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(NaturalNews) An organic dairy farm in Vermont found a way to bring down their vet bills and raise cows with fewer health problems. The answer was simple enough; they started feeding the animals grasses, flax and alfalfa - or essentially what amounts to a more natural diet for the animals. It's a diet they could consume while grazing in the pasture.

Just as important, they left out of the cow's diets the formerly feed soy and corn meal, or foods that are artificial in a cow's diet by nature's design. Corn and soy are not foods a cow would naturally consume in quantity while grazing in a pasture.

In just a few months, the cows belched significantly less methane gas and while this may seem minor, burping cows are actually a major contributor to greenhouse gases. It turns out that cow, pig and sheep belches represent the largest source of methane pollution in the U.S. and burped gases from these animals represent a full 2 percent of all the U.S. emissions that affect climate change.

After their diet was altered, the cows developed fewer foot problems, which are serious problems in farm animals, and had no stomach problems. The combination of which brought down the vet bills and in all likelihood, decreased the number of drugs the animals were given - drugs that are typically passed on secondhand to the consumers of milk.

Stonyfield Farm farmer, Kristen Dellert, seemed surprised that problems disappeared from the animals and was quoted by the Associated Press saying, "I just figured a cow was a cow and they were going to do whatever they were going to do in terms of cow things for gas."

It's actually very similar to how too many people think about human health.

The average consumer thinks that health problems are somehow natural and normal for humans and are a product of our genes, age, or luck. It doesn't occur to them that these problems may be much more directly related to the foods we consume on a regular basis - as most of what people eat is unnatural for the human species, by nature's design. Of course, it doesn't help that mainstream health care providers all too often echo this message, while handing out things like lollipops to children.

Now, there's a call on the government's steps to regulate emissions from these animals. But perhaps we're looking at the problem in the wrong way.

Perhaps the solution is not to measure and regulate the emissions of these animals, but to insist that they are fed in a way that's consistent with their natural diet by nature's design. When you recall that Mad Cow disease was created by aberrations to the cow's natural diet as well, to do anything less begins to look a bit foolish.

While we're on the topic, to do the same for human population wouldn't be such a bad idea. Most of the population would be just as surprised as the Stonyfield farmer at the problems of the body that would disappear, and the ones that would simply not appear, if we consistently ate diets consistent with nature's design, and eliminated what was not.

Resources:
Greener Diet Reduces Dairy Cows' Methane Burps
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090621...

U.S. Climate Legislation Won't Regulate Cow Burps
http://www.reuters.com/article/gwmC...

Milk: It Does a Body Good?
http://www.westonaprice.org/transit...

Mad Cow and More
http://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-...

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