How Beef Goes From Pasture to Plate: A Video

It takes a lot to produce beef - not just in terms of hard work or lots of time, but also with reference to the number of people that dedicate their lives to taking care of livestock in order to produce healthy, safe beef.

The following is a video hosted on FactsAboutBeef.com that highlights the intricate lifecycle of a beef animal.



Additional questions about beef production? Shout 'em out below!

Until next time,
~ Buzzard ~

Flippin' Sweet

Here are some grilling tips that will make you feel like you know secret ninja moves from the government.

 

Smell that flame-grilled deliciousness!
Photo courtesy simplebbqrecipes.com

July is here and that means grilling season is in FULL swing! At my house grilling season is 12 months long but we all know summer is the BEST time to enjoy the weather, have a cold drink with friends and family and fire up the grill.

 

What better to toss on the Traeger than some juicy burgers?  You can never go wrong with a hunk of ground beef! Or can you?

 

Making sure your meat is at the proper temperature is important for ALL cuts and species, but it is especially crucial when cooking hamburger because of the surface area exposed to potential bacteria. If pathogens are present when the meat is ground, it will cover more surface and mixed throughout the meat.

 

Bacteria is not exclusive to ground beef, of course. They are everywhere in our environment; any food can harbor bacteria. In animal products, pathogenic (illness-causing) bacteria, such as Salmonella, Shiga-toxin producing Escherichia coli (STECs), Campylobacter jejuni, Listeria monocytogenes, and Staphylococcus aureus, can be present. These harmful bacteria cannot be seen or smelled.

 

Not to worry, though, because properly cooking the meat will kill the bacteria. However, it is still important to keep cold meat cold and hot meat hot. The “Danger Zone” or temperature range where bacteria multiply the most rapidly is between 40 and 140 °F. This means you should store ground beef at or below 40 °F and then cook it to a safe internal temperature of 160 °F to destroy any harmful bacteria. Even if you think it’s okay to eyeball it, it’s not. You can’t read temperatures or see bacteria by looking at your burger, so just don’t risk it. Anyone else have Danger Zone stuck in your head now?

Always use a meat thermometer
photo courtesy wikihow.com

In the U.S., beef you find in the store (and what you get from the meat locker if you get your own cattle butchered) is treated in a USDA-inspected plant to reduce bacteria. Methods like organic acid washes, water washes, steam pasteurization, steam vacuuming, and other antimicrobials are used so we can be confident that we are buying the safest product out there.

Now, if you’re looking for new grilling tips to try here are some of my GO TO tricks to get great burgers every time.

• Crack an egg in the ground beef before forming your patties. It helps the meat stick together when they’re cooking so you don’t have to fuss with crumbly burgers.
• Want your burger to still be juicy, not dry, at 160°? Me too.
• Don’t over-handle the meat while preparing it. It could make it tougher
• Try waiting until your patties are formed to salt or season the meat. Not only do you avoid over-handling the meat, it prevents the salt from dissolving muscle proteins and turning your burgers from moist and tender to sausage-like and springy. (This will also help create an awesome carmelized crust on the patty, which is great!)
• Unless you just can’t live without them, don’t add junk like onions, herbs, eggs, breadcrumbs, etc. to your ground meat. It FORCES your to over-handle the mix. With the right seasoning, you won’t need that extra stuff anyway! But again, this is totally up to you.
• You know how burgers shrink when they cook? Poke your finger in the center of them making an indention. This will help it hold its shape.
• Don’t squish the burgers with a spatula while they’re cooking. It will squeeze out the bit of fat that make them thick and juicy.

The perfect patty
Photo courtesy: Landolakes.com

P.S. If you’re looking for a new grill to try out your new tricks on, my favorite grills are Traeger. They use wood pellets so they rock if you’re not in love with the taste (or smell) of charcoal.

Happy summer grilling!
¬
–Kenzie Curran

Thankful for a Life Around Cattle

Hey FFT Blog readers!  My name is Lindy Bilberry and I’m a new face on the Food for Thought scene.  I am currently a sophomore studying Agribusiness at Kansas State University and grew up around cattle—both in a beef feedlot and on our family’s cow-calf operation.  Growing up, I lived for the mornings that my dad would let me tag along on Saturday mornings to check cattle at the feedlot with him.  A lot of us are probably unfamiliar with what exactly happens in a feedlot, so I am going to share about my experiences in our operation.  Hopefully it helps us all to understand a little bit about how the cattle in the pens eventually become the hamburgers and steaks that we like to see on our plate!

Growing up, spending time around cattle was my way of life.  That’s me in the leopard print jacket with the calf.

