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Can Eating Bugs Save The World

Monday, January 10th, 2011

Insects produce much smaller quantities of greenhouse gases per kilogram of meat than cattle and pigs. This is the conclusion of scientists at Wageningen University who have joined forces with government and industry to investigate whether the rearing of insects could contribute to more sustainable protein production. Insect meat could therefore form an alternative to more conventional types of meat.

Cattle farming worldwide is a major producer of greenhouse gases. For the assessment of the sustainability of insect meat, the researchers at Wageningen University quantified the production of greenhouse gases of several edible insect species.

The results of the study were published in the online journal PLoS ONE on 29 December.

The research team has for the first time quantified the greenhouse gases produced per kilogram of insect product. The gases concerned were methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O). The results demonstrate that insects produce much smaller quantities of greenhouse gases than conventional livestock such as cattle and pigs. For example, a pig produces between ten and a hundred times as much greenhouse gases per kilogram compared with mealworms. Emissions of ammonia (which causes the acidification and eutrophication of groundwater) also appear to be significantly lower. A pig produces between eight and twelve times as much ammonia per kilogram of growth compared to crickets, and up to fifty times more than locusts. An additional advantage of insects over mammals is that they convert their food into meat quicker.

Alternative

The study indicates that proteins originating from insects in principle form an environmentally-friendly alternative to proteins from meat originating from conventional livestock. Further research is required to ascertain whether the production of a kilogram of insect protein is also more environmentally friendly than conventional animal protein when the entire production chain is taken into account.

Source: Science Daily

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Backyard Chicken Butchery

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

These folks sure do make chicken butchery look easy. It sure helps to have the featherman.net chicken plucker. (Keep in mind these babies go for over $1000)

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UK Scientists Give Meat From Cloned Cattle Thumbs Up

Friday, November 26th, 2010

Meat and milk from cloned cattle and their offspring is safe to eat, government advisers have determined.

The conclusion by the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes, an independent body that assesses whether food products are safe, increases the likelihood that authorities will approve the sale of foodstuffs from cloned animals.

Andrew Wadge, chief scientist at the Food Standards Agency, said: “The committee has confirmed that meat and milk from cloned cattle and offspring shows no substantial difference to conventionally produced meat and milk and therefore is unlikely to present a food safety risk.”

Previous “safe” rulings by the advisory committee often lead to the granting of a licence. The review was initiated by the FSA after it emerged in the summer that such milk and meat had been sold unwittingly in butchers’ shops without a licence. The committee could not issue a safety ruling because it had no request from a producer wanting to sell such milk or meat; so the FSA submitted a hypothetical application.

The expert panel said there was no evidence of any difference between such meat and that from conventionally-bred cattle. Members concluded that any potential differences between cloned animals and conventional animals was unlikely to exist beyond the second generation.

The committee noted that consumers might want to see effective labelling to be able to distinguish such products. It also recommended gathering further data, as available evidence is relatively limited.

The panel’s conclusions mirror those in 2008 of the US food and drug administration’s five-year study which found that cloned meat and milk were indistinguishable from traditional meat and milk.

It is legal to sell food derived from clones in the US, but no applications have been made in Europe.

Embryos from cattle cloned in the US were first imported three years ago, but no official checks have been kept on their offspring. The agency said in August it traced three bulls born in the UK with embryos from a cloned cow in the US. In September it warned that it would be impossible to set up a regime to trace and label food from farms with cloned animals.

Under European law, such foodstuffsmust pass a safety evaluation got approval being marketed. The agency’s board will discuss the issue in December, and is likely to make recommendations to ministers.

A spokesman said the board will consider the committee’s opinion and also a recent European Commission proposal to ban such meat and milk.

The board’s discussion would influence Britain’s negotiations on the issue in Europe, the spokesman said. “It is for individual member states to interpret European law; but, obviously, we differ from the commission on this, which is why we [have] asked for clarity from Europe.”

Source: Guardian UK

The US approved meat and milk from cloned animals (except sheep) in 2008.

