Taco Bell: we do SO use meat in our meat!!

[i_am2bz]

I don't know where she gets it, her parents (my BIL/SIL) love our eggs & stuff from our garden. Some people just have phobias, I guess! :/

(I guess I better not tell her about the other thread I've read on this forum, about how many bugs WE eat that get mixed up in the food supply...she'll probably starve herself to death. )

Well, she's got a better chance of getting over it someday if at least her parents are setting a good example. I know adults who think that way too!

Well, she's 28 already so I don't hold out a lot of hope. :/

I can only pray she doesn't pass on her craziness to her kids...

 

[Dunkopf]

I think the whole Taco Bell thing is just a lawyer stunt.

I agree, but I would not take bets on WHOSE lawyers it is a stunt of. It could be someone looking for attention; but IMO it could also perfectly well be a publicity stunt by Taco Bell itself. (Gets yer name in the media, gets you to be able to have lots of free advertising 'hey our taco filling is nearly-all nearly-beef', etc)

Call me a cynic,

Pat

I agree. Then they can raise their 89 cent menu to 99cents. Ten different flavors of mush. I hate their food. You don't need teeth to eat it.

That cheese sauce is really scary.

 

[Shiloh Acres]

Most beef around here is grass/hay fed too. My rancher friend (who said he'd split one with me) buys cottonseed meal as well. I haven't looked that up yet.

Cottonseed meal and cottonseed oil have high levels of pesticide due to the massive amounts of pesticide that is used on cotton. Don't kno how this is digested or if it is transfered to the muscle (meat) of the cow/steer. My DS has allergies to some of the pesticides and we had to watch cottonseed oil in products while he was growing up.

Sigh ... now see, I KNEW if I listed that here, someone would tell me what was wrong with it.

I can definitely say that if there are high pesticide residues in cottonseed meal, I do NOT want to eat beef that's been eating it.

I'd rather know than not know. Now I'll need to figure out how to politely decline and not be insulting. They are a very kind family, but I have health problems that are aggravated by pesticides.

Thanks for letting me know.

 

[lwheelr]

You also really have to ask about the meaning of "grassfed beef". I live in Wyoming, where every rancher claims his meat is "grassfed", and wholesome and healthy. But...

If you question them about winter feeding, they admit that they supplement with cake in the winter. And it is medicated, hormone enriched, "nutritionally balanced" (that means full of extracted nutrient blends and chemicals).

Most ranchers don't really know what is in that cake, or if they do, they've been brought up on the common ranching tradition that if it is made for cows, and the cows don't die from eating it, that it must be good and people are silly if they complain about eating cows that have been fed the stuff. And the ranching lobbies, and feed company lobbies work hard in Washington making sure that cows do not have to be raised with the same regulations that chickens do (not that chicken is a whole lot safer, but hormones and "non medical" antibiotic use is forbidden - though they put other stuff in medicated feeds for chickens). They like how things are done, and do not ever want to have to change it, so they proudly claim that their cattle is grassfed, and never mention to you that they cake them - if you see where they are raised, you see only the pasture they want you to see.

The antibiotics in that supplemental feed makes me prone to fungal infections. It is responsible for the superbug e coli that got me sick two weeks ago (which didn't come from my raw milk, or my homegrown chicken eggs, or my manure fed home vegetables, or my home butchered duck or rabbit - it came from a bottle of contaminated nationally branded dairy product from factory farmed dairy cattle fed medicated feed, in a USDA inspected facility). And BTW, I am NOT immune compromised in any way, I rarely get sick, and when I do, it is about half as bad as other people with the same thing - can't imagine how bad that e coli would have been for a normal person, I think they'd have been hospitalized with dehydration.

The RBGH (recumbent bovine growth hormone) causes serious hormonal imbalances in girls and women, and minor ones in adolescent boys, because of the way that it interacts with our pituitary gland. If you are having hormonal imbalances, go to 100% organic animal products (or look for RBGH free meat and dairy) and it is likely to get better (even though "organic" products still aren't 100% clean, they are usually better than the regular stuff).

The artificial hormones in beef and dairy can cause heavy menstrual periods (I use the term "heavy" to mean "HEEAAAVYY"), ovulation problems, pregnancy implantation failure, cell regeneration (that means "healing") problems, PMS issues, and many more.

So, no Wyoming "grassfed" beef for me unless I know for certain that it has not been fed cake at all. Colorado, Texas, Kansas, etc, all follow the same rules.

Sort of like Taco Bell's meat - as long as it is mostly grass, not mostly corn, it's "grassfed".

Funny thing, I've mentioned that cake to a couple of people locally who claimed that they were getting the healthiest meat available and they knew it didn't have medication or hormones in it because they were buying it right off the range. They all but accused me of lying - yet when I asked the rancher they bought their beef from, he said, "Sure, we feed them supplemental cake in the winter, everybody does." Sure enough, every rancher I ask says the same thing. Difference is, I ASKED, the other people did not!

And the only reason I KNEW this, is because my son worked on a local ranch, and talked about caking them in the winter. So I asked what was in that cake. He asked, was told, so I knew what everybody does, but nobody talks about to the customer.

 

[Dunkopf]

Is hay really expensive? Or is it just cheaper and adds more weight to feed the cake? Down here the 3x3x8 bales of mixed are going for around 65.00. I've seen those cakes advertised at Big R. They seem kind of expensive but I imagine they go farther because of density compared to hay.