One summer in high school, I had the chance to work as a ‘pen rider’ at Circle Feeders in Garden City, Kansas.  Basically, this meant that my job was to get on my horse every morning at 6:00 and ride through pens of cattle, checking to make sure that none were sick.  If we did find an animal that was sick, we would take it out of the pen and to the hospital (yes, we call the barn where sick cattle are treated hospitals) where the employees who are trained in animal health treat the animals for their ailments.  Circle Feeders had a capacity of holding about 13,000 head of cattle.  At that time, I was riding about one-third of the pens and on an average day I would pull maybe four or five cattle out for treatment.

Last summer my dad and I did some work at a feedyard outside of Garden City, Kansas.  This is a picture of what a large-scale beef feedlot looks like.

There is a lot of talk right now about antibiotic use in livestock and the fear that we are ‘drugging up’ animals in order to make them bigger.  I have had the chance to spend time in a lot of feedlots and around a lot of beef producers in my day, and I have never once found this to be the case.  People who are raising cattle, whether it’s in a feedlot, a cow-calf operation, or whatever, ultimately care about the health of their animals.  When I was working at the feedlot, I would pull animals out to send to the ‘hospital’ because I was worried about their well-being.  They weren’t treated with medicine to bulk up or get muscles, but rather to treat an illness.  They’re going to an animal doctor, just like we go to the doctor to get medicine if we have a sore throat or the flu or a fever.  Cattle are treated so that they can get back to feeling normal so that they can continue to eat and grow!

Questions, thoughts, comments, or concerns?  I would love to hear them!  As we approach Thanksgiving, I can’t help but think about how thankful I am to have grown up around cattle, feedlots, and producers who truly care about the well-being of their animals!
 
Until next time,
Lindy

What Do Cows Eat?

A few weeks ago I was at home, cutting what may seem like run-of-the-mill hay to the untrained eye:

But, upon closer inspection you may (or more likely may not, due to my photography skills) see what is growing in that field:

 

Still can’t tell? Here’s a close-up brought to you by Google images since I forgot to take one:

 

The dreaded crabgrass

You might recognize this as a weed that has plagued your neighbor’s lawn and is slowly encroaching on your own, the dreaded Crabgrass, and this field has it growing about 3 feet tall.  So if this weed is growing like crazy in the field, why am I swathing and baling it instead of spraying it with herbicide or working it under?  The answer is cows.  Cows can take this weed and turn it into delicious beef. 

This got me thinking about what else cows eat that’s unusual, then I looked at my shirt.  It’s made of cotton.  After cotton is harvested, the seeds are separated from the fibers.  Ranchers can buy those seeds or the seed hulls and mix them into a ration for cattle.  

In my lunchbox I had a sandwich and a cookie.  Large scale bakeries have products that have imperfections such as broken cookies.  Folks with cattle that live near large bakeries can buy these products and feed them to their cattle.  In the end the bakeries don’t have to throw away products that people don’t want to eat, and ranchers get a low-cost feed ingredient. 

The pickup I was driving that day had gasoline in it that was 10% ethanol.  Ethanol is made from distilling corn, and after the distillation process is complete, powdery corn leftovers are… well leftover.  In the cattle industry these are known as distiller’s grain.  Distiller’s grain makes for a great ration ingredient to add protein, phosphorus, and sulfur to a bovine diet. 

The moral of this story is cattle are great at recycling.  They take byproducts of everyday items and, with the help of their ruminant digestive system, turn them into food for people.  So what do cows eat?  Just about anything.  Thanks for reading, and as always if you see or hear of something that concerns you about where your food comes from, ask a farmer. 

Eat Beef,

Bruce Figger





Hormones in Beef: The Rest of the Story

Alright, so I want to talk a little bit about hormones in beef cattle.  I mean we all know a lot about them, mass media tells about them almost daily, about how they are bad for us and how they increase the risk of cancer.  But what has always puzzled me is why we only hear about hormones in the beef industry, and about how hormone consumption in beef is going to kill us.  Well I want to tell you a little bit of the rest of the story.  Yes, it is true conventionally raised beef does contain hormones.  It contains 1.9 nanograms per 3 ounce serving.  This is compared to all natural certified organic beef which contains 1.5 nanograms per 3 ounce serving.  That is a difference of .4 nanograms per 3 ounce serving.  That is decimal point with eight zeros and a four behind it (.000000004).  There is not much of a difference.  Now compare that to a food like soybeans.  Soybeans contain phytoestrogens which have been proven to be hormonally active in humans, per three ounce serving of soybean oil there are 168,000 nanograms of phytoestrogens.  Per three ounce serving of cabbage there are 2016 nanograms of estradiol.  Both of these foods contain no meat and are used frequently in vegetarian and vegan diets.

According to USDA numbers an average per capita 60 pounds of beef is consumed per person per year in the United States.  That works out to be 320-three ounce servings per year per person.  Which in turn comes to approximately 1077.17 nanograms of estradiol per year from beef consumption.

