Committed to Food Safety
As food providers, we have a responsibility to ensure that our beef is safe to eat. We lead the market in food safety. At Estancia food safety means a rigorous combination of internal processes, oversight, traceability, and third-party audits. You won't find stricter protocols or more careful safeguards anywhere in the industry.
Pasture-raised Beef is Safer
The first thing you should know is that pasture-raised beef is much safer to eat than beef that comes from feedlots. Our animals graze freely on high-protein grasslands that are green all year round and they are transported directly from our ranches to our processing plant. They never see a feed lot, which means they are never crowded together or stuck standing in manure. The simple fact of the matter is that feedlots are breeding grounds for pathogens and the more time cattle spend in feedlots, the more likely it is that the pathogens will end up in the processing plant on the beef that is shipped out to consumers. Food safety is about a clean process from pasture to plate, and every step of the way. Our animals live in a clean environment until they day they go the plant and our plant sets the gold standard for food safety.
Careful Processing
At our state-of-the-art processing facility, we test daily for pathogens such as eColi, listeria and salmonella. To ensure the accuracy of this testing, we employ a third-party laboratory that tests our facilities every week. Furthermore, our safety processes are certified by European customer groups, the USDA, and INAC (the cattle oversight organization in Uruguay).
Young Animals
Our beef comes from young steer, which generally have higher acid levels in their bodies than older animals. We also check the pH levels during processing and reject any meat with high pH levels. Low pH levels (meaning the meat is more acidic) means contamination is much more unlikely.
Traceability
At Estancia, and in Uruguay, we use the most advanced traceability system in the world. Developed and implemented fifteen years before other countries (three is still no traceability in US beef production), we can track a box of Estancia Beef back to the farm where the cattle came from, and soon we'll be able to track each cut back to the animal it came from. All that information is on the bar code of every box of Estancia beef so we can provide feedback through the supply chain to ensure quality and food safety.