01/18/2024
Know the difference! WE wonder why we have so many allergies and sickness! Buy local!
A good friend of mine reminded me yesterday of a post that was made on Facebook a year or two ago which showed this picture and pointed out the difference between grocery store ground beef, on the left, and small farm produced beef, on the right. The post claimed that grocery store ground beef contained “water and other additives” and was produced using many cows rather than a single cow like the ground beef sold by small farms.
It is true that commercially produced ground beef is made up of multiple cows. Ground beef is made from trimmings when making the beef cuts we’re used to seeing in the meat counter at the store. Typical commercial beef processing plants kill anywhere from several hundred to 6,000 cattle a day, it’s an assembly line system, so it’s just natural that the trimmings would be blended to make the ground beef you see in the store.
There are some processing plants that kill what we call cull cows. These are older cows, cows that no longer are productive breeders, or no longer productive milkers. These cows are deboned and used exclusively to produce ground beef. A lot of this beef is Holstein that comes from dairies. Ever see the really cheap ground beef or hamburger at the grocery store? These products come from one of these plants. It’s totally safe but isn’t as high quality as the beef that is used to cut steaks, roasts, and other products so it’s ground and made into burger.
Farms like ours use small processors which kill a limited number of cows weekly and cut each cow individually. The ground beef produced by these plants come from the trimmings of the cow being cut and are not blended with another cows trimmings. There’s no problems with blending the trimmings from other cows it just isn’t done because of cutting each cow individually rather than via an assembly line process. Processing beef at these small plants is done totally by hand and is extremely expensive when compared to beef processed at the large plants; more than $700 per head more expensive which is why small farm produced beef is so expensive when compared to grocery store.
It is against the law to add anything, other than fat, to ground beef. Water, phosphates, binders, or other additives CAN NOT be added. Beef fat can be added but only up to a max of 30%. When you see 70/30 on the label it’s 70% beef and 30% fat. Often you will see 70/30, 80/20, or 90/10 sold. Our Palmetto Provision ground beef is 80/20 while our Keegan-Filion 100% grass fed is 90/10 or leaner due to grass fed containing less fat than grass fed/ grain finished beef.
Ground beef that is produced using nothing but the trimmings and the primal cuts with no added fat is call ground beef. Ground beef that contains additional fat that didn’t come from the trimmings or primal cuts used, is called hamburger.
There is a ton of misinformation out there that plays on our ignorance of how our food is produced and processed. In some cases the misinformation is used to make one product appear to be better than another as what was done by the farmer whose post we’re discussing. In other cases the misinformation is being used to confuse or create panic in the reader. We don’t believe in these practices and will do everything possible to call out misinformation whenever we hear about it.
Farmers need to do better, they owe it to their community to be truthful and honest in their dealings and to do what is necessary to educate people that weren’t raised on a farm and don’t know what is done to put food on peoples tables. As a small farmer, I know that the meat we produce is higher quality than what can be produced in confinement houses using industrial methods. I don’t need to spread misinformation about how they produce pork, beef, or chicken, all I have to do is tell people how we produce our meat and have them try it, they’ll taste the difference.
Honesty may not mean much to some folks these days, but around here it means everything.