Now I want to compare that number to something that is practiced by thousands of women every day in the United States: birth control.  What I have here is a progesterone based birth control product.  It contains .035 mg of estradiol per pill and is based on a 28 day cycle so there are 21 active pills in a dispenser of this product.  If you consider a woman who uses this product for one year, that is 252 pills or 8,820 nanograms of estradiol per year.  Remember the amount estradiol per year from beef was 1077 nanograms per year. Approximately eight times more estrogen from progesterone based birth control than from beef. Now let’s consider a woman who takes an estrogen based birth control pill. They contain 35,000 nanograms of estradiol per pill which for the same 252 pill year works out to be 8,820,000 nanograms of estradiol per year.  That is approximately equal to 875,868 lbs of beef.  Or on a hot carcass weight basis, that is like eating 1100 steers per year per person.  That works out to be just a little over three steers per person per day.  So in summary for every one pill of estrogen based birth control consumed it is like eating 3 whole cows by yourself, daily. 

If you want to trim hormones out of your diets, beef should probably not be the first place you look. 

Thanks for reading and please let us know if you have questions and leave your comments below!

~ Nick Henning

Calving Season

Hello everybody! My name is Jacob Hagenmaier, and I am a veterinary medicine student at Kansas State University. I am very passionate about providing a safe, wholesome food supply as well as the great stories people involved in agriculture have to tell. One such story is calving season. Right now is the end of our spring break, and while many students across the nation spent the last week enjoying sandy beaches or snow covered mountains as the perfect getaway, my break was spent in the beautiful Flint Hills of Northeast Kansas on our family ranch. March is a busy time for many ranchers, because that is when their cows are due to calve. Calving season varies within different operations, but early fall and spring tend to be the most common. Calving season is a very intense and strenuous time for cattle ranchers. Some nights, not a wink is spent sleeping due to continually checking on the pregnant females and assisting with births if needed. Still, calving season is one of the most rewarding and fulfilling parts of being involved in beef production. All the hard work spent feeding, delivering calves, putting down straw for bedding, and monitoring herd health is well worth it to see newborn calves bursting with energy and ready to go to grass around May!

Since our herd consist of predominately cattle that are 100% black, I get especially excited to see a calf born with a little bit of color.  The bull calf pictured above tends to be my favorite this year because of the "Joker-like" face pattern -- google "Joker from Batman" and you'll see what I mean! Within 12 hours of birth, all calves on our operation are given a shot that contains minerals to boost their immune system, a pill with antibodies against causes of scours (Bovine term for diarrhea), and a tag which identifies their mother. Around mid April to the first of May, the newborn calves and their mothers will be taken to pasture to feast on the fresh grass that comes with spring.

That's all for now... I better get back to studying :/

Best,

Jacob

Superfood: Flax Seed

Flax Seed: Up close and personal.

You may find flax seed in your local grocery store, check in the cereal or supplement aisle. It's considered a superfood, a fad term given to food products that are high in a nutrient content that is believed to be a health benefit.

What ingredient is so SUPER in this oily seed? Omega-3 fatty acids.

Jim Drouillard, a professor at K-State, has been researching flax seed for the last decade. Not in human nutrition, but ruminant. Ruminants are mammals that digest plant-based food because they have bacteria and protozoa in their digestive tract that can help them out! There are about 150 species of ruminants, but Dr. Drouillard is interested in cattle.

He has found that feeding flax seed to cattle in the five months before they are ready to be slaughtered can help make these animals more healthy. He set out to improve the health of the animals, but also found that it increases the amount of omega-3 fatty acids found in the meat from the animals fed flax seed.

NBO3 Technologies is a Kansas-based company that launched a ground beef product that is high in omega-3 fatty acids. Flax seed is pretty expensive, but for consumers who are willing to pay for the higher priced beef product, it's a good option.   

It also goes to show that the research done at Universities like Kansas State, is groundbreaking and necessary for advancement in today's society.


Always a Wildcat,

Tera 

McDonald's - Not Lovin' The Angus Burger Anymore

 

What’s your favorite food at McDonald’s - Chicken Nuggets, Quarter-Pounder with Cheese?  Hope it’s not the Third Pounder Angus Burger (or the Angus Snack Wrap).

With the price of beef on the rise, even large corporations such as McDonald’s have had to make some cutbacks – their first one being the Angus Burger.  The price of beef has risen as a result of last summer’s drought, with the price of beef carcasses rising 24 cents per hundred pounds (cwt) to hit $204.91 per cwt, a new record.

Check out the full story here: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/wheres-beef-mcdonalds-dropping-angus-burgers-us-menu-1C9864163

With McDonald’s already making cuts to their menu, how do you think this will affect other fast food chains?

-Alex