{"id":3083,"date":"2013-01-18T17:31:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T17:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farmforward1.wpengine.com\/?p=3083"},"modified":"2022-11-09T17:53:07","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T17:53:07","slug":"whos-got-beef","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/news\/whos-got-beef\/","title":{"rendered":"Who’s Got Beef?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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If you eat beef, we hope you\u2019ll make a decision to reduce the amount and only purchase meat that comes from cattle who were treated according to publicly accessible and independently approved animal welfare standards.<\/p>\n

That’s not as easy as it sounds. If you don\u2019t deliberately seek out meat from ranchers who follow a higher standard of animal welfare, you can be certain that your meal came from an animal who was mistreated\u2014though not quite as severely as chickens, pigs, and sea animals. Ranchers get a premium price for their animals when they follow good husbandry practices, so you can be sure that they will let you know when they do.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the premium price that comes with high animal welfare standards has also encouraged a lot of deceptive labels. So how do you know what beef is best?<\/p>\n

Creating alternatives to factory farming is a big job and one farmer can\u2019t do it alone.<\/p>\n

First, ignore any word on a label unless you are already familiar with its legal definition from a trusted source. Words like \u201cfree-range\/roaming\u201d and \u201cnatural\u201d are poorly defined from a legal perspective and in no way indicate that meat came from animals raised in a high-welfare setting.<\/p>\n

For basic welfare during the animal\u2019s life, you want a \u201cgrass-fed\u201d and \u201cpasture-raised\u201d animal\u2014but these terms are poorly defined and without an independent certification it\u2019s hard to know if the animals really spent their lives eating grass on pasture. It is even harder to tell if the animal was mutilated (castrated, dehorned, or branded) and how the animal was killed, as these inhumane practices have nothing to do with a cow being grass-fed or pasture-raised.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the best way to ensure that your food came from animals who had both a higher welfare life and a better death is to buy your beef in bulk from a 100 percent grass-fed and pasture-raised beef ranch that you have personally visited and to personally arrange for the animal to be individually slaughtered. Farmers\u2019 markets and food co-ops often foster\u00a0these kinds of relationships. Abundant\u00a0information on local, higher welfare farmers online is also available online.\u00a0SustainableTable.org<\/a>\u00a0is a good place to start.<\/p>\n

If a traditional supermarket or restaurant is your only option, the industry leaders\u2014who don\u2019t guarantee higher welfare animal products but do make finding them more likely\u2014are Whole Foods among supermarkets and Chipotle among national restaurant chains. Beef with the\u00a0American Grassfed Certified<\/a>\u00a0label indicates that the animals genuinely were pasture-raised and grass-fed (which those words alone do not guarantee). This certification, however, has important limitations such as the lack of regulations covering slaughter.\u00a0Animal Welfare Approved<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Global Animal Partnership<\/a>\u00a0Steps 4 through 5+\u00a0certifications also genuinely indicate significantly higher-than-average levels of welfare. Meats that carry the\u00a0Certified Humane<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Global Animal Partnership<\/a>\u00a0Steps 1 through 3\u00a0certifications come from animals who are raised by better-than-average methods, but their animal welfare standards are significantly weaker than steps 4 through 5+.<\/p>\n

Whether you choose to reduce your meat consumption or support higher welfare farmers or both, we hope that you will join Farm Forward in our work to reduce the suffering of factory farmed animals.<\/p>\n

Sign up\u00a0for the Farm Forward newsletter to receive updates and important information about how you can get involved.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Premium care comes with a premium price. But how can you know which package is best? Learn more about the system here. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,20,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animal-product-labeling","category-animal-welfare","category-food-system-solutions"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}