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Raising Rabbits For Meat

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

Food production is the most important skill in survival. Without sufficient food you’re sunk. You won’t have the energy to protect yourself or your supplies, you won’t be able to get firewood to keep warm, or water to stay hydrated. So yes, you can live for weeks without food, but only if other people are there to take care of you and they have enough food! And meat is one of the best energy foods. Unfortunately most meat production is a high feed/time endeavor. It takes a lot of feed and time to get that cow to butcher size. Two years from birth to butcher if you’re looking at optimum growth. Plus a cow standing out in a field is going to draw attention, even if you live in the boonies. That’s why rabbits are such a good survival idea. They are very low profile, quiet, easy to raise, healthy, easy to feed, reproduce quickly, and reach butcher size in 10 to 12 weeks. No other livestock animal has a better feed to weight ratio. Meaning it takes less feed to get your rabbits to butcher size than any other meat animal. There are some great rabbit raising books out there with the standard information, but some info is only learned by experience. These are tricks about rabbit raising that we had to learn the hard way through trial and error, or was passed on to us by other rabbit raisers. So if you are a rabbit raiser or just starting a rabbit journey I hope this helps!

Health
Do not use straw in rabbit cages. If mice have been in the straw their feces and urine can carry infections that will spread to your rabbits. We had this happen! Old newspapers, clean grass hay, or dry wood shavings are the safest.

Wood Shavings as litter: I would only recommend putting litter like wood shavings, clean grass hay, or newspaper in cages for pregnant females for their nesting box. But wood shavings have a drawback. The dust can get in the babies eyes causing eye problems. We had this happen too! Mother rabbits should make their nest out of fur they pull off themselves, more on that later.

Clean litter trays frequently, at least once a week. Rabbit urine is high in ammonia and can cause health problems for your rabbits if left to accumulate. Keep your rabbits in a well-ventilated area. Rabbit droppings make excellent compost!

Give your rabbit a piece of natural wood to chew; they really like apple wood branches. This helps keep their teeth from growing too long.
Always put an untreated piece of board in the cage for your rabbit to sit on. Meat breeds are heavy and the pressure can cause sores called hutch sores to form on the bottoms of the feet.
If hutch sores occur build an outside run for your rabbit. Cover on the top with wire or wood but not the bottom. Let the rabbit run on ground until the sores are healed. Letting the problem go can cause feet problems or even death!

We use wire stackable cages with wire bottoms with trays underneath each rabbit to catch the urine and feces. We use wood shavings in the trays to absorb the urine and keep the smell down. It works much better than newspaper or straw. Stackable cages take up less space, are easy to clean, and make rabbit chores go faster. They are also easier to keep in a secure location like a garage or basement. Worth the price in my opinion.
Empty aluminum soda pop cans are fun and safe toys for rabbits to play with. Rabbits get bored too and can start destructive behavior! But be careful, a few rabbits will actually bite through the metal. If you have one of these then take the can out and try something else.
Always provide a mineral salt lick for rabbit health. Make sure its “mineral” not plain salt. And stock up, they are cheap right now, but may be unavailable later.
Keep rabbit food secure from mice. They carry diseases!
Give pregnant and nursing females oats (about ¼ cup per day), they love it and it helps build up fat stores for good baby production. Also give to babies to fatten them up for dinner!

Kindling/Baby Problems
This is the most problematic aspect of rabbits. You will devote more time to kindling (rabbit birth and newborn babies) than anything else in rabbit care. While rabbits are easier to breed and raise than chickens in my opinion, that is only true with a good experienced doe (female rabbit). If you have good mom, baby care on your part is non-existent. Here are some hard learned tricks to problems.
Do not use wood shavings in kindling (birth) box! Give the doe newspaper or clean grass hay if it seems like she is not pulling fur good enough. Putting grass hay and newspaper in may also stimulate her to start building a nest. Do this about a week before kindling (birth).

First Time Mothers
Almost everyone you talk to and every book you read will say that first time mothers will always loose the first litter of babies. And frankly this is pretty true. But I have noticed that it is usually due to the mother not making a good enough nest and the babies getting chilled as they are born furless. Also the mother almost never gives the first really good feeding that is necessary after birth, causing the kits to be weak. Put those two together and you have dead babies! So here are ways I have solved this problem. Works in other situations too.
Chilled babies: So you go out and find babies chilled and close to death. Or maybe you think they are dead. Hold on! Unless the baby is actually frozen to the wire they may be just barely still alive. Get them inside and if they are hardly moving submerge them up to their neck in warm (not hot!) water. Be careful to not get the head wet. I have had babies that were so still it took this measure to show me they were alive. And like a miracle they came back. Now after they are moving pretty well take them out and gently rub them with a warm dry cloth, being careful of the umbilical cord area. Once dry put them in a box with a heating pad covered with a folded towel or hot water bottles to keep them nice and warm.

