Why doesn Niman Ranch market certified organic meat?
Niman Ranch strongly supports organic farming principles. Many of our farmers and ranchers have organic farms or organic pastures and use organic feeds. However, for our meat to be certified organic, all the feed that we give our livestock would have to be certified organic. This would raise the cost of production of our meat by as much as 50%, depending on the grain market. There is currently a shortage of organic grain in this country, making feeding only organic feeds particularly difficult. We believe a better use of those limited organic grains would be direct human consumption. More and more of the organic grains and soy currently available in the U.S. are actually imported from distant lands, mostly Brazil and other Latin American countries. We do not support importing feeds from distant foreign countries, believing instead that any feeds given our animals should, to the greatest extent possible, be grown by our farmers themselves or local farmers. Sometimes this means organic a
