Beef Labels: The Choice is Yours

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Cooking TipsNutrition & Health


Like farmers and ranchers who are able to choose how to best raise their cattle, you have many choices when it comes to the beef you buy. Statements or claims often appear on food labels at the grocery store or on menus at restaurants. Let’s take a look at what they mean.

Grass-Fed or Grass-Finished cattle:

  • Spend their entire lives eating grass and forage
  • Spend most or all of their lives in pastures
  • May spend time at a feedyard, eating only forage, like hay (dried plant material) or silage (plant material with more moisture)
  • Can be given FDA-approved antibiotics to treat or prevent disease
  • May or may not be given growth-promoting hormones

 

Certified Organic cattle:

  • May be grain- or grass-fed.
  • Are raised on 100% organic feed and pasture
  • May spend time on pasture and at a feedyard
  • Never receive antibiotics or growth-promoting hormones

Grain-Fed or Grain-Finished (likely will not have a specific label) cattle:

  • Spend the majority of their lives eating grass in pastures
  • Spend 4-6 months at a feedyard
  • Aare fed a balanced diet at the feedyard that contains grains, hay or forage, and often local ingredients like potato or soybean leftovers
  • Can be given FDA-approved antibiotics to treat or prevent disease
  • May or may not be given growth-promoting hormones

Naturally Raised cattle:

 

  • Never receive any antibiotics
  • Never receive any growth-promoting hormones
  • May be fed grass, forage, and grain products
  • May or may not spend time in a feedyard

Natural:

  • Does not refer to how cattle were raised
  • “minimally processed and does not contain any artificial ingredients or color”

Regardless of how they choose to raise cattle, farmers and ranchers care about the land and animals. They work each day to produce wholesome and nutritious beef for families like yours.

References:

U.S. Department of Agriculture ‘Choices of Beef Definitions,’ October, 2016

USDA 2012 Ag Census Cattle Industry Highlights, February, 2015