Weakness due to lack of milk
If momma didn’t feed them right after birth your going to have weak babies who will be unable to nurse the next time, or if momma rejected them and you need to put them on a surrogate mother (more on surrogates later) the babies will need enough energy to nurse once put back with a mom. Here is what I do and it usually works. Make a warm sugar water solution 2 parts water to 1 part table sugar. Put in an eyedropper and put in warmed babies mouth. Do not give to a chilled baby! Wait until you warm it up. Give only one drop of sugar water at a time; it is horribly easy to drown these babies! After two drops stop. With any more you risk drowning the baby. You should see them swallowing while feeding, don’t force it. You will see these babies start moving around making noises and looking for food as energy increases. Now you know they are ready to be given back to mom or surrogate mom. If you fear it’s too cold outside bring mom to the babies inside to feed them. Mother rabbits only feed babies once a day. Some moms won’t feed under these conditions and then your going to have to try taking babies out to mom twice a day and bringing them inside until they get fur. Or to solve this problem keep your rabbits in a rabbit barn with heat available, or only breed in warm weather.
Insufficient Nest: Mother rabbits should pull out their fur to make a nice warm nest, but first timers almost always do a bad job. If this happens you’ll have to do it for her. After birth (if you do this while mom is still pregnant you can kill the babies inside her due to her struggling) take mom out and gently pull fur from her tummy and sides. It will come out easy due to hormones and reveal her nipples to babies. Shove all this fur into a nice nest shape and make a hollow with your fist. Put babies in and cover with fur. Now put mom in and watch closely. If she tries to reject them you will know because they will start screaming as she hurts them. Get them out! Now you have a problem. Hopefully you can find a surrogate mom.

Surrogate moms: I always breed more than one rabbit at the same time, that way if one mom rejects or has too many babies to support you can give them to another mom. Most rabbits can only support about 8 to ten babies at one time. And if you are breeding meat rabbits your going to have big litters. If different litters are born too far apart it is harder to get the surrogate to accept them. So breed together. Here is how to get a surrogate to accept different babies. In the morning (not night) take the babies and put them in the new nest. Cover well with moms fur so they will smell like the other babies, you can also rub vanilla extract on moms nose to help mask the scent. Now watch mom closely, if she rejects you will know. Check the babies a few times first day, trying not to upset mom. The more you mess with a new mom the more likely she is to kill her babies.

As I have said meat rabbits have big litters so your other moms may not have room to take more babies. What then? Well, you can keep another smaller breed of rabbit just for surrogating. The smaller lops make excellent moms. We always bred our pet Holland at the same time as the meat rabbits. Smaller rabbits generally have smaller litters, but can still support up to eight babies. Our Holland was a rock! She accepted anything and always took great care of her litters. Also bonus, you can tell whose babies are who’s. This is important for future breeding purposes. If all babies look alike then you will not be able to tell which babies came from which moms for future breeding.

Buck Problems
Most bucks (male rabbits) have no problems except one. Due to living in a small cage they have very little staying power when it comes to breeding. So when you are trying to breed a male to a female he gets tired very quickly. The solution is to give your buck an open space or rabbit run to live on. His muscles will be stronger and he will breed better as a result. Just make sure it is secure from dogs and predators!
Predator problems – Animal and Human
Rabbits are a prey animal for pretty much anything bigger than a squirrel. So securing your rabbits is a major concern. The biggest predators Pre-SHTF are neighborhood dogs. They get really excited when they see a rabbit and kill mode kicks in! Even a Yorkie could kill your rabbits simply by jumping at them and barking. Rabbits aren’t the cleverest of creatures and panic easily. When they get really scared they will run circles in their cages and jump up sometimes breaking their own backs! Any rabbit not in a secure cage is a sitting duck for owls, dogs, cats, hawks, raccoons, skunks, badgers, possums, and mean kids! And that is just in town! So my advice is put your rabbits in a rabbit barn. This can be a humble shed, garage, or basement. This will become even more important in a SHTF situation. You will not want people [outside your family] knowing that you have meat available.

