Frequently Asked Questions

1. What's the difference between grassfed and other types of ground beef?
2. Are your cattle ever confined and fed?
3. Your label says that your cattle are raised without antibiotics, what if a cow gets sick?
4. Why is your ground beef more expensive than other ground beef?

1. What's the difference between grassfed and other types of ground beef?

Conventional - I believe that the conventional ground beef that is available to consumers today is a safe product as described by today’s sense of the word. There is a large market for this product. However, conventional ground beef is generally a commodity and has typically lost the identity of the animals from which it is made. The product commonly contains: Imported beef trimmings from Australia or New Zealand Dairy animals that are frequently given hormone injections to increase their milk production. High fat trimmings from feedlot cattle that have had the higher value cuts marketed separately. Beef from cattle that have had growth promoting hormones utilized or given antibiotics.

Natural – This product is derived from source verified cattle that have not been exposed to added hormones or antibiotics. Preservatives, additives, or irradiation are not used. The cattle typically have been fattened in a feedlot on a high grain diet and their higher value cuts are marketed separately. 

Organic - The cattle that go into this product are raised with a protocol of pesticide free farming practices. No preservatives, additives, or irradiation is used. The use of supplemental hormones and antibiotics is prohibited. However, these cattle may be fattened in a feedlot on a high grain concentrate diet and their higher value cuts are marketed separately. 

White Oak Pastures Grassfed Natural Ground Beef – We put all of the steak, roasts, and other high value cuts into this product. None of the higher value cuts are robbed off to increase our profitability at the cost of lowering the quality of our ground beef. The animals are grassfed. This means that the beef is healthier than conventional, natural, or organic beef as described in the next pages. No preservatives, no additives, nor irradiation is used. Grassfed beef is naturally lower in risk of carrying e-coli because the animals do not have the acidic rumen that is commonly found in feedlot cattle that are fed a high grain concentrate diet. These cattle are raised, fed, and humanely handled in accordance with White Oak Pastures “all natural protocol”.

The colored box indicates the protocol that is used in raising the cattle that go into the beef types listed.

2. Are your cattle ever confined and fed?

No. Our cattle are born in a free-range environment and allowed to graze tender pastures all of their lives. Supplemental feeding only occurs during periods when grasses are dormant and even then they continue to freely roam the open pastures. Almost all of the nourishment that goes to grow our cattle comes from mother’s milk, growing grasses, and locally grown hay.

3. Your label says that your cattle are raised without antibiotics, what if a cow gets sick?

If antibiotics are necessary to save an animal’s life, we administer them. However, this animal is tagged and dropped from the all natural program. We almost never have to administer antibiotics because:

• Our herd has been closed to outside animals for many years. It is difficult for disease causing pathogens to infect our animals because we don’t bring these problems onto the farm.
• We have a stringent biosecurity program that closely monitors our herd health.
• We have a very aggressive preventative vaccination program that keeps the disease resistance of individual animals at a very high level.
• We have had each of our cattle screened to eliminate “persistently infected animals” [carriers] for the most troubling diseases.

4. Why is your ground beef more expensive than other ground beef?

Our cattle are raised under the “white oak pastures all natural protocol”. This production system was not designed to deliver the cheapest beef possible. It was designed to produce a healthy, nutritious, and better tasting product. Further, it requires management practices that are good for the environment [land, water, and air]. These practices also ensure the humane treatment of the cattle. This is a farm; we will not operate it as though it were a factory.

Cheap industrial food is cheap only because the real costs of producing it are not reflected in the price at the checkout. Rather, those costs are charged to the environment, in the form of soil depletion and pollution (industrial agriculture is now our biggest polluter); to the public purse, in the form of subsidies to conventional commodity farmers; to the public health, in the form of an epidemic of diabetes and obesity that is expected to cost the economy more than $100 billion per year; and to the welfare of the farm- and food-factory workers, not to mention the well-being of the animals we eat. As Wendell Berry once wrote, the motto of our conventional food system should be: Cheap at any price!