She wrote the piece in response to a column that appeared in the paper by Erin Duerr titled “From Scratch: Try natural, grass-fed beef for your meals.”
Here are a few lines from the commentary, but I'd encourage you to read the full article here:
Which is the better beef: grass-fed or corn-fed? More than ever before, consumers have a lot of questions about their food, and beef is no exception. They see cattle grazing in the fields and they see cattle in feedlots, but they don’t understand the difference.
Growing up on a cow/calf ranch, I’ve seen both sides of beef production. I now work on behalf of Nebraska’s corn farmers representing the livestock industry, as well as running seedstock cattle of my own.
It is important to know that most all cattle are raised and spend most of their lives on range or pasture conditions eating grass from the time they are born until they are 12 to 18 months of age. Then, depending on how the feeder cattle are marketed, they are moved to a feedlot and usually separated into groups of 100 where they live in pens that allow about 125 to 250 square feet of room per animal. Cattle usually spend four to six months in a feedlot, during which they are fed a nutritionally formulated ration of corn and/or silage, hay and distillers grains.
Pope then goes on to write about the nutritional value, economics and environmental aspects of both types of beef production.
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