Heat – The Silent Rabbit Killer
The most tragic thing to come home to is a barn full of heatstroke-killed rabbits. Rabbits can die of heat stroke in 80 degree Fahrenheit weather. That’s it! They are covered in nice warm fur, which is great in cold weather, but not in the heat. Here are the ways to avoid heat death:
1. Shade! Never, ever, put your rabbit hutch in direct sun in warm weather, or they will die! Put your hutches or cages in the shade of a building or tree.
2. Always provide frozen water bottles for your rabbit to lie on in the heat. I like big 2 liter ones for our meat rabbits because they last most of the day. Keep one in the cage while the other one is in the freezer refreezing.
2. Always provide lots of water in the heat. Use water bottle feeders so the rabbits can’t defecate in them or spill them.
3. In really hot weather 90 or above soak the hutch roof and sides in water from a hose several times a day to cool it down.
4. If you notice your rabbits panting take action immediately, your rabbits are in heat stroke! Mist your rabbits with the hose and put frozen water or pop bottles in the cage with them. Monitor to make sure they are cooling down.
5. If a rabbit is laying still in the cage and won’t wake or is sluggish but still breathing it is now in a coma from heat. Get it out and submerge in a bucket of cold water up to the neck. It should revive if not too far gone.

Conclusion
Rabbits are an easy animal to raise once you get the cages and feeders, and much of that you can make yourself. They are also perfect for kids to care for, as they are small, cute, and generally non-aggressive. The worst you will get from a rabbit is a bad scratch. A cow or a pig however, could easily kill or injure your eight to ten-year-old child.

If you had 5 to 10 does breeding every two months you would have a good meat supply for the year. Another major advantage is that you can butcher for daily needs. If you butcher a hog or cow you have to process, pickle, salt, or freeze hundreds of pounds of meat all at once. It’s a tricky business to do safely. With rabbits you have no possibility of spoilage and a nice pelt of fur to turn into clothing. We have seen interest in our rabbits triple in the past months. So much so that I have run out of breeders to sell. This is something that has never happened to me before! People are waking up and looking for ways to ensure food safety. If you are looking to buy breeding stock then make sure they are young (under a year of age) or proven to be fertile, and buy from a good breeder who knows about proper care and feeding. Good Luck!

Source: Survival Blog

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American Meat Is Even Grosser Than You Thought

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

In the focus on E. coli and salmonella, meat contaminated by heavy metals, veterinary drugs and pesticides has been slipping through the bureaucratic cracks.

In 2008, Mexican authorities rejected a shipment of U.S. beef because the meat exceeded Mexico’s regulatory tolerance for copper. The rejected meat was returned to the United States, where it was sold and consumed, because the U.S. has no regulatory threshold for copper in meat.

Incidents like this are why the food safety arm of USDA, known as the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), is under USDA scrutiny. While the public has gotten used to microbes like E. coli and salmonella threatening the nation’s meat supply, and while food safety agencies make food-borne illness a high-profile priority, contamination of meat by heavy metals, veterinary drugs and pesticides has been slipping through the bureaucratic cracks.

Microbial contaminants can be killed by cooking, but chemical residues aren’t destroyed by heat. In fact, some of these residues break down into more dangerous substances when heated, according to the FSIS National Residue Program for Cattle, a recent report by the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General.

The report is full of bad news about the ineffectual attempts that are being made to keep chemical residues out of the food supply, but optimists might point to the report’s tone as a sliver of good news. The report is sharply critical of the efforts to keep our meat free of chemical residues, and shows determination to shore up this gaping hole in food safety.

“… The national residue program is not accomplishing its mission of monitoring the food supply for harmful residues,” the report says, noting that thresholds for many dangerous substances, like copper and dioxin, have yet to be established. “We also found that FSIS does not recall meat adulterated with harmful residues, even when it is aware that the meat has failed its laboratory tests.”

The routes by which veterinary drugs make it into human food trace a disturbing portrait of how large dairy farms operate. Sick dairy cows are given medications to help them recover, but if it appears an animal will die, it’s often sold to a slaughterhouse as quickly as possible, in time to kill it before it dies. That way, “[the dairy farmer] can recoup some of his investment in the animal,” according to the report.

In such cases, medications may be consumed along with the meat. Such drugs include Ivermectin (which can act as a neurotoxin in humans), Flunixin (which can damage kidneys), and penicillin (which can cause life-threatening allergic reactions in some people).

