"When beef is marketed as 'grass fed beef,' doesn't that automatically imply that the cattle were raised using a pasture-based production strategy?"
In this article I am going to answer another of the frequently asked questions I get from farmers and beef consumers about grass fed beef.
From a marketing standpoint, "Grass-fed beef" simply means that the beef was produced on a diet primarily consisting of grass and was finished without grain. That's it.
However, this marketing label is not restricted to a single 'one-size-fits-all' farming strategy that must be used by all farmers to produce grass-fed beef.
When the USDA developed their marketing standard for what it means for beef to qualify as "grass fed", they intentionally did not address HOW to produce it, because they recognize that there will be many different farming strategies used to produce grass fed beef.
This broad definition is a good thing, because it allows farmers the freedom to innovate and find more efficient and cost-effective ways to produce beef for the grass fed market, which ultimately benefits both consumers and farmers alike.
However, it also sets up the potential for confusion as both consumers and farmers may imagine a very different picture of how cattle are raised for the grass fed beef market than what is actually used by different farmers... See more
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