Dear Dedy,

your question made me realise how ignorant I was about livestock farming
here, so I rang the Board of Agriculture yesterday to get some answers.

The vast majority of cattle on the island are dairy cows. These are grass-
fed for as long as possible each year (for economic reasons) then given
protein concentrates mixed with cereals etc for a short time in the
winter.

Male calves and old dairy cows are slaughtered on the island for meat, but
this is not very common.

Thanks to the recent favourable attentions of a TV Chef, our beef has
recently become more popular, and there are now three farmers on the
island raising dairy/beef cattle crosses (via AI, as no alien-breed bulls
are allowed here!).

As I've happily chosen to live without a television all my life, I missed
this news.

No local pigs, sheep or chickens are sold to the public. Farmers are
allowed to slaughter livestock for their own use. However, we islanders
are a race of smugglers and pirates with little respect for illogical
laws, so I will be making enquiries about buying some home-killed meat
direct from the farmers ;-)

As for our imported meat, it comes from South Africa, South America, The
UK, Scotland, Ireland, France, New Zealand and Australia.

I have two questions relating to this topic:

Our local beef has delicious yellow fat. I've always assumed that this is
due to the caroteinoid content of our largely grass fed animals. As such,
this would make yellow fat more nutritious than the more usual whitish
kind. Does anyone know if this is true, or is there another explanation
for the colouration?

Also, I see much discussion on this list about the superiority of grass-
fed compared to grain-fed cattle. Is this just a matter of taste, or does
is affect the nutritional content of the beef?

I was also curious as to whether eating grain-fed animals can cause gluten-
intolerant people to react badly to it?

I'm sorry if this has all been covered in 'Neanderthin'. I'm still waiting
for my order to come in at the library.

A la perchoine (patois, not bad French ;-)

Persephone



Dedy wrote:

>Persephone,
>Are there livestock farmers on your island?... maybe you could buy direct
>from them?...