The meat from sick dairy cattle is low-grade, and is usually turned into burger and sold to the sorts of buyers who stretch their dollars furthest, like fast food chains and school lunch programs. But veterinary drugs are also finding their way into an upper echelon of meat: veal. Click to continue »

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Will The USDA Doom Locally Produced Meat?

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

That wailing you hear in the distance is the sound of small meat processors begging the USDA for mercy. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service recently proposed a set of new regulations that will require all meat processors to submit their products to a new series of tests, a procedure that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for even a modestly scaled operation, enough to cripple many small processors.

What worries fans of small farms and locally produced food is that the closing of small processors will mean the closing of small farms. Slaughter and processing is the biggest challenge for small-scale meat; they’re operations simply too costly and complex for farms to handle themselves. As it is, farmers have few options for meat processing without selling their animals to massive feedlot-meat operations, and without that piece of the puzzle, many farmers may quit. Why is the USDA considering the new testing regime? Some producers wonder if the machinations of Big Food are in play.

“The new testing would just ensure that the current processes, which are based on scientific consensus, are working,” according to Dustin VandeHoer of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. But, he adds that it’s not clear why they’re being mandated: “It doesn’t appear that it’s in response to any specific situation. They’re just kind of reinterpreting the existing rules.’” And he’s unsure that the new tests are necessary. “We haven’t had problems with food safety, especially with the smaller plants,” he says. “We should never become complacent, but I think we can reach a point where [small meat processors] can still be allowed to operate and food can be safe. I don’t know that we need to be taking this path that’s going to put small plants out of business.” (Repeated attempts by Salon to solicit comments from the USDA were unsuccessful.)

Greg Higgins, chef/owner of Higgins Restaurant in Portland, Ore., and a founding member of the sustainability and local-food-focused Chefs Collaborative, has darker suspicions. “What’s always in the back of my mind is the industrial food lobby,” he says. He suspects that the change in the USDA regulations, and the way they will affect small meat producers, was probably “fairly well thought out by the lobbyists.” The popularity of small farms, grass-fed meats, and artisan products like salumi and prosciutto is expanding rapidly, and Higgins suspects that the industrial food lobby is trying to squeeze producers out so as not to lose a share of the market.”They don’t want any competition,” Higgins says. “They’re very powerful and I think they would relish the opportunity to keep the market closed.”

Mario Fantasma of Paradise Meats in Trimble, Mo., wants to trust the USDA. “I’m sure their intentions are good,” he says, “but I don’t think that they see far enough into what it can do to small companies — and even large companies for that matter.”

Higgins says that it’s unfair for small plants to suffer when health safety risks are disproportionately linked to large-scale processing. “Think about all the big health scares we’ve had,” he says. “They’re all related to large-scale food production, whether it’s spinach from a massive grower in California or ground beef out of the Midwest, they’re all gigantic, they’re never these little tiny plants.”

And Fantasma argues that small plants are, by necessity, already more conscious about food safety. “At small facilities, we’ve always had food safety in our top priorities. We can’t afford not to. If one of our customers came here and got sick, what do you think would happen to my business? That alone would kill us. It’s common sense that we want to do everything in our power to make sure that our product is safe.”

“The thing that’s going to affect us is the cost of the testing,” Fantasma says. Regulations for small plants like Fantasma’s will require 13 samples of every product to be tested before processing, and another 13 samples after processing. “When you add all those products and tests, it racks up a super amount of money,” he says. “Right now we’re sitting at about $500,000 for the initial validation tests, just for the first year. We wouldn’t be able to do it. It would just really devastate our business.”

Fantasma recognizes the trickle-down effect of the new regulations. “It’s not just about us, the processors. Look at what would happen to the farmers who are trying to offer their farm-raised products to their customers. [The USDA is] taking away their ability to market their own products. Their farms would wither up. They would have to go back to selling to commodity markets, whether they want to or not. And what’s bad about it is that these guys raise some nice animals, hormone- and antibiotic-free. They work real hard for their living, trying to keep a sustainable farm running, and when you take their market away from them, it shuts them down.”

The American Association of Meat Producers and the Iowa Department of Agriculture have both made public statements against the new regulations and have started a letter-writing campaign. VandeHoer is hopeful that the USDA will heed their concerns about the fate of small plants, and Fantasma says the letter writing is his only hope. “All we can do is go to them and say, ‘Look, this is going to kill us.’”

