08/26/2026
Thanks Meg Harrington for this information…I’m going to pass this along to my customers as well.
Listen....consumer transparency is what my ultimate goal is here. There is literally not enough locally producing direct to consumer ranchers feeding cattle right now to fufill the demand so a lot of people only have access to grocery store beef. Grocery store beef is nutritious too but sometimes things get added in that aren't very desirable to eat but are to enhance flavor, bind or preserve the meat to keep it fresh longer since many times it has to travel across the country to get to the grocery store cooler.
The cattle that make up that grocery store beef are produced by another rancher just like us. They just choose to take a different route with their cattle and that is ok. Instead they sell their calves to a salebarn, those calves are then purchased by a stocker operation or grower and then they go on to the feedyard where they are all fed and then processed later by one of the major processing plants. Occasionally, foreign beef is brought in to the country and mixed with native beef to make those consistent lean-to-fat percentages so every package is exactly alike. But you won't know that by looking at the package because beef is not required by law to have a country-of-origin label on it.
Now for those of you that don't have access to local meats or means for storing beef shares here are some things to look for during your shopping experiences to ensure you are getting the cleanest possible meat there is at the best price if you can't shop with a local rancher.
Read the labels.......
If a package does not have an origin label, it may contain imported meat, and stores do not have to tell you.
Labels like "grass-fed" only describe how the animal was fed, not what country it came from. Grass fed is fine but it takes years to produce an animal on solely grass and sometimes it's a miss on flavor. And technically corn is a tall annual cereal grass so they have probably been fed corn at some point. So sometimes you end up paying more for just a pretty "grass fed" label.
All meat HAS to be antibiotic free. There are strict guidelines on slaughter withdrawal times on antibiotics to prevent them from entering the food supply. Watch for those labels you will likely just pay more for the marketing when literally every animal has to be without antibiotics and cleared to be processed.
What is meat glue? Meat glue binds protein-containing foods together like biological Velcro. Meat glue is labeled under names like transglutaminase, TG enzyme, or TGP enzyme on ingredient lists. Packaged meat that uses this enzyme must also be labeled with descriptive terms like "formed" or "reformed" meat. Restaurants and food service providers are generally not required to label or disclose the use of meat glue on menus just FYI.
Lab grown meat. 🤢
Current federal guidance for products like cell-cultivated chicken or beef requires terms such as “cell-cultivated” or “cell-cultured” to appear next to the product name.
Natural flavoring is a heavily processed chemical compound extracted from plant or animal sources—such as fruits, spices, or dairy—to add taste to food. Many grocery store ground beef packages will have added natural flavoring. It's technically a natural product but highly processed so I would personally try to avoid.
So that was a lot to digest. But what I can tell you is our packages of ground beef contain just BEEF. The cattle are raised here, processed in Arkansas at a small local butcher and delivered fresh back to your freezer.
✌️❤️🐮🥩
