Our Good Meat® Values

We believe in meat production and consumption practices that invest in healthy land, animals, and people, that embrace transparency from start to finish, and nourish and build community. 

We have a broad Good Meat® vision because we believe food is intensely personal, cultural, and contextual. Therefore we support a constellation of choices, practices, production methods, systems, and behaviors, and we want to see as many people as possible, from ranchers to chefs to consumers, included and represented.

Many in our community believe that meat can come from animals that were raised as part of carbon-sequestering, regenerative ecosystems. For others, it can come from farmers who are invested in pastured or grassfed production practices. For many of us, another Good Meat value is cooking and eating every part of the animal. Flavor can also be a determining factor, for animals allowed to graze in diverse ecosystems often reflect that diversity on the plate. And truly humane treatment of animals can, and should be, rolled up into any one of these aspects. Many of us define our Good Meat values as all of the above.

The meat we choose to eat and support can also come under many different names and labels.

Some labels are regulated and some are not.Some terms and/or certification you may have encountered or be familiar with might include:

• grassfed & grass-finished *
• animal welfare/humane
• organic/real organic
• pastured/pasture-raised
• antibiotic/hormone-free

Sometimes labels and terms have no agreed upon, regulated, or formal definition, and sometimes they do. And sometimes the meat we choose to eat and support has no particular name or label at all. Confused yet?

*Grassfed & grass-finished: Oh, how nuanced these particular labels can be! For a very basic introduction, go here. To delve even deeper, check out our Grassfed Alliance Authentic Grassfed principles.