Source: Salon.com

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Cows Raised On Grass Not Free Of Deadly E. Coli

Friday, January 29th, 2010

The comparative health benefits of grass-fed beef are well documented. Scores of studies indicate that it’s higher in omega 3s. But when it comes to E. coli O157:H7, the advantages of grass-fed beef are not so clear. In fact, exploring the connection between grass-fed beef and these dangerous bacteria offers a disturbing lesson in how culinary wisdom becomes foodie dogma and how foodie dogma can turn into a recipe for disaster.

in the fall of 2006, when food activist Nina Planck wrote about the bacteria strain on the op-ed page of theNew York Times. At that time, people were getting sick from bad organic spinach, but the contamination seemed to have originated with herds of conventionally raised cattle that lived upstream. Not every animal excretes this nasty type of E. coli, she argued. “It’s not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay, and other fibrous forage. No, O157 thrives in a new—that is, recent in the history of animal diets—biological niche: the unnaturally acidic stomachs of beef and dairy cattle fed on grain, the typical ration on most industrial farms.”

he Times speaks, the world listens. Planck’s appraisal of grain- vs. grass-fed beef was highlighted on the Web sites for the Organic Consumers Association, the Center for a Livable Future, Grist, and Culinate.com, among other enviro-foodie venues. A few months later, Hannah Wallace of Salon warned that “a cow’s corn diet can also make us sick” on account of the acidic environment it creates for bacteria. Even Michael Pollan, perhaps the most widely read food writer on the planet, explained in a New York Times Magazine piece, “The lethal strain of E. coli known as 0157:H7 … was unknown before 1982; it is believed to have evolved in the gut of feedlot cattle.” These animals, he added, “stand around in their manure all day long, eating a diet of grain that happens to turn a cow’s rumen into an ideal habitat for E. coli 0157:H7.”

For many consumers, the case was closed: To avoid E. coli O157:H7, just eat grass-fed beef.

Unfortunately, the scientific evidence tells a very different story. Planck’s assertion seems to be based on a 1998 report published in the journal Science. In this study, the authors fed three cows a variety of diets in order to ascertain how feed type influenced intestinal acidity in cows and, in turn, how intestinal acidity influenced the concentration of acid-resistant strains of E. coli. They hypothesized that these strains would be especially dangerous to humans, since they could survive the low-pH environment of the human stomach. It turned out that grain-fed cattle did indeed have a much more acidic stomach than those fed grass or hay. And sure enough, they had a million times more acid-resistant E. coli in their colons.

This was good news for grass-fed beef: Eliminate grain from a cow’s diet and you’ll keep its intestines from getting too acidic and spawning dangerous, acid-resistant bacteria. There was only one catch. The authors of the Science piece never specifically tested for E. coli O157:H7. Instead, they guessed that the pattern of O157:H7 growth and induction of acid-resistance would mirror that of E. coli strains that are always living in the colons of cattle. If this assertion were true, E. coli O157:H7 would reach dangerous levels only in gastrointestinal tracts of grain-fed cows.

But between 2000 and 2006, scientists began to take a closer look at the effect of diet on E. coli O157:H7 specifically. A different set of findings emerged to indicate that this particular strain did not, in fact, behave like other strains of E. coli found in cattle guts. Most importantly (in terms of consumer safety), scientists showed in a half-dozen studies that grass-fed cows do become colonized with E. coli O157:H7 at rates nearly the sameas grain-fed cattle. An Australian study actually found a higher prevalence of O157:H7 in the feces of grass-fed rather than grain-fed cows. The effect postulated (and widely publicized) in the 1998 Science report—that grain-fed, acidic intestines induced the colonization of acid-resistant E. coli—did not apply to the very strain of bacteria that was triggering all the recalls.

What might explain this discrepancy? Scientists wondered whether there could be two subtypes of E. coli O157:H7 with varying degrees of acid-resistance. By that logic, the microbes from the grass-fed guts would be less resilient—and therefore less dangerous—than the ones that were growing up in the cows reared on grain. So they started running tests to find out.

Read more at: Beware the Myth of Grass-Fed Beef (Slate.com)

Thanks Autonomy Acres, for the story.

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