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BACKGROUND INFORMATION

NATURAL HORMONES IN CATTLE
Cattle, like people, and to a certain extent plants, produce estrogens and androgens. However, because a 1200 lb. beef animal is much larger than something small, like a potato or soybean, the proportion in beef is hundreds and thousands times smaller.

A 3 1/2 oz portion of steer beef has only 1.3 nanograms of estrogen. A steer that has received an estrogen implant only has 1.9 nanograms of estrogen per 4 oz serving. Compare this to a potato that has 245 nanograms of estrogen. If we compare soybean oil to beef fat, the soybean oil has over 1,000,000 times as much estrogen in the same amount of sample. For your reference, a nanogram is one-billionth of a gram which is analogous to one blade of grass in an entire football field. When we change nature, we can affect hormone balances in plants and animals.

For example, a noncastrated bull produces 1000 times more testosterone and estrogen than a steer (castrated animal). As a bull grows normally, the hormone balance provides normal male characteristics such as converting feed energy to muscle instead of fat. Additionally, a bull is very aggressive by nature because of the higher hormone levels. This aggressiveness leads to stress, and stress causes higher levels of cholesterol in the beef. Bulls often become so aggressive that they can be dangerous to be around, whereas steers are more docile, like females.

When we make a steer out of a bull calf, his hormone production is lowered and the steer takes on a metabolism similar to a female. Steers put on more body fat than bulls. Twenty years ago, beef was much fatter than it is today. Steer beef used to have more fat than protein and these steers often had 2-3 inches of backfat and the meat was loaded with marbling. USDA Prime beef was very bad for your heart on a regular basis. This is why beef got a bad rap from the nutritional information published by the USDA.

Compare this to the Maverick Ranch cattle of today that only average 1/4 inch of backfat and have much smaller and fewer fat cells within the red meat. There are two reasons for these changes. First, U.S. cattlemen started importing European cattle breeds of genetically leaner cattle to America in the 60’s. Traditionally and prior to 1965, English breeds, which arehigher in fat, predominated the market. The newly imported breeds from continental Europe dramatically changed the beef industry due to their lower internal fat content. Secondly, “hormone” implants were developed and APPROVED BY THE FDA over 30 years ago.

The first implants were estrogenic, and in 1987, androgens were also approved by the FDA for use in cattle. What researches found is that a steer or spayed female puts on too much fat and does not deposit as much muscle (red meat). They also found that replacing a very small amount of natural hormone that had been taken away had the same effect as exercise. The metabolism is stimulated and feed energy is converted more to red meat than fat. This provides a nutritionally superior product and a faster gaining animal. Muscle is more dense and weighs about twice as much as fat. Therefore, the cattle producer had a better animal that produced leaner beef and also gained weight faster.

Consumers were demanding this leaner product that was better for their health. As a new term, the phrase “growth promotant” was coined and this somehow had a bad effect. We want to emphasize that an implanted steer still gains weight and grows about 25% slower than a bull because the implanted steer has less than 1% as much natural male hormone levels when compared to a bull. We’ve had numerous consumers call us concerned about hormone levels in beef. They did not realize that 99% or more of their daily estrogen intake is from fruits, vegetables and grains.

There is nothing wrong with estrogen from these items unless your estrogen balance is already out of kilter with other hormones. When that imbalance happens, we are much more likely to have disease and premature aging.
Source:Bar Diamond Laboratories

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WHY THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT HORMONE IMPLANTS IN CATTLE?
The controversy was started in two places, even though there was no scientific basis. In 1979, one branded beef company created a way to sell beef by niche marketing. By the 1980’s, a lot of natural beef companies, including ourselves, felt that natural beef was what the public wanted. In developing our natural beef program, we felt that we could provide a tasty, high quality beef by using genetically superior cattle and testing all the beef in our program for the absence of artificial steroids, antibiotics, pesticides and growth promotants. About the same time, the EU banned U.S. beef in Europe.

