Turning ‘grass-fed’ into dollars

We see local agriculture as an industry that is integral to the unique rural character and community strength of our area, and have, therefore, been particularly interested in the creamery study recently completed for the Sullivan County Industrial Development Agency. We were happy to see the study conclude that a creamery could be viable; and though it added the caveat that the facility should concentrate on value-added products like cheese and ice cream rather than fluid milk to be successful, that’s scarcely a deal-breaker.

In fact, we think that, if anything, the study underestimates the chances of success by missing out on one factor that could potentially be a huge marketing plus. A growing body of evidence suggests that, notwithstanding the bad reputation dairy products have gotten for saturated fat content in recent decades, dairy products from grass-fed cows, as distinct from the grain-fed cows typical on factory farms, have major health benefits. (The terms grass-fed, forage-fed and pastured are frequently used interchangeably, though forage actually includes a variety of pasture plants in addition to grass).

The evidence of our eyes suggests that local dairy herds belong to this class of healthy cattle, a suspicion we confirmed by a call to Dan Shockey of the Sullivan County Cornell Cooperative Extension, who told us that they are indeed forage-fed. As for the medical claims: we don’t want to practice medicine without a license, but the articles we have seen seem to be well-sourced enough that they are at least worth investigating further.

You’ve probably seen products on the grocery shelves touted for their omega-3 content; well, it looks like grass-fed milk has an omega-3 benefit, too. It has the optimum ratio of omega-3 to omega 6 fatty acids, one to one. That compares to factory-cow milk, which has four or five times as much omega-6 as omega 3, and our Western diets as a whole, with a ratio of 15 to one.* Grass-fed milk could help restore the balance.

Another health benefit of grass-fed milk is related to a substance called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), of which it contains five times as much as milk from grain-fed cows. A study published earlier this year in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition** examined over 3,500 people in Costa Rica for whom grass-fed dairy products are the main source of CLA. Higher levels of CLA were associated with a 50 percent reduction in the risk of heart attack. CLA has also been associated with reduced risks of cancer and diabetes.

What’s particularly nice about both these claims is that they relate to the type of fat found in milk. In other words, if you want the health benefits, you must consume the fat. Now that’s an easy sale—and obviously extremely useful when you’re talking about marketing cheese and ice cream.

To actually use a “grass-fed” label in order to establish a niche for local dairy products would admittedly be easier said than done. To convince consumers that the claim is valid, it would probably be necessary to have some form of third-party certification, but the USDA does not have a grass-fed standard for dairy. And whether the USDA develops a standard or another organization is used, certification could run into money—not to mention the annoyance of periodic farm audits.

Another alternative might be to set up a system of sampling to test the omega-3, omega-6 and CLA content of the milk directly. This might be prohibitively expensive, but there’s no way to know without checking it out—and it would bypass the probably greater logistical problems of having herd feeding audited.

But however it’s done, in this diet-obsessed country, there ought to be some way that our local family farmers can reap financial benefits from the fact that their herds are producing a far healthier product than the factory-farm commodity they are competing with. They already have a premium product; now let’s just find a way to get them paid for it. We think a Sullivan County creamery project would provide a great vehicle for doing this, perhaps with the help of groups like Pure Catskills that are already engaged in marketing the advantages of locally produced food. And while finding seed money will not be easy in today’s economy, the payoffs to our local economy could be big enough that figuring out how to finance this project is worth making a priority for all of us, farmers and non-farmers alike.

*“The importance of the ratio of omega-6/omega-3 essential fatty acids,” ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12442909 .

**“Conjugated linoleic acid in adipose tissue and risk of myocardial infarction,” by Liesbeth A Smit, Ana Baylin and Hannia Campos.

Also in this issue:

• Letter to Gov. Paterson on a moratorium

Dr. Punnybone

The Bribe of Frankenstein