Imported Beef vs. American Beef: What's The Difference?

I talk about buying American beef a lot, and I’m not going to stop.

It’s not because I believe every pound of beef raised outside this country is bad, or because imported beef doesn’t have to meet food safety standards before it’s sold here. I talk about it because somewhere along the way, we created a food system where the average American can walk into a grocery store, pick up a package of beef, and know almost nothing about the animal it came from.

Who raised it? Where was it raised? What was it fed? Was it given growth-promoting hormones? What standards did the farm operate under? Are the people profiting folks who care about American values? Who processed it, and how far did it travel before it reached your plate?

Most people don’t know the answers to those questions, and we’ve been conditioned to believe we shouldn’t need to ask. I disagree. I believe you should know where your food comes from. I believe American farmers and ranchers are worth supporting. And I believe the more distance we put between the people raising our food and the people eating it, the easier it becomes to lose sight of what we’re actually paying for.

That’s a big part of why we built Valor Provisions in the first place.

I’m also not going to pretend we can flip a switch tomorrow, eliminate every pound of imported beef and expect the American food system to keep functioning exactly as it does today. We can’t. We’re feeding hundreds of millions of people, and our food supply chain operates at an enormous scale.

But acknowledging that reality doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question how dependent we’ve become on a food system that increasingly separates consumers from the people actually raising their food.

If you’ve heard me talk about what I call “the Big Four,” this is what I’m talking about. A huge portion of beef processing in the United States is controlled by a handful of companies. USDA data shows that the four largest beef packers handle roughly 85% of steer and heifer purchases in this country.

Think about the imbalance there. We have thousands of American cattle producers raising animals across this country, yet an enormous percentage of the cattle market flows through only a few processors and two of those are controlled by interests outside of the United States.

This is an important distinction to make. Beef imported into the United States can't simply come from anywhere. USDA only allows meat imports from countries and establishments that have been determined eligible, and those countries must maintain inspection systems USDA considers equivalent to the U.S. system. Imported beef is also subject to inspection and testing when it enters the country.

And that's where I come back to transparency.

A USDA import inspection can tell us whether a shipment meets the requirements for entry into the United States. What it can't necessarily tell you as a consumer standing in the grocery store is the entire story of how that animal was raised.

What veterinary products were permitted on that farm? What were the producer's individual practices? Were growth-promoting hormones used? How were antibiotics handled? What did the cattle eat? What standards did that particular operation choose to follow beyond what its government required?

Those are different questions than whether the finished product passed inspection.

I'm not saying that every pound of imported beef is unsafe. That's not the point. I'm saying meeting the requirements to enter the U.S. food supply isn't the same thing as knowing how your beef was raised.

That's why I keep coming back to knowing your farmer.

When we work directly with an American producer, we're not limited to knowing that their beef passed an inspection. We can learn about the operation itself. We can ask about antibiotics, hormones, feed and animal care. We can visit the farm or ranch. We can decide whether their standards align with ours before we ever put their products in the Valor marketplace.

To me, that's a level of transparency worth protecting.

Compare that with buying from a specific farmer or rancher. You can look up their operation. You can see the people who run it and where their animals are raised. You can research their standards and ask questions about how their cattle are fed, whether they use growth-promoting hormones, how they approach antibiotics and what matters to them when they raise an animal.

That’s what people mean when they say “know your farmer”. It isn’t just a cute slogan to put on a T-shirt. It means knowing who is responsible for producing the food you’re putting on your family’s table and having the ability to decide whether their practices align with what matters to you.

Hormones and antibiotics deserve a much deeper conversation than I can give them here, but they're worth addressing because they're another good example of why knowing your producer matters.

Growth-promoting hormone implants are a common tool in conventional beef production, particularly in feedlot cattle. These aren't some hidden or illegal practice. The FDA has approved a number of hormone implants specifically to increase weight gain and, depending on the product, improve feed efficiency. In simple terms, they help cattle put on weight more efficiently, which can reduce the amount of time and feed required to get an animal to market.

The FDA considers these approved implants safe when they're used according to their labeled conditions. But I think there's an important distinction that gets lost in conversations about food: you can believe something meets a government safety standard and still decide you don't want your food raised that way.

That's where we stand.

At Valor Provisions, the beef producers we choose to work with do not use growth-promoting hormones. That's not because we're trying to scare you about conventional beef. It's because how an animal is raised matters to us, and we want to work with producers whose practices align with the standards we've set for our marketplace.

Antibiotics are a little more complicated.

Medically important antibiotics can no longer legally be used in the United States simply for growth promotion or better feed efficiency. FDA has moved those drugs under veterinary oversight and limited their approved uses to animal-health purposes, such as treating, controlling or preventing disease.

That last part is important. Antibiotic use in conventional animal agriculture isn't always limited to waiting until one individual animal is visibly sick and then treating it. Depending on the drug, species, situation and veterinary direction, antibiotics may be used to treat an animal, control the spread of a disease within a group, or prevent a specific disease when animals are considered at risk.

