This is diverse and maybe even controversial so I'm just wondering what each of you look for personally when it comes to choosing raw meat?
Do you take precautions such as frozen, rinsing, marinaded, rotten, aged, salted, organic, no antibiotics, no hormones, grass fed, grain fed, open farm, closed farm, free range, ect - the list might go on forever - or do you simply not care, or do you believe that bacterias have no risk?
I guess to answer my own question, as you might know I was having an issue with eating organic grass fed beef and despite warnings to not eat grain fed beef, I did anyway, and the result was good. Besides, I love it.
I think you are missing out if you haven't tried it
. Grain fed meat is much tastier, meatier, livelier, fatter, richer, just better and it makes me feel amazing. That organic grass fed meat tasted dull, listless, plain, too lean and sickly but the grain fed has an amazing healthy taste. I also make sure to buy meat from big farms, because they know what they are doing.
I'll tell you some facts I learned from farming below, if you're interested, and you can compare them with all those suspicious Internet facts and inaccurate studies that you can find everywhere online.
Here is an accurate link to an article describing what a healthy diet of a cow should be and how their digestion really works, it gets the thumbs up from me:
http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/400/400-010/400-010.htmlI'm sure that we can agree through millions of sources that the bad E.coli known as E. coli O157:H7 is only spread through feces, however after doing a lot of research on its sudden creation or how some sources say "its sudden evolution", I am starting to think of it as a biological weapon and if the first e.coli bacteria strain wasn't manipulated by man and naturally derived from normal feces, it was still used as weaponry like in this case:
http://www.nr23.net/govt/spray_dorset.htmNormally I am one of those people who do not care about bacteria, and I do not see huge risks to it, also I believe society has become too clean and hygienic and that is making more people sick, but I do think there is something weird going on with the e.coli strain so I've been researching a lot lately.
I do not trust sources that imply e.coli can cause death - that is unusual unless the persons in question have exceptionally low immune systems, but according to some sources, these few apparently did not. In the cases of the hamburger incident where two young people died and had abnormal symptoms such as seizures and strokes, I think there was something else going on. I don't think that was just e.coli and I am not the type of person to believe everything I read on the Internet. It sounds fishy to me. I like to analyze everything and I'm just saying, I sense BIG warning flags about it. There is something being withheld from the general population in regards to the truth about E.coli, more so these certain events. Perhaps it is as simple as them trying to stage outbreaks of illness by biological warfare of something much worse through other means to make sure people continue to live in blindness to the health benefits of eating raw foods, meats and vegetables alike, maybe it is more ominous than that.
Here is a link regarding the newest strain of E.coli they created and this news only makes me more suspicious about biological warfare. I swear I'm not a conspiracy theorist, biological warfare (in general) is something that is very real, and I have many military friends that can attest to that, they've only had clearance to tell me that HIV, bird flues and the H1n1 viruses are man made warfare so I don't know anything about E.coli or the truth in this article but I wouldn't be surprised:
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/06/germanys-superbug-is-weaponized-with.htmlEither way, according to every source on the internet and what every human being is brainwashed to know, it's a bad strain of the otherwise really good bacteria, E.coli that lives in animal and human intestines. That’s why the FDA warns us to be careful when eating raw vegetables and to wash any of our produce because even vegetables are planted in soil with manure. E.coli can also make people sick if it gets into water supplies... easy way to attack the population...
This means, if you buy into all of that, the bad strain of E.coli has literally nothing to do with what the cow eats and you can kiss your grass fed arguments goodbye, when it comes to the subject of E.coli. All those studies that "prove" that grass fed farms have less chance of e.coli in meat afterwards really do not prove a thing.
Unless, there is something more ominious at work and it's not just some diareah inducing bacteria that they are putting into our food supplies...
The leaner the meat is, it means the cow was probably skinny, which equals low health quality in livestock. That means the whole fad of "lean meat" might not be so great for us. You want to be eating meat of cows that look literally healthy: not too fat and not too skinny. Unfortunately, it's not like you can go up to the farm and look at the cows you are going to be eating.
No cattle are raised on 100% grains because that would cost the farmer a lot of money. Some beef farmers that send their cattle to feed lots usually just feed grains to cows for the last couple months of their lives, just to fatten them up more, because it gives the meat a nice rich taste, which I prefer…
On our dairy farm cows ate a well balanced diet of mainly grass in the form of hay and silage, corn, sometime alfalfa hay, salt blocks with a never-ending supply of water and there was only a small percentage of grain given. Calves lived on milk until they were weaned, then they would switch to hay and grains. This was the best meat I have ever tasted…
Dairy cows and beef cows raised in small pastures are often dirtier and sicker than cows that live in barns or feedlots. You often hear otherwise on the Internet, but these people stating these claims know nothing about farming. Barns and feedlots are regularly scraped and cleaned. Pastures cannot be regularly cleaned of feces. The cow feces will literally stay in the field. Also, fields become trampled down and get very muddy. On areas where their hooves are constantly trampling, grass will no longer grow.
