Cattle meat is by far one of the most energy dense sources of nutrition, and if done right societally, one of the most efficient too. The issue is that the US (and most of the developing world) does it wrong by adopting factory farming to mass produce meat and destroy ecosystems within a few decades.
If you're eating cattle/red meat, do it right - buy fresh, don't touch frozen and always go for grassfed. That itself makes it much safer than eating chicken (which is more likely to be factory-farmed) or eating fish (which is more prone to chemical contamination these days).
