NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO PROGRAMS
"GRASS FED BEEF"


Rancher Glenn Elzinga and Family

We'd like to think that the juicy steak we toss on the summer grill comes from the kind of pastoral landscape it did a hundred years ago, but few do. Most beef cattle in American are finished in feedlots, fattened up on a complex diet of grain, antibiotics, and agricultural byproducts. The beef industry says that's what consumers want, but critics argue its a system that pits biology against the bottom line. Producer Guy Hand visits one of a small band of cattlemen who've abandoned the feedlot for pasture, trying to raise their herds from start to finish the old fashioned way—on grass.

 

 


image
image