December 3, 2007

"Hormone-fed beef", more friendly to the environment

The use of growth promoting hormones in North American beef cows not only profits beef producers, it also benefits consumers and the environment, according to a new report by the Hudson Institute Centre For Global Food Issues in the US.

Growth promoters - which are banned in the EU on food safety grounds - have been used in North American beef production for 50 years. Despite its negative publicity, the report states that hormones in US beef have enormous environmental benefits. Increased feed use efficiency, reduced land requirements, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions per pound of beef produced have all been conclusively demonstrated.

The report also showed that comparing conventional beef production to an alternative grass-based beef production system using an economic/production model created by scientists at Iowa State University, growth promoting hormones and ionophores decrease the land required to produce a pound of beef by two thirds, with fully one fifth of this gain resulting from growth enhancing pharmaceuticals. Whereas grass-based organic beef requires more than 5 acre-days to produce a pound of beef, less than 1.7 acre days are needed in a grain-fed feedlot system using growth promotants.

According to the report, grain feeding combined with growth promotants also results in a nearly 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gases (GHGs) per pound of beef compared to grass feeding (excluding nitrous oxides), with growth promotants accounting for fully 25 percent of the emissions reductions.