This was, in reality, a trade barrier designed to keep U.S. beef from entering Europe and putting a greater burden on European governments who subsidize cattle production in their own countries. More beef from the United States in Europe meant more cash subsidization for European cattle producers by their governments.

European scientists have never been able to identify any harmful effects in humans from eating U..S. raised beef. The practice in Europe is to use bull beef rather than steer beef and the natural hormone levels of European beef is actually much higher than in the U.S. One TV program reported that the beef that had received growth promotants caused early maturity in children in South America. This was reported without any scientific fact to back up their story. Scientists later proved the story incorrect.

WHAT IS MAVERICK RANCH’S POSITION ON HORMONE IMPLANTS IN CATTLE?
First, you need to know that 14 drug companies produce FDA approved implants. These are all estrogenic or androgenic compounds. In general, these are small pellets, slightly larger than a pin head, and are implanted in the middle back of the animal’s ear. These implants are gradually released over a 60 to 200 day period and in effect, stimulate the animal’s metabolism.

All scientific studies prove there is zero risk to humans, and laboratory tests consistently support this finding. Although safe to humans, Maverick Ranch’s policy is that we are opposed to some of the implants and provide an economic incentive to discourage use. In 1995, several strong androgen implants became popular. If used, they tend to make steers a little more like bulls, and some of the beef becomes too lean to qualify for USDA Select or Choice grade which are the USDA grades that Maverick Ranch uses. Colorado State University has recently completed a study that shows that several implant strategies not only reduce USDA grade, but they make the beef so lean that it decreases tenderness and palatability.

Since it is important for a branded beef program to have the best possible eating qualities, we respond by simply not buying cattle that have been managed in a way that creates poor eating quality. Genetic improvement throught genetic breeding for leanness in cattle has been so great that hormone implants have lost their economic edge by creating more cattle that “won’t grade” USDA Choice and Select.

Our Maverick Ranch system is blessed with the fact that we have an abundance of producers, so we can buy beef based on rigid requirements, which continue to get more stringent in order to ensure that our beef remains tasty and tender.

Since we permit certain natural implants and analyze each management system individually, we are often asked “Why do you still test for hormones in the laboratory?”

We test because we realize that each animal responds differently and we want to make sure that there are no unintentional human mistakes which would result in a detectable residue. Producers must follow FDA rules and Maverick Ranch’s rules as well. We feel that if any man-made steroid can be detected, we can’t represent the beef as natural. Also, all natural hormone levels have to be within a safe range; it doesn’t appear that the animals own endocrine system was functioning abnormally. (Exceeds levels taken from the Code of Federal Regulations 21 CFR Sec. 556.240) Therefore, if we detect an antibiotic, man-made steroid, any unusual hormone level, or any chemical in our test for over 50 substances,
THAT BEEF IS REJECTED.

There is no way we can test for every possible chemical influence, as there are over 80,000 chemicals used in the world today. However, we can and do test for the substances that we believe are likely to occur. Sometimes, over 30% of the cattle are rejected. When that happens, we have to eliminate some producer’s cattle and allow new producers to enter the program. Our producer requirements and restrictions are listed in the section for producers. We have one final reason for checking natural hormone levels in a laboratory.

There are 65 known and perhaps as many as 150 chemicals in our environment that can disrupt the endocrine systems of humans and cattle. When this happens, certain hormones can be in overabundance. While we check our beef for the 32 chemicals that can disrupt an animal’s systems, we wonder about the ones of which we have no knowledge. By testing and eliminating animals with hormone levels above a certain point, we can automatically remove animals that had endocrine systems altered by some chemical residues that come from air, water and soil pollution other than the chemicals for which we test.

5360 N. Franklin St. • Denver, Colorado • 80216 • (303) 294-0146 • FAX: (303) 294-0623
www.maverickranch.com • Email: info@maverickranch.com

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