From: djhop5@hotmail.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2006 2:58 PM
To: MarketingClaim
Subject: meaning of grassfed



   As a consumer of beef, I am concerned that your effort to define "grassfed"
will enable feedlot beef producers to term and label their product "grassfed",
when in fact it is fed many things and may not ever have eaten a living blade of
grass or pasture in it's entirely confined life.


   Grass and natural forage that ruminants eat grows on pasture and "grassfed"
should only mean that the animal concerned ate that and only that, either while
roaming on pasture or baled in winter and has never been fed any grain, not that
it had a few bites of hay in it's lifetime of confinement along with corn
silage, grain, growth hormones and antibiotics.


    If you define "grassfed" in the manner in which the term "free range" is
defined, i.e. a "free range" animal implies that the animal runs around loose on
pasture and eats what grows there but itreally means it could have been raised
on a concrete pad in open air where nothing grows and it eats only what it is
given, then ''grassfed" will be a deception much as "free range" is.


    Please do what is right for the consumer and not what lobbyists for big beef
(and big money) tell you to do.  If the factory farm beef industry products are
so good for us, honest labeling without attempts to mislead would not be
necessary.  They simply would not need to make their product sound like
something it isn't.  Your integrity as a consumer advocate/protector might also
go up a notch or two also.