For Your Health

Meat, dairy products, poultry and eggs from animals fed grass diets, rather than grain-based diets, are higher in beta carotene (Vitamin A), conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), and Omega-3 fatty acids. Initial research has shown all of these elements to be crucial in reducing cholesterol, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure and other life threatening diseases.

Grassfed animal products are lower in fat and calories. If a person consuming the average American quantity of beef (66.5 pounds) were to switch to grassfed beef, he or she would reduce the number of calories consumed in one year by 17,733.

Consumers of grassfed meat nearly eliminate their risk of becoming infected with pathogenic E. coli bacteria. In the (unlikely) event that meat from a grassfed animal is contaminated with the naturally occurring E. coli bacteria, it will be easily killed by the normal acidity in a human digestive tract. Feeding large amounts of grain to animals causes the E. coli bacteria to become resistant to this acidity.

For Animal Welfare

Meat and dairy animals allowed to graze on open field live longer and can produce longer due to more natural, less stressful, conditions.

Hormone shots, sub-therapeutic antibiotics and animal proteins added to feeds in conventionally fed animals boost production in the short-term, but reduce the quality of life in these animals.

For the Environment

Animals allowed to graze on pasture spread out their waste over the entire pasture area, providing a natural source of fertilizer. This is in contrast with a commercial feedlot or dairy where the manure must be collected, trucked, and then spread onto fields nearby. Large amounts of waste may prompt commercial feedlot managers to spread the manure too heavily or to use scarce water resources to wash it into a smelly storage lagoon.

Grazing operations are very environmentally friendly as they are really “grass farms”, which use livestock to process grass into a healthy food product and because they don’t have to use a lot of diesel or gasoline to power the equipment used to farm commercial grains.

Amercian Grassfed Association
http://www.americangrassfed.org/faq.htm#2

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