We have found a great deal of evidence to suggest that to feed livestock grass is better for the environment and a good deal better for health. A great deal of Doctors maintain that a diet of purely grass fed meat and dairy products are extremely good for you and less stressful on the digestive system and body than other meat products.

The taste is different due to an omega-3 fatty acid found in grass. As soon as an animal is taken off grass and fed grains the meat loses its valuable store of omega-3 and the good fats in the meat disappear. Grass fed beef actually has the same fat content as skinless chicken. The meat tastes cleaner, has more flavour and is so much better for you. There are less bad fats and more of the good fats. Meat is not just meat, the way an animal is fed can make a huge difference to the health benefits of the food

Taken from Grass-fed Beef by author Jo Johnson

The difference between grain/concentrate fed animals and purely grass fed animals is dramatic

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Taken from The Carbon Fields - How our countryside can save Britain by Graham Harvey

Grass-fed beef contains just a quarter of the fat of grain-fed beef. Cattle grazing pastures incorporate up to ten times more beta-carotene and up to five times more vitamin E into their muscle tissues than grain-fed animals. Beta-carotene, which is converted into vitamin A in the liver, and vitamin E are fat soluble vitamins. Both are essential nutrients vital for health. It has been long known that fat-soluble vitamins protect against heart disease, cancer and infections. Pasture (feeding) also boosts the level of health-protecting fats, particularly those known as omega-3s. These vital fats play a key role in human metabolism. New research shows that the elimination of pasture-fed meat and milk from our diets may have been a factor in the rise of most degenerative diseases, including cancer, obesity Type-2 diabetes, heart disease, autism, depression, schizophrenia and Alzheimers

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Taken from www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm

The animals grow at a natural pace. For these reasons and more, grass-fed animals live low-stress lives (and produce meat with) less total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories. It also has more vitamin E, beta-carotene, vitamin C, and a number of health-promoting fats, including omega-3 fatty acids

Another benefit of omega-3s is that they may reduce your risk of cancer. In animal studies, these essential fats have slowed the growth of a wide array of cancers and also kept them from spreading.

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Taken from www.seedsofhealth.co.uk/articles/beyond_organic by author Jo Robinson (Jo Robinson is a New York Times bestselling writer)

when it comes to animal production, organic is not enough. We need to be raising animals on their species-appropriate diets. Few consumers realise that many producers of organic or naturally raised animal products, raise their animals in confinement and feed them grain. Feeding large amounts of grain to a grazing animal decreases the nutritional value of its products whether the grain is organic or conventionally raised. The reason is simple. Compared with grass, grain has far fewer omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin E.(1) Therefore, grain-fed animals have fewer of these important nutrients in their meat and dairy products. Grain feeding also interferes with the creation of a cancer-fighting fight called conjugated linoleic acid or CLA.(2) For many consumers, food safety is an even bigger concern than nutrition. Once again, grass feeding offers an important advantage. It has been known for decades that grain feeding makes a cows digestive tract more acid. Now we know that this acidic environment speeds the growth of potentially dangerous E. coli bacteria and, even worse, makes the bugs more acid-resistant. Alarmingly, these acid-resistant bacteria are much more likely to survive the cleansing acidity of our own digestive juices and make us ill.(4) Depriving our livestock of fresh greens and vastly increasing their consumption of grain has jeopardized our health in ways people never imagined. Although feeding organically raised grain reduces our reliance on pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, it does not provide the food that nature intended us to eat.

References

1. Garton, G. A.. "Fatty Acid Composition of the Lipids of Pasture Grasses." Nature 187(4736): 511-12.

2. Dhiman, T. R., G. R. Anand, et al. (1999). "Conjugated linoleic acid content of milk from cows fed different diets." J Dairy Sci 82(10): 2146-56.

3. Lopez-Bote, C. J., R.Sanz Arias, A.I. Rey, A. Castano, B. Isabel, J. Thos (1998). "Effect of free-range feeding on n-3 fatty acid and alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E) content and oxidative stability of eggs." Animal Feed Science and Technology 72: 33-40.

4. Diez-Gonzalez, F., T. R. Callaway, et al. (1998). "Grain feeding and the dissemination of acid-resistant Escherichia coli from cattle." Science 281(5383): 1666-8.

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Taken from http://www.seedsofhealth.co.uk/articles/healthy_beef

Farmers feed their livestock with grain because it provides fast gains. Grain has been available because the fertilizers and pesticides required to grow grain have been available in abundant amount. This development coincided with the end of World War II when a new market needed to be found for the chemicals that had been used in the manufacture of bombs.

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Taken from The Carbon Fields - How our countryside can save Britain by Graham Harvey

Today, ruminant animals get a lot of flack from environmentalists because microbial action in the rumen, the animals fermentation chamber, produces large amounts of methane. Dairy foods and the meat of cattle are said to be harmful to the planet (however) a number of plants found in species-rich, natural grassland are known to reduce methane emissions. Ruminants raised by traditional, pasture-based systems are part of a system that locks up vast amounts of carbon in the soil. Its the feeding of grain to animals thats damaging the planet, not the production of healthy foods on traditional pastoral systems.