Pasture raised what?

Most of you know, I teach butchering and meat crafting. We are also small scale farmers. I raise, pigs, beef, sheep, meat chickens, turkeys and laying hens. We have learned a thing or two about what it takes to get great meat and we haven’t had to buy meat from the store for five years or so.

Many of you dear readers do need to purchase meat and hopefully are striving for the best quality meat you can find and afford. Great meat is expensive and sometimes hard to find. Here I would like to introduce you to one of my marketing pet peeves. The term “pasture raised”.

Beef and other ruminants are and should be pasture raised. Their digestive system is set up to convert cellulose to sugar. Sugar that will feed bacteria in their gut which becomes the source of protein for their muscle growth. Pigs and chickens don’t have a rumen. They rely on dietary protein for general health, like growing feathers and to gain weight add muscle.

In every case a pig and chicken marked as pasture raised has been fed a supplemental feed containing a source of protein. The protein source can be vary, from organic, to non-gmo, or even soy free. Whatever suits you is what you should look for in a farmers feed program. But the pasture added very little to the growth of that animal. Here’s what it did do. a pig and a chicken will eat some grass. Grass contains omega 3 fatty acids. Increasing omega 3 fatty acids to create balance to the omega 6 fatty acids is a good thing. Not critical for growth but makes the fat a more healthy fat.

The other very positive aspect of raising animals in pasture is environmental. For a local farmer pasture raised means these creatures were not raised in a warehouse, could see and live on dirt. They saw sunshine and rain. These are all great things and what we strive for on our farm. A commercial grower doesn’t have the same idea of what pasture raised means. It's complicated and in my view, often a term added to packaging for the sole purpose of marketing, not animal welfare. Take a look at this article that talks about the requirements and oversight required to label as pasture raised. TLDR it isn’t much. https://www.greenerchoices.org/pasture-raised/