Looking for the "right" beef

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I've got a ton of leftover red wines at home, and decided it was time to use it up in a stew of some sort.  I decided to challenge myself a little by braising some oxtail in red wine, instead of the "usual" bœuf bourguignon.  The real challenge, I soon realized, was in finding the right ingredient.

Ever since Froggie introduced me to the Omnivore's Dilemma, I have been appalled at the industrial machine that raises cattle in the US.  My objection to the US cattle industry extends beyond simply the fact that the cattle are raised in crowded factories, or the heavy use of antibiotics and dietary supplements to lower the risk of disease.  My biggest objection actually lies with the cattle being raised on corn.

Over the last few decades, more and more land in the US has been converted to plant corn.  The majority of the corn actually isn't for human consumption, as they wouldn't appeal to us.  The corn is actually being produced as feed and will be consumed by cattle.  This is a strange phenomenon, as when we were kids all of us were taught that cows graze on grass. No children's textbook ever said anything about cows eating corn, and ground up corn powder, no less.

The whole process of destroying grazing pastures to plant corn to feed cows and other livestock messes with the ecosystem, big time.  It has far-reaching consequences that most of us are oblivious to.  Just changing one crucial element can alter the entire food chain.

My first "enlightenment" in this area came while watching a TV program in my hotel room in Nara back in 2006.  Nara is a small city famous for its historic temples as well as for the thousands of deer roaming freely around Nara Park (奈良公園).  Tourists want to play with the cute deer, and have taken to buying senbei (せんべい) from vendors to feed the animals.  As a result the animal diet has gradually changed from just grass to a mixture dominated by senbei.

The TV program highlights how the tourists are helping to alter the local ecosystem.  Thanks to their changing diet, the deer now produces droppings with different content.  The droppings nowadays are no longer attractive to the dung beetles, who now have to find something new to eat.  The droppings also don't fertilize the land the same way it used to.  The food chain has been irrevocably altered, thanks to enterprising locals and well-meaning tourists.

But I digress... The US cattle industry is screwing up the ecosystem on a much bigger scale, so I have been looking for grass-fed beef for the last few months.  Unfortunately, that's easier said than done.

First of all, not everybody carries grass-fed beef.  Pretty much all US beef is grain-fed so that doesn't work.  A good majority of the Aussie beef I found were grain-fed, at least grain-finished for a period.  Forget Japanese beef.  That means my best bets were New Zealand, Argentinian or Chinese beef from the wet markets.

It also doesn't help that most supermarkets only stock steaks.  One mostly finds tenderloin, strip loin and maybe flank or rump.  Sometimes there are short ribs, but many of these come from US beef.  I saw oxtail at one or two places, but they were from US or Aussie wagyu... so grain-fed again.  Finally, I stopped by Great and found a whole slew of grass-fed beef, from New Zealand, Scotland and elsewhere.  I also managed to pick up some oxtail which supposedly came from Brazil.  While it wasn't labeled one way or the other, my hunch was that Brazilian cattle are mostly grass-fed.

The other alternative, of course, was to venture across the street from my apartment to the wet market.  I was told that I should be able to get oxtail from local/Chinese cattle if I reserve it in advance.  I'd probably do that next time, as local beef would certainly leave a smaller carbon footprint compared to something shipped all the way from Brazil or Argentina...