rebecca's pocket

Here's an idea:

-- Define "grass-fed" to mean, well, cows who are fed grass.

-- Define "pastured" to mean grass fed on pasture

Animal rights people who care if the meat they eat was happy and frollicking before it was killed can eat "pastured" meat. People who just care about the taste, chemical, biological, health-related composition of the meat can eat "grass fed."

Oh, wait, animal rights people don't even eat meat ... so why do they care about this?

Well, I'm an "animal rights" person, I guess, and I do eat meat sometimes (especially with all the travel I've been doing). I would be more inclined to do so if I was confident that the animal I was eating had a happy life and was killed with an absolute minimum of pain and distress.

I don't think it's wrong to eat animals, but it's dead wrong to raise them under factory farm conditions, or to slaughter them carelessly.

I had the same thought you did about the "pastured" label. One problem is that the USDA is reluctant to pass regulations that are not inclusive of most US farming operations, or which might in some way indicate that the majority of produce could be more safe than it is.