Somebody in my other thread told me, "cows that are forced to breathe in manure dust all day get sick" but manure does not create dust - it is wet, and regularly scraped away. Barns are well ventilated, usually without an entire wall, half walls or such, proper ventilation in attics, ect, if they weren't they would literally explode due to methane gas build up. Real farmers, at least dairy farmers, are in the barns 24/7, day and night, and they don't get sick either from the smell of manure, it's stinkts but it's not going to hurt you unless you are trapped in a non-ventilated area.
Some sources try to say cows cannot digest grain, or it makes them sick. Those two statements are both inaccurate. Grains are plants. Cows can digest it perfectly fine because they are plant eaters. Again, most farms do not feed cows 100% grain anyway so it doesn't even matter.
Be weary of anything that is "free range". Unless they can roam a never-ending wilderness, they will be unhealthy animals because they won't be cared for properly.
Without shelter from rain, livestock will get sick. Only in dry climates can livestock live outside constantly. Damp and wet environments are unhealthy for them. It would be a bad thing where I live, because it's a rainforest here.
They will not be healthy if they are eating the same feces infested grass over and over again. They need fresh grass to eat. Farms should be supplying new grass to the cows. Grazing from the same small pasture for the rest of their lives will make them sick.
The only way a farmer can duplicate a natural feeding environment is proper agriculture techniques. The farmer you buy your meat from should be doing adequate grass testing to make sure the grass the livestock are eating is healthy.
Your farmer should be plowing the fields and crops. You can bet that most of the small farms owned by hippies that call themselves "organic farmers" probably don't do any of these things, so you really have to be careful about a lot more than reading the meat package for "grain fed" or "grass fed".
This is why, much of the time, beef that is finished off with grain and raised on large farms in the industry, will probably be a lot healthier than buying meat from smaller, inexperienced farmers.
There is a lot more to farming than meets the eye, folks.
Farmers should supplement their diets if they are lacking in certain nutrients, give them proper veterinary care, and add in any vital nutrients to the grass in the field if it is lacking in nutrients for the livestock.
For example, our fields had once been victim to a giant forest fire, this left the soil inadequate in lime, and therefore we had to add in lime but for the most part my dad was an excellent farmer so his crops were always in top shape.
The farmers who took over our farm after we sold it lost half of their herd because they refused to add in lime to their silage and this made the cows ill, but lime is a necessary thing that cows need to be healthy.
Be weary of what kind of grass the animals are eating. Are your farmers experienced or are they just letting the livestock roam free on uncared for grass? Cows need proper nutrition. Sure you can eat grass fed meat, but remember… not all grass that cows eat is exemplary. Silage is also beneficial to cows because it is fermented and good for the gut.
*** It would be wise to remember that sick cows are never butchered and made into meat… They are just killed and left to rot in the woods and given to scavengers.
The reason a lot of big farms fail and lose livestock or have contamination problems are because they are "open farms". Closed farms do not have this problem.
This is probably the biggest thing on my list you should watch out for. Never buy meat from an open farm, because then you never know what kind of contamination the animals have.
Basically, an open farm is the type of farm that will allow you to come to their farm and walk around and look at the livestock. They won't care if you let your dog off the leash to run around the farmstead. They will also buy cattle or animals from other farms or ranches - but all of this creates contamination.
A healthy farm will be a truly closed farm and the farmer will be the type of man who holds a shotgun and shoots at every single thing that comes near his cows to keep them free of contamination. They get salmonella and die if birds crap in their feed. Closed farms will not allow visitors. Nobody but farmers and employees are allowed in barns. The vet and any other visitors that go to other farms must wear new and clean boots before walking onto the farm to make sure the farm does not become contaminated by manure from other farms.
Stray dogs and wildlife that walk around the farmstead will usually be shot, that's just how it goes. A good farmer does not buy cows from other locations, he breeds them himself to prevent contamination.
The truth is you should really be suspicious of the raw meat and raw milk you buy from small-inexperienced farms.
I'm tired of people trying to say that all big industrial farms are bad news.
Most of the big farms that are so successful are successful because the farmers have had farming in their generations for years, they go to agriculture meetings, they stay on top of technology, they educate themselves, ect. Agriculture is a science. There is a lot to it.
You don't want to go with a small farm because the bigger farms can afford to buy the proper farm equipment to get the job done properly, and smaller farms cannot and face it - people these days are lazy. Chances are, the small farms aren't farming properly. These are the reasons why I prefer to eat the grass fed meat that is fed grain in the last 3 months of their life and farmed by a
big farm in alberta over the small tiny farm that sells organic grass fed meat around here. I don't trust small farms.
I actually get digestive issues from the grass fed meat, mainly constipation and gas, but I have no problems with the grain fed meat.
I guess to summarize, I don't trust meat all the time. But I still eat it, how I like it. I enjoy risk taking activities in my life
