At Estancia, we produce high-quality grass-fed beef – but not at the expense of animal welfare or the environment.
Humane Treatment of Animals
We take our responsibility to animals seriously. Each animal has access to two acres worth of green grass and no animal ever sees a feedlot.
Animal welfare is critical to the beef we produce because it makes for a healthier and better-tasting steak; it also is the right way to treat animals. Free-ranging, grass-eating is the tradition in Argentina and Uruguay so the practices are inherent in the culture and tradition. It's a simpler way to raise cattle for the very same reasons it's better for them. Free range, grass fed cattle is beef the way nature intented, not unlike wild game.
When it comes time to slaughter, we use the Temple Grandon methods to ensure minimal animal stress. We do it for the animal, and because the beef tastes better when it’s not stressed.
Sustainability
Estancia beef sets the standard for sustainable production.
Because grass-fed beef does not rely on fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers, pesticides, and diesel (used in the planting, harvesting, processing and transportation of grains), Estancia’s products are very low impact, with a low carbon footprint. In the place of fossil fuels, grass-fed beef relies on solar power, rainfall, and photosynthesis.
While much of our beef is shipped from Uruguay, our internal audits suggest that the amount of fuel (in the form of marine diesel) used to transport chilled containers is negligible when compared to the amount of fuel required to fatten the average U.S. feedlot steer. We estimate our fossil fuel consumption per pound of beef produced at somewhere between 1% and 10% of the U.S. commodity feedlot steer equivalent. In many ways, Estancia is in the business of land preservation. Our cattle live in harmony with nature and the fields are full of wild animals and birds. While raising cattle is not perfect nature, it far exceeds the alternative for most ranchers. If you have ever seen pastures converted to soy or mono-crops, you know. Mono-crop agriculture turns a pastoral setting into an area devoid of life other than the crop it’s producing.
The most economic use of land on per acre income is to produce soy or corn and put the cattle into feedlots, but our efforts give the farmers incentives to keep native grasslands. We feel that by preserving a demand for grassland, we are preventing industrial agriculture and all the negatives that go with it.