Not trying to question what you're saying. Just curious.

 

[Buster]

Most cattle are grass fed up until the last few months when they are moved into CAFOs and finished on grain. The question is not whether they are grass FED but grass FINISHED.

As to the Taco bell situation, there is no doubt in my mind there is a great deal of stuff other than cow meat in there. There are whole companies that specialize in filler to go into ground beef for fast food places.

 

[lwheelr]

Cows cannot live on just hay. They need something else to flesh that out. If you have good browse, they'll do ok, because it provides a variety of vegetation and seed, though it still might not be enough in the winter.

Much of the rangeland that cattle are wintered on though, is rather poor forage, and often difficult for the cattle to forage in the winter. There's been a drought across the west for more than 10 years, so all the major cattle rangeland ranchers supplement in the winter with cake to keep the cows from getting too thin before calving.

Out here, they supplement with hay, and cake. The hay supplements the range grass, the cake replaces grain and nutritional supplements.

Even if they supplement with cake, it is still called grassfed. Even "grass finished" cattle usually have supplementation of some kind, they just can't have more than a certain percentage.

When you buy cattle direct from the rancher, there is no "finishing" process, per-se. Either the cattle are considered ready for slaughter, or not. Generally, through the winter and spring, they are not, through the summer and fall, they are.

 

[Shiloh Acres]

My friend grows, bales, and sells hay. He probably makes more money off the hay than the beef most years, I would say. He runs around 100 head.

Hay costs him nothing except potential sales (and of course the expense of growing and baling) but if feed is pricey, and he complains that it is going up, then hay/grass must surely be cheaper for him.

I know he buys creep feed and cottonseed meal. And he did mention finishing them briefly before slaughter, but I think he mainly looks at the body condition and does it seasonally.

Well, be all that as it may ... I can tell by talking to farmers and ranchers around here that they totally buy into that way of doing things. I respect their knowledge of many things, and they've been a great help to me on things like what winter pasture to plant and when, etc. But we just don't do things the same way and I have a feeling they think I'm crazy for having so much diversity of livestock and going without routine antibiotics, etc.

I might have to go back to my former thoughts of raising a calf. Either that or give up beef, which might not be so bad. I eat steak maybe once a year, and often substitute ground turkey for ground beef. I just need a new way to make chili and curry stew, and that's probably not that hard. Wonder what goose chili tastes like, LOL!!!

 

[~gd]

Is hay really expensive? Or is it just cheaper and adds more weight to feed the cake? Down here the 3x3x8 bales of mixed are going for around 65.00. I've seen those cakes advertised at Big R. They seem kind of expensive but I imagine they go farther because of density compared to hay.

Not trying to question what you're saying. Just curious.

Well I will question what she is saying. She assumes that all 'cake' is the same while it really isn't any more than all hay is the same. Her comment is about (rBST), recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), or artificial growth hormone. which MAY be a problem in milk but not in beef unless she is eating the whole cow RAW. Cooking denatures this protein the same as it does most proteins. You can buy rBGH free 'Cake' for less than the cost of rBGH 'Cake', that work of Biotech labs is not given away free. She is right when she says the help doesn't know which cake is being fed but the person that pays the feed bills does. Since cattle on proper feed are producing BGH naturally the only way to avoid it is not to eat beef. If you were allowed to claim that beef is hormone free you could get a better price, but that claim is not allowed because all meat contains hormones naturally. Another bit of Junk Science in my opinion.

 

[lwheelr]

I've done the research on it, and I've checked into various meat and dairy suppliers. RBGH is not the same as BGH. They are distinctly different, and they act differently in both the cow, and in people. And it is an issue in both meat, and dairy, for a range of reasons.

It is also not the only growth hormone being used, though it gets the most attention. Most countries in the EU, plus Japan and Canada have outlawed the use of it due to animal and human health concerns. Were there not persuasive science based evidence to indicate the legitimacy of those concerns, it is doubtful that there would have been sufficient backing to overcome the powerful lobbies of Monsanto and other artificial hormone producers, and in so many major countries. The FDA doesn't exactly have a good safety track record where approval of chemicals by powerful companies is concerned.

Properly fed cattle do produce their own growth hormone. But the beef industry wants them to grow faster and produce more heavily than nature intended - so they tend to use artificial hormones, because it yields higher slaughter weights. That IS the whole reason they were developed - and if it were not cost effective, it would not be used at all. You either buy standard feed and spend more time feeding them, or you buy the slightly more expensive stuff and ship them off sooner (or later at higher weights), resulting in a larger savings because you feed for a shorter period of time for higher weights.

Check the labeling of the meats and dairy in your store. If they are free of artificial hormones and antibiotics, they almost always say so. If it does not say so, you can assume they have used them (because they WOULD label them as being free of them if they could, they can get a higher price for them if they are). You'll notice that the majority of the meat in the case has no such label - a good portion of meat in the US comes from dairy cattle, not just strictly from beef cattle. What do you think happens to all those Holstein steers and all those milk cows when their production starts to drop? But artificial hormones are used in cattle feed for beef, and now are being used as implants.

Cooking does not destroy hormones - pasteurization does not deactivate them either. High heat changes some slightly, but does not remove them. And when was the last time you had a steak that was fully cooked all the way through?