Recently, there was an interesting piece from NPR on the differences between beef cattle that are raised in Europe versus the United States. The “All Things Considered” story was written in light of a settlement to a long running trade disputed regarding the importation of American beef into Europe. Under the new agreement, the European Union has agreed to increase its importation of U.S. Beef by 400% but all of the beef must be hormone free. This condition is an extension of the general fears many Europeans share about the health and quality of beef treated with hormones.
In an interview, Michel Baudot, a French beef farmer points out how the European beef industry raises and processes its cattle with a different core philosophy than the U.S. beef industry; a philosophy that comes down to the principles of profit vs. quality. Baudot explains that, typically, European cows are raised hormone free and more importantly; the cows are raised with every aspect of their life tracked and recorded for a product provenance. Cows are numbered and traced from birth to the store shelf.
The smaller scale farming and localized sales have created a very wide variety of beef cattle and a variety of shapes and sizes for cattle in Europe. The U.S. has chosen to try to standardize the average beef cattle for maximum size and processing efficiency. This maximizing philosophy is exemplified in the U.S. cattle industry’s use of synthetic growth hormone. Used in the last months of the cow’s life, growth hormones increase the size of the cow significantly.
While the practice of hormone administration has become a mostly accepted practice for the U.S. consumer, Europeans have a much more suspicious view of hormone use. This suspicion has led to the banning of hormones used in cattle.
It is interesting to see how this ban pans out in the end. Europeans farmers are at a disadvantage when it comes to competing internationally with America’s cheap beef. Hormones have not been definitively linked to any particular health issue but they are indicative of an ideology about beef.
The push to get cattle bigger through any means necessary and processed as quickly as possible has created cheap beef, but it has also created virulent antibiotic resistant strains of foodborne illness. The ideology saw E. coli O157:H7 enter the picture and take a foothold causing numerous outbreaks with thousands of victims. The massive centralized processing and production of beef has created environments where a single contaminated cow serves as a starting point in the contamination of hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef putting thousands of people at risk of devastating food poisonings and the deadly complications like hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).
That is not to say that Europe is free from the scourge of foodborne illness; issues with E. coli and “Mad Cow” exist overseas not just in the U.S. But there are some lessons that could be learned from the European model. The current U.S. cattle tracking system is either self imposed or nonexistent. Attempts to impose a mandatory system in the U.S. have been poorly received as many ranchers fear the added expenses. But we are talking about human lives, not cheap beef. Many consumers would welcome a modest price increase on their beef purchases if it meant that the beef has a traceable provenance; recalls would be easier to enact, contaminated product would be less likely to accidentally get into the food system and outbreaks could be linked back to a source faster and more accurately. Europe’s decentralized processing and production is also an interesting point that deserves further exploration.
America’s problems with beef are getting bigger and they are not going away. A reevaluation of our beef system from farm to table is necessary before we can start to effectively deal with these important issues. With lives hanging in the balance, urgency is required.
Richard J. Arsenault, 2010
