The Rural Voice, 2005-01, Page 28The forage advantage
Meat and milk from cattle and other ruminant
animals have healthy advantages that consumers
want, but producers face obstacles in getting a
premium for a product that's in demand
By Keith Roulston
Ruminant
animals can
turn grass and
forages into
healthy fatty
acids needed
in the human
diet.
-w„
Talk about finishing cattle on
forage these days and people
may look at you as a radical.
All the attention in recent years has
been in improving marbling, taste
and tenderness, all qualities
producers have been assured come
from a grain -fed finishing regimen.
"We don't seem to realize that if
we look at the world scale there's
much more beef produced by feeding
forages exclusively than what we see
in North America and some other
countries that use grain finishing,"
Dr. Ira Mandell, University of
Guelph beef researcher told the
Forage Focus conference in
Shakespeare November 30.
There's also market research
showing consumers will pay more
for this natural ,product and farmers
could see higher returns for this more
natural product.
24 THE RURAL VOICE
Until recent \ears consumption of
beef has been declining in Canada.
"We're turning off consumers
because of the nutritional quality of
beef," Mandell said. "A lot of
consumers are concerned about the
high amount of saturated fat and how
saturated fat is associated with high
cholesterol and health problems."
But a shift to forage -feeding could
change the whole image for beef and
meat and milk from other ruminant
animals, Mandell said.
"There's really a lot of promise if
we could alter the fatty acid
composition of beef and put in poly-
unsaturated fatty acids, and that's
where forage finishing comes in."
Health professionals are saying
we need to consume no more than 30
per cent of our daily calories from
fat. So we need to change the fatty
acid composition and lower the
amount of saturated fatty acids.
Over .the past decade there has
been much talk about the need to
increase our consumption of Omega-
3 fatty acids including EPA and
DHA and linoleic acid. Linoleic acid
is high in forages while EPA and
DHA are present in algae and fish.
"We also want to make sure that
EPA and. DHA are at least 10 per
cent of our daily Omega-3 fatty acid
intake. There are real health benefits
in consuming EPA and DHA."
Increasing the level of Omega-3
fatty acids lowers the risk for
coronary heart disease. These fatty
acids are also important for vision
and neural developments in infants
so that infant formulas are often
supplemented with DHA.
Our diets are very high in the
kinds of fatty acids that aren't good
for us and health professionals are
telling us we need to reduce the
intake of those fats and increase the
consumption of Omega-3 fatty acids.
Health professionals want us to
increase our consumption of fish to
at least twice a week. "The problem
is there are a lot of people who won't
eat fish period let alone twice a
week," Mandell said, "so you need
another source of Omega-3 fatty
acids."
Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is
a long -chain polyunsaturated fatty
acid with many of the same benefits
as EPA and DHA (as well as helping
prevent cancer) and it's found in the
meat and milk of ruminant animals
because its a product of bacterial
fermentation of cellulose. Beef, veal
and lamb have much higher CLA
levels than monogastrics like pigs
and chickens.
So if ruminants like beef and
dairy cattle can have such a
positive health effect, why have
they had such a bad rap in recent
years? Mandell puts it down to the
diet we've been feeding animals in
an effort to produce greater
efficiencies and more tender meat.
Meat and milk from any ruminant
animal such as cattle, sheep, goats,
deer or elk fed grains will have high
amounts of fatty acids because of
their digestive systems. Pigs,
chickens and humans with simple
digestive systems digest proteins in
the stomach but the main absorption
of carbohydrate, protein and fat takes
T