100% grass-fed, in a free roaming non-confined environment.
From grass-fed 101: There is currently no USDA-standardized definition of grass fed. This makes the term grass-fed misleading, as many producers use the term grass-fed but forget to tell you that their animals have been “finished”. Finishing is a process of fattening the animal for the last 90 to 160 days on an un-natural diet of corn, grains and “other”.
What is “other” you ask?
My father’s last job was for a small feed-lot operator in North Dakota. During a visit, he gave and me and Dan a tour. It was my first time on a feed-lot, and even though it was small by factory feed-lots, it was still awful. I could see that my father felt similarly by the look in his eyes. Our last stop on the property was the feed storage area. At our feet were piles of silage. Not a silage of chopped up corn and hay, but an other type of silage consisting of French fries, potato ole’s, hamburger buns, chewing gum still in the foil wrapper, (I guess no one was willing to peel the wrappers off for the cows), and other discarded fast food items. Our disgusted silence was soon interrupted by a tractor. The driver lowered the bucket on his front end loader, scooped up a big shovel full and then moved off to feed the cows. So even if you are trying to avoid fast food, you could very well be eating it anyway. Excerpt from Michael Pollans’, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Grain finishing became the industry standard, because it enabled animals to fatten and mature earlier, thus making it much cheaper to “finish” them to a desired weight, and because of the changes that grain feeding causes in the tissues, the meat from almost any animal can be made tender through grain finishing. That, combined with the powerful corn industry in this country, and its overproduction, created the industrialized feedlot model that feeds most Americans today. Fact; according to the NBA in 2008, 92% of all bison raised are finished in the cattle fed-lot model.