Beef Education

What is Natural Beef?

Natural beef, as defined by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, is beef that does not contain any artificial flavoring, chemical preservatives, or any other artificial or synthetic ingredient and is no more than “minimally” processed. 1

The USDA’s guidelines for natural beef do not take into account how the cattle were raised, meaning that cattle can be sent to feedlots for high energy diets intended to maximize cost efficiency prior to slaughter as long as these feedlots do not use antibiotics, pesticides or chemicals. 

However, natural feedlots come with their own dangers, as they increase the possibility of disease due to the large numbers of cattle in small, confined environments and the increase in stress without the use of antibiotics to ward disease off.  In addition, even with the use of antibiotics and pesticides, evidence points to feedlots as causes of the rapid spread and evolution of disease, as well as harmful effects on the environment through the concentration of waste and pollutants. 

These factory farms have been cited as the cause for everything from the bird-flu outbreak in 2004 2 to the Cryptosporidium contamination in 1993, which killed more than 100 people and caused an estimated 400,000 to become sick.3

We here at Painted Creek Farm believe the best way to produce the highest quality truly natural beef is to avoid feedlots altogether while maintaining an environment for our cattle that exceeds USDA specifications. 

That means free-roaming cattle grazing as nature intended, on pesticide-free pastures, free of chemicals, hormones and antibiotics.  This adds up to a better, stress-free life for our cattle and better beef with a taste you won’t find in any factory farm-raised animal

1. The USDA definition for “minimally processed” is loosely defined and outdated, leaving many advertisers to claim their products as natural when they may be far from what the consumer thinks of as “natural”.  Taken from Food Safety and Inspection Service, “Beef...from Farm to Table,” United States Department of Agriculture, http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Beef_from_Farm_to_Table/index.asp (accessed Jan 22th 2009).

2. Stephen Leahy, “Report Blames Factory Farms for Bird Flu,” Inter Press Service (February, 2007), http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0221-03.htm (accessed January 20, 2009).

3. Natural Resources Defense Council Water Program Directors and Staff, “Facts about Pollution from Livestock Farms,”  Natural Resources Defense Council, http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/ffarms.asp (accessed January 20, 2009).