What makes Midwest Best Beef better
Here are some of the choices we’ve made to honor tradition, treat our animals with respect, and provide a high quality product to our customers
When you buy from Midwest Best, you can be sure where your beef comes from, what’s in it (or not in it), and where it has been before it got to your plate. Unlike the commercial beef industry, you don’t need to take our word for it. We not only welcome, but we encourage farm visits. See for yourself how we produce your beef; verify for yourself the ingredients we use and how we care for our beef.
We avoid all feed additives & supplements.
We mix all of our own feed with individual ingredients, on our own farm, with our own equipment. Most of the ingredients come from our farm. This method is considerably more costly and time consuming, but it’s important the beef we produce meets the standards we promised to ourselves and our customers.
We go to great lengths to make sure the beef our family and your family consume is the best product we can produce.
We follow many of the same organic principles regarding vegetarian feed sources with no animal by-products or antibiotics.
Since we use conventional version of the same feed stuffs, we are able to offer a safe, healthy, and natural product at a price comparable to your local grocer. See out FAQs for a detailed explanation comparing the natural beef we sell and the Organic version.
We don’t use large feedlots with thousands of animals crammed into a relatively small space.
Our animals are provided shelter and clean bedding regularly to ensure they are healthy and safe. Raising our animals this way eliminates the need for the routine antibiotics to keep them alive.
All of our beef is harvested from Angus beef around 2 years of age.
Did you know the quality of meat from a supermarket can vary widely? Ground beef from many supermarkets tends to come from retired dairy and beef cows (female birthing cows) that can be between 6 and 8 years of age.
Midwest Best Beef is raised right here in Iowa.
Did you know your beef can come from anywhere in the world without labeling it? The U.S. repealed the Country Of Origin Labeling (COOL). Now your local supermarket beef could come from anywhere in the world without notifying you, the consumer.
At Midwest Best, our beef is 100% beef
Did you know the beef you buy at supermarkets can be up to 12% injected water and chemical solutions? Wal-Mart, for example, says a majority of its fresh offerings are enhanced with a 6% to 12% solution of water, salt, sodium phosphate, and natural flavorings. Whether they call it plumping, juicing, or enhance beef, it means you are paying retail beef prices for a water/salt/chemical solution.
There are no additives, colors dyes, preservatives, or water added to any of our beef.
Not only do we not add any water, brine, or any other chemical solutions, we dry age the entire carcass resulting in beef with a lower moisture content and a higher concentration of flavor
Most of us have bought “cheap” ground beef at one time or another and been astonished at how much our burger shrank on the grill or in the fry pan. Most people believe it’s the fat melting away. The fat may contribute, but the primary reason is the water boiling off. The water, brine, and chemical solutions added to commercial meat will cook-off while grilling or frying. Additionally, the fibers within the meat will contract, releasing their moisture as well. Different tissues will contain different amounts of water and thus will contract more or less depending on that water content.
At Midwest Best Beef, our beef is all muscle meat. We do not grind other parts of the cow such as noses, lips, etc. in our beef. This produces more consistent beef with less shrink and deeper flavor.
The cut of meat you buy is the cut that came off the animal, as it came of the animal
Did you know “Meat Glue” is used in about 8 million pounds of meat each year to turn inexpensive meat into more expensive cuts? The commercial beef industry uses “Meat Glue” to take inexpensive stew meat and bind it together to make meat that can be marketed as more expensive streaks. Only about 15% of a steer will yield high value steaks. In the past, the trimmings from the carcass were ground into hamburger or sold as stew meet or stir-fry meat. In an effort to increase profits, the industry came up a “Meat Glue” that allows these trimmings to be glued together to form a larger more valuable cut. Besides this deception to the consumer, it allows for increased risk of bacterial contamination and E-Coli. While still legal in the U.S., the European Union banned glued meat in 2010.
At Midwest Best Beef, we don’t use any reconstituted meat or meat products in our product line.
