Is Organic meat really Green?

Question

Is it really beneficial to the environment to buy organic meat rather than non-organic meat?

Answer 1

All meat is green they just dye it red to make it look more appetizing

Answer 2

its not really really green, a vegan diet is that, but its lots greener than intensively reared beef; grass fed means much less energy and land spent on growing transporting and storing feed, less farting (seriously, cows on grass diet and especially on vetch/grass ley f**t less), and raised on mixed farm gives more efficient use of manure.

and it tastes loads better.

Answer 3

I believe it is because overall, organic meat means using natural food sources with no chemical treatments/enhancements, as well as no chemicals, steriods, or hormones used on the animals.

When you think about it, that equals less consumption of resources to produce the same harvest of animals that it would be to treat them all.  

At least that's how I look at it.

It's healthier for us to consume to animals that way, anyway.

Good luck.

Answer 4

I'm a small farmer on a permaculture farm.  The "organic" meats that are mass produced basically do not mean much.  Only that the animal was not fed antibiotics, hormones, and steroids.  It also means the feed they ate was organically grown.  It does not mean the animals had a better, or kinder life than other factory farm raised animals.

If you buy grass fed organic beef, or lamb that DOES mean something.  It means the animal grazed in a pasture to atain its growth, instead of a place of confinement and having it's food brought to it.

Now this is where it gets quiet confusing.  Free range organic chicken means nothing. Chickens that are for meat are all done growing by the time they are 8 weeks old....two short months.  For the first six weeks of a chickens life they are allowed to keep those chickens in the standard massively overcrowed chicken barns the non-organic chicken meat is raised in.  

Then magically on the sixth week of life, they open a little door to the outside world, to a fenced, green grass world.  The only thing is by the time chickens are six weeks old, their habbits are completely set in stone.  Those chickens will NEVER venture out and be real "free range" birds.  But because that magic little door is opened up, they can lable them "organic free range."  So for chickens it means zero, except they do not have the drugs in their system.

Organic pigs are still raised in confinment and never see the out of doors.  

Turkeys are the same.

If you truely want organic meat, and meat that was humanely raised, you need to make contact with a small farmer, like myself.  

You also need to be aware that small farmers like myself are very often dead set against paying the Government to come and inspect their farm (and pay the Government) so they can have the right to use the word "organic."  I will not pay the Government to be allowed to use a word found in the dictionary.  Without the inspection it is illegal for me to do so, if my farm sales total more than $5000 in a year.

I raise meat goats and meat rabbits.  My customers come directly to my farm, and butcher the animals right here on my farm, themselves.  This is illegal in some states.  

In most states however you can find a small farmer who is willing to sell you cow, pig, or lamb, and transport that animal to a butcher for you.  You then get to go and pick up the meat yourself.  You need never see the living animal if that would bother you.  Chickens and turkeys are a lot more problematic, because there is no profit in raising the bird, transporting to a butcher, and having you pay all that cost.  Customers are not going to be willing to pay $25 for a chicken.  

There are however some farms, in some states where they are able to legally butcher a chicken on the spot for you.

If you live in North Carolina, and a few other states like that, I'm sorry, but you are just scragged.  In North Carolina, a farmer cannot even legally sell you an animal, you trasport it to the butcher, and have it butchered for yourself.  Nor can a farmer there sell you an animal to butcher yourself.  I bet you though the U.S.A. was the "land of the free," didn't you?  Not even close.  You wouldn't belive the rights that are being taken away from the consumer, and the small farmer, by the lobbiest of big companies like Monsanto.  

Buy from small farmers if you are able to...you will help preserve your very own freedoms and rights.

By the way, I can appreciate littlerobbergirls sentiments on meats, what she is talking about are the mass produced, confinment raised livestock.  Cattle, sheep, goats, even pigs, can be raised on marginal land where crops simply CANNOT be grown.  The livestock can take vegitation (like sagebrush) which is of zero value to humans, and turn it into high grade protien that humans can utilize.

People all around the world would starve to death, if they did not have livestock to support them.  Their land is often too barren, and there is not enough water to grow crops.  Yet cattle, sheep, and goats will provide them with food, and allow them to live happy and healthy lives in these areas.

Most of the lamb people eat here in the U.S.A. starts its life out here in the sagebrush deserts of the West.  Many cattle too.  It's just that they are transported to confinment feedlots and fattened with grains that the trouble comes into play.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 5

sorta

Answer 6

No.  The resources it takes to raise cattle is horrific.  Much more resource-appropriate to eat a vegetarian-based diet.

There are differences in cattle operations, though.  Some are obviously "greener" and more humane than others.