cat food.

In the village I used to live in in Malaysia, everyone fed cats leftover rice. That didn't seem to cause them to attack rice plants instead of little critters.

[helenjp]

That didn't seem to cause them to attack rice plants

Just kidding...though our cats used eat apple cores, possibly by precept and example. They would bring home fish from the beach from time to time, and often caught birds. They seemed to prefer their rarer catches of mice and rats though -- birds and fish were left outside, but rats and mice were frequently brought proudly indoors...and occasionally dropped, alive...

People call miso-soup over rice "neko-manma" or "catfood" here.

Getting off topic here...time to get back to boring translation!

[Katherine]

Helen, I've never heard of mouse meat as commercially-sold cat food.

Nor small birds, nor moles...

Though it's often the case I can get my cat to eat distinctly un-catlike foods that have been permeated with butter.

By the way, if cats could speak, they'd tell you that all meat, fowl, and fish are their prey, unless I'm misinterpreting the begging that goes on at my feet as I prepare these things.

[Susan in FL]

Thank you from me, as well Helen, for the interesting and informative post.

I've always liked beef, but in recent years I've gradually changed some of my food preferences and eating habits and I eat less of it, not because of BSE or any scares, but just because. A big factor is that over the course of my adult life, either the quality of meat has declined or my taste has become more discriminating. Probably that would be both. It just doesn't taste as good to me.

I've never known as much about beef as eG has taught me. I've always thought that marbling makes for better flavor. The taste of it being most important to me, I would like to ask this question. Putting aside all animal rights issues, etc.... grass-fed, grain-fed, animal-protein-based fed... indoors, outdoors... what makes the beef taste best?