It’s all about the rumen!
Animals like cattle and sheep absorb nutrients in a specialised stomach called a rumen. This is where fermentation occurs prior to digestion. This fermentation occurs when the cud (the grass) is regurgitated and chewed again to further break the plant matter down. CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid) only occurs in grass fed ruminant animals because it only comes from the nutrients of the grass broken down and absorbed by the animals and stored in their fat.
These ruminant animals have difficulty digesting grain and frequently develop liver tumors and other disorders as a result of eating grain.
Other ruminant animals are goats, deer and buffalo.
You may have heard the term – grass fed and grass finished. This means the animal has been raised solely on grass with no grain in it’s diet whatsoever.
The animal needs to be grass fed and grass finished for the animal to retain these vitamins, good oils and fats mentioned above. They are then passed onto us when we eat the meat.