Our approach at Valor is different.

We don't believe an animal should be allowed to suffer just so someone can put an antibiotic-free claim on a package. If an animal becomes sick and needs treatment, it should receive the appropriate care. But the beef programs we work with don't routinely use antibiotics, and if an animal requires antibiotic treatment, that animal is removed from the program supplying beef to Valor.

For us, that's responsible animal care while still maintaining the standards we've chosen for the food we sell.

And once again, this comes back to transparency. We don't have to look at a package and guess what happened before the meat got there. We know the producers. We can ask how they manage their cattle, what they use, what they don't use and what happens when an animal becomes sick. We can visit the farms and ranches and see how they operate.

You may decide conventional production practices don't bother you. That's your decision to make. But I believe you should at least have enough information to make that decision for yourself.

That's what knowing your farmer gives you.

Another reason consumers have had such a difficult time understanding where their beef comes from is that the labels haven’t always been as straightforward as you might expect. For years, seeing “Product of USA” on a package didn’t necessarily mean the animal was born and raised in the United States.

That changed beginning January 1, 2026. Meat voluntarily labeled “Product of USA” or “Made in the USA” now has to come from animals that were born, raised, slaughtered and processed in the United States.

I think that’s a good start. If Americans are intentionally trying to support American agriculture, the words on a package should mean what consumers reasonably believe they mean.

But I’d still encourage you to go one step further whenever you can. Don’t just look for a flag on a package. Look for a farmer.

A country-of-origin claim can tell you something important about where your beef came from. Knowing the producer can tell you much more about how it got there.

Choosing to buy from an independent American farm is about preserving a way of life and ensuring food transparency.

When you choose to buy from an independent American farm or ranch, you’re doing more than putting beef in your freezer. You’re creating demand for what that producer raises, and that demand helps support the people taking care of the animals, the employees working on the operation, processors, truck drivers and other businesses connected to American agriculture.

It also sends a pretty simple message: we still value having farmers and ranchers in this country.

Farming and ranching aren’t easy businesses. Land is expensive. Equipment is expensive. Feed, fuel and labor are expensive. Markets fluctuate, weather doesn’t cooperate and producers can do everything right and still face circumstances completely outside of their control.

We can’t spend decades choosing the cheapest possible food from the biggest possible supply chains and then act surprised when small farms disappear. If we want independent American farms and ranches to survive, appreciating what they do isn’t enough. There has to be a market for what they produce.

That doesn’t mean I expect every American to suddenly buy every pound of meat directly from a farm. I’m a realist. There are more than 340 million people in this country, and our food system operates at a scale that requires large producers, processors, distributors and retailers. They are part of how we feed this country.

But your purchasing decisions still matter.

Maybe you buy a quarter beef from a rancher down the road once a year. Maybe you shop at a local farmers market. Maybe you find a family farm in your state that ships directly to your door. Maybe you use Valor to discover an independent producer you never would have known existed otherwise.

Supporting American agriculture doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing decision. It can start with simply paying more attention to what you buy and asking a few more questions about where it came from.

The next time you buy beef, look beyond the front of the package. Find out where it was raised. Learn what the labels actually mean. Look up the company or farm if you can. Find out how the animals were raised and whether those practices align with what matters to your family.

And when you have the opportunity to buy from an American farmer or rancher whose practices you believe in, support them.

I know buying this way can sometimes cost more. Independent producers don’t have the scale of multinational food companies, and raising animals according to different standards can come with additional costs. But price isn’t the only measure of value. There’s value in knowing who produced your food. There’s value in understanding how an animal was raised. And there’s value in keeping independent American farms and ranches in business.

You don’t have to agree with every standard I care about. You should decide what matters to you and your family. What I want is for more people to start asking the questions in the first place.

Valor wasn’t created because America needed another website selling meat. There are plenty of those.

We built Valor because I believe there’s room for a different kind of marketplace; one that helps connect families with American farmers, ranchers and producers doing things in a way we believe deserves to be supported.

That means we want you to know their names and their stories. We want you to be able to learn about their farms and ranches, understand their production practices and know more about the food arriving at your door than a cut of meat, a weight and a price.

It also means creating another avenue for independent producers to reach people who care about how their food is raised. The more ways good farmers and ranchers have to reach customers directly, the less dependent they have to be on a system where a handful of massive companies control so much of the market.

At the end of the day, that’s why I care so much about the conversation around imported beef vs. American beef. It isn’t because every pound of imported beef is bad and every pound of American beef is automatically better. Where an animal was born is only one part of the story.

The bigger question is whether knowing that story still matters.

I believe it does. I believe knowing where your food comes from matters. I believe having the ability to research the people who raise it matters. I believe keeping independent farms and ranches operating in this country matters.

And I believe the American farmers and ranchers doing the work to raise our food deserve more than our appreciation.

They deserve our business.

— Pat Montgomery
Founder, Valor Provisions