Stefan writes: >Orkos-criteria for instinctive quality meat: <snip> >3. animals may not have the possibility to eat human waste or get to fields > with cultivated fruits/vegetables/grains etc. Huh??? What farmed animal is not raised on cultivated fields? Hopefully something is being lost in the translation here. The animals at the Chateau were not instincto according to such a definition. Grass-only lamb and cattle and buffalo are still eating "cultivated fields". If this is the actual meaning of the ORKOS criteria, then instincto has (once again) simply priced itself out of the market of humanity: such a great idea(?) but so lofty as to be impossible, or so lofty as to be the inbred excuse for it's poor track record. In any situation it can be argued that the problem is that the RAF was not high enough quality (since very few RAF, probably none! _could_ be raised according to the above stated standard, and all wild animals are suspect because by definition we don't know the details of their diet). >Having scanned the archives back to 1/97 I found several discussions about >pastured animals. I want to point out that this is not enough for meat to >be instinctive quality. I got meat from pastured animals of Ireland here in >Germany and it turned out to be bad. The problem is, that no farmer who is >raising cattle for profit can wait for them to grow up naturally. It lasts >too long. So all of the pastured animals in commercial agriculture are fed >with >additional food, mostly wheat (nearly always heated) but also powders with >dubious ingredients (always heated.) It's clear that the additional feeding >must be denatured - otherwise the animals wouldn't eat enough of it and >the farmer would seek for other methods. They always come to denatured >feeding. We call that "topping off with grains" and it can occur concurrently/daily (as with Coleman beef) or only during the weeks before slaughter (as with some buffalo culled from Yellowstone). You are right that most animals called "pastured" have probably had grain additions to their diet, but unless one is to resort to wild RAF (as did Zephyr) such mostly-pastured animals are the best to be had (excepting polluted wild seafood ;)). Indeed, completely "scratch-fed" chickens who feed themselves from a lush orchard appear to be against the ORKOS standards. I, however, see the additions of limited raw grain for a chicken as a good thing. Further, I look for the least "topped off" animals available. What RAF exactly do Europeans eat? I can't imagine ORKOS could abide by its own standards religiously, but am sure they can charge high prices for it...;) Crickets are looking primo as pollution proliferates. >Let me stress, that even instincto quality wheat cheats the instinct of >animals and leads to overeating. According to instincto theory this is from >the fact that wheat is an artificial breeded grain that has never existed >in nature before. Hint: read books about feeding of ducks, poultry and >cattle, written by commercial farmers. Yeah, but most poultry do _better_ with the addition of some limited grain. Wheat is probably best avoided, but most birds will eat wild grains with relish and are well-equipped to digest them. >Speaking over the quality of meat I also would like to mention, that meat >from "wild" animals most often is not instinctive quality because point >no. 3 isn't met. I tried meat of wild porks of germany. It wasn't wild >at all. It was a accumulation of the waste these porks ate. >I know that chances are better for animals living in the wide areas of the >United States but I still wouldn't trust such meat (and Hawaii is too >small anyway) Animals are able to overcome very very long distances in >their lifetime. >Wild meat from New Zealand often mentioned in older posts is suspect to come >from animals that had access to commercially grown food too. New Zealand >is a country that does a lot of commercial agriculture for export. No chance >for wild animals to feed themselves naturally. If the helicopter-harvested red deer from NZ isn't good enough, I would like to know what you _do_ eat? BTW, New Zealand may be one of the only countries in the world that an instincto can eat beef and lamb from an ordinary butcher shop. It isn't perfect but it is better than what can be obtained in the USA. ORKOS aside, it seems that folks, instincto or otherwise, are constantly making "compromises" with their food supply. None of it is of the quality that our species cut its teeth on. None of it. I assume that you avoid seafood from the Baltic Sea but challange you to find any seafood which is contaminant free--any _fruit_ for that matter. While I make great effort to obtain the best RAF possible, I am weary of the elite-ism which seems part and parcel of instincto (not you personally Stephan ;). The foods are _expensive_ and often flown from the other side of the planet. And then if something goes wrong, it is because the food is not perfect. How convenient and unfalsifyable... Though I don't know the details of Zephyr's daily diet, I have visited their 3 acres in Hawaii and know intimately what is available in southern CA--the two places he split his time. I doubt that the quality of his foods is the problem. I maintain that even if the mongoose was riddled with every parasite known to man, if instincto is True then Zephyr should not have been on his deathbed. This reminds me of an instincto retort I heard about the polio outbreak amoungst the Gombe chimps: well, what do you expect--they were provided commercial bananas. Yikes! If some third world bananas are enough to "cause" polio... Come on, instinctos, people get some great results with less than perfect RAF--and since less than perfect RAF is all we have on this planet, instincto could do with some humility on the subject, instead of ever-trumping the (lack of) quality of one's food. It is all a bit much too hear the excuses/tweeks proposed to explain the poor track record. I wonder if it is so much a matter of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) everyday with less than perfect food, as it may be GIGO with the type of person that sees instincto as salvation (myself included :(). >At least if I should show symptoms of disease after consuming RAF I will >immediately go finding out what it is instead of assuming a detoxification >process. Good. This is reasonable, but often pooh-poohed by instinctos... Cheers, Kirt