Ruminants are not the only animals you will find happily grazing on pasture-intensive farms. Chickens and turkeys are busy foraging as well. Unlike ruminants, however, poultry cannot survive on pasture alone. Because they lack a multi-compartmented stomach, they need some from of high quality protein, such as insects or a mixture of grains and legumes. But greens are a key part of their natural diet as well. Chickens that are raised on pasture will get as much as 30 percent of their calories from grass, clover, and other greens. Turkeys are more eager grass eaters and can glean as much as 50 percent of their calories from pasture. With economy the overriding principle, however, their feed may also contain any number of unsavory ingredients, including "tankage" (the ground up flesh, hooves, feathers, and bones of other animals), chickens or cattle manure (an economical source of high-quality protein), stale pastry (good for food energy), and ground cardboard (for that all important bulk). Typically, feed labels do not list these ingredients individually but lump them together under the generic term "byproduct feedstuff". To further stimulate the animals' growth, they are dosed with synthetic hormones and antibiotics.       It's Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature Care must be taken to introduce the artificial diet slowly or the animals will become sick and perhaps die. Even after adapting to the feedlot diet, they continue to have food-related problems. Disorders linked with grain feeding include bloat, acidosis, laminitis, liver abscesses, telangiectasis, and sudden death syndrome. To control these diseases, the animals are treated with yet more antibiotics and medications. We humans pay a price as well. The 20 million pounds of antibiotics fed to our livestock each year are spawning antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Alarmingly, the percentage of salmonella resistant to five different antibiotics has increased from less than one percent in 1980 to 34 percent in 1996. Much of this increase is due to the routine use of feed antibiotics in the livestock industry. In fact, studies are now underway to see if injecting hormones into chickens embryos before they hatch will get the birds to your table even sooner. Would You Like Your Eggs Scrambled or Medicated? A recent finding is that the antibiotics and medications routinely given to commercial laying hens can linger in their eggs long after all traces are gone from their blood. Little did you know that when you buy a dozen eggs from the supermarket, you might be getting a free dose of antibiotics as well. With so many advantages to eating grass-fed meat, poultry, and dairy products, one senses that there must be something inherently "right" about them. Indeed, there is. When we feed animals their original diet, we are feeding them the food that is most in harmony with their genetic make-up. This more natural diet produces naturally healthy animals. The same is true for us. When we eat grass-fed products, we are eating food that is ideally suited for our genetic make-up. One might say that our bodies "expect" to be fed grass-fed products. The Stockman Grassfarmer August 2002 Here's a glaring example. A study conducted by the University of Illinois and published in 1999 in the well-known publication. The Journal of Animal Science, investigated the practicality of feeding stale chewing gum and its packaging material to cattle. Wonder of wonders, the scientists concluded that the bubble gum diet was a net benefit-at least to the producer. I quote: "Results of both experiments suggest that [gum packaging material] may be fed to safely replace up to 30% of corn-alfalfa hay diets for growing steers with advantages in improving dry matter intake and digestibility." Needles to say, the researchers didn't bother to find out how bubble gum influences CLA levels.