The Texas Beef Industry Council is smiling because it does not care what kind of beef is sold, just as long as consumers continue to buy beef roasts, steaks, hamburger, hot dogs, sausage and cold cuts.
“I’m with the Beef Council, which promotes beef. Period,” the Texas Beef Industry Council’s Mike McCravy said. “Grass-fed beef has been around a long, long time. There are people all over the U.S. and all over the world that raise grass-fed beef. I don’t think it’s a fad, I think it’s a way to market your beef.”
Organic food has grown in popularity by leaps and bounds in the past 10 years, said Dr. Jason Cleere, beef cattle specialist with Texas AgriLife Extension.
“If we look at health benefits between a traditionally corn-fed animal that went through the feed yard versus the ones that only received grass throughout its life, there is not really a big nutritional difference between the two,” Cleere said. “We are accustomed to the corn-fed flavor of beef and grass-fed to some may not be as appealing, but many look at grass fed as more of a ‘back-to-nature’ scenario.”
David Todd, owner of SWT LLC, which he described as a small to medium size organically certified ranch, believes “there is no question” of the better-tasting beef that comes from free-ranging cattle.
“The meat tends to be more flavorful, more savory,” said Todd, who likened the quality to a lean cut of venison.
“It tends to have less fat in it, and it will dry out, so you have to cook it low and slow, but it can be as tasty and tender as you can imagine,” he said.
Organic beef, like other naturally raised foods, are pricey, but Texas boasts a number of successful markets, such as Whole Foods in Austin. In the organically grown market, a 3-pound, boneless prime rib roast costs nearly $75, compared to a 6-pound USDA select beef rib eye roast that retails for $6.99 a pound at H-E-B; or the ultra gourmet Kobe Wagyu 8-ounce package of beef filets that sell for $149, or the non-organic USDA 6-pound prime rib roast that sells for $189 at Williams-Sonoma.
Todd compared the concept of grass fed cattle to the pasture-raised bovine before World War II. After the war, corn was promoted as a supplement to fatten cattle for the slaughterhouse.
Marketing cattle fed exclusively on grass is a relatively new but growing concept and does not constitute a fad that will phase out in the future, he said.
“It’s a portion of the industry,” he said. “I would say 90 percent of ranchers are still raising their cattle on grass and finishing them on grain, two months or more.”
Todd described his cattle operation as a “hybrid” because the majority of his cattle are grass and grain fed, and “we have a little experiment with organic.”
The ranch turned to organics as a trial because of health consciousness, but “there are a lot of economic things that make it very difficult to buck the trend. We are figuring how this grass-fed organic business can be viable,” he said.
USDA/TDA certified organic livestock operations are inspected and must maintain specific standards that restrict not only the use of antibiotics and growth hormones in animals, but commercial fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides in pastures.
A key to an organic operation is to provide good quality forage for cattle, so ranchers don’t have to supplement with grains, Cleere said.
The Central Texas cattle industry is primarily a cow-calf operation, Cleere said. Stocker cows are weaned and sent to graze. In the final production phase, these cows are put into feed lots where they are predominately fed corn for 100 to 150 days, when they are fattened up for the slaughterhouse.
The majority of cattle are going to be fed a grain-based diet at some point in their lives, but a good portion of their lives are spent on grass, Cleere said.
