Feeding your cattle a mixture of second-hand chocolate, ethanol by-products and minerals doesn't sound very tasty, from this beef consumer's point of view. There is the saying of "you are what you eat" and I wonder if any of those flavours will come out in the final product.
But more importantly, IANAFarmer, but I don't understand why cattle need to be fat in order to be profitable. Don't the farmers want their cattle to have high protein/muscle content versus high fat content?
Beef cows are sold 'by the pound' so farmers look at the cost of adding pounds to the price per pound and solve for the greatest $.
As for the feed vs the taste, I literally put chicken shit on the ground my tomatoes are growing in and it makes them both larger and tastier. Biological transformation is a magical thing in many ways.
"As for the feed vs the taste, I literally put chicken shit on the ground my tomatoes are growing in and it makes them both larger and tastier. Biological transformation is a magical thing in many ways."
But you don't put chicken shit IN your tomatoes!
I wonder how it makes the cows feel after eating it, e.g do they know the difference or is it like when my dog eats something off the sidewalk when I'm not looking and then mopes around for the rest of the day 'cause she doesn't feel well.
He's putting the fertilizer in the tomatoes exactly as much as these guys are putting candy in cows. In both cases, the material is presented to the organism which then takes it in on its own.
There's a reason the chicken poop causes your tomatoes to grow bigger and taste better. I don't imagine you'd feed that poop to a cow thinking it would grow bigger and tastier.
There's a reason why fattening up cows causes them to grow bigger and taste better too. Chicken poop won't do that. You also don't feed old chocolate to tomatoes.
> Don't the farmers want their cattle to have high protein/muscle content versus high fat content?
Not really. Marbling is a coveted feature in beef because folks tend to think fattier food tastes better. Marbling is largely just a euphemism for fatty. For example, beef has to surpass a minimum fat threshold to qualify as USDA Prime or Kobe beef. And getting that stamp lets the farmer get a higher price - so farmers who are selling to the general market do want a higher fat content.
Although, lean ground beef (93/7) generally is at least a buck more per pound than fattier ground beef (80/20). I kind of suspect that is because it is harder to separate more fat out when grinding. I imagine it takes more work to get 93/7 than it does to get 80/20.
Fat is also not evenly distributed. Lots of extra fat on beef is cut from the carcass, ground, then remixed with lower fat ground beef. IIRC, 93/7 is standard, and 80/20 is just cut with fat.
As others already answered, lean meat weights less, therefore it's less money per cattle. The majority of the fat on cattle is in-between the muscle fibers.
Right. You don't want big blobs of fat that someone's just going to cut off- but you don't want a totally dry steak, either. You want the meat to be nicely "marbled", fat and oil distributed throughout.
But more importantly, IANAFarmer, but I don't understand why cattle need to be fat in order to be profitable. Don't the farmers want their cattle to have high protein/muscle content versus high fat content?