The Natural Approach

Some people confuse the terms “organic” and “natural.” Organic beef follows stringent requirements that include never allowing the cattle to eat anything but certified organic feed and never giving it antibiotics even for healing purposes.


By comparison, the beef that my partners and I send from our ranches to your plate is an all- natural product. We manage our cattle to meet the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) definition for natural: Our products never contain any additives. In addition, the products we produce are never more than minimally processed.

I've included a few pictures here of ranchers and partners involved in our program. The first photo is of Chuck Schronk, Charlie Harrod, a rancher from Arkansas, myself and Wendell Schronk of Beefmaster Breeders United, San Antonio, Texas. The second picture is of me talking with Dr. Charles Graham, DVM of Gonzales, Texas.

We provide our customers this assurance by working only with licensed feedlots that feed only high quality grain. We even guarantee that our cattle receive no growth hormone implants or antibiotics during the last 100 days of the feeding period to go beyond the “minimally processed” requirement.

But there’s much more going on with our natural beef products. Because we want to provide you with some of the finest beef that you’ll ever eat, we work with others in the beef industry to achieve huge strides in beef quality assurance.

That means we raise and handle our cattle with the finest care. Our customers have demanded this and we have moved much further down the road in providing high levels of cattle care than ever before.

Ranchers refer to the mood of cattle as their disposition. And it’s our goal to create an environment that generates only cattle with good dispositions 100 percent of the time. We have built our cattle working facilities so that our cattle are always comfortable. And we support beef industry efforts to educate the trucking companies that transport our cattle from the feedlot to the processing plant to ensure that they understand how to keep these cattle stress-free through harvest.

Our commitment to you doesn’t end there, however. Nolan Ryan's Guaranteed Tender Beef selects only the tenderest beef at the processing plant. We then age it for 14 days to be sure every bite is tender and full of flavor. We are proud that USDA certifies our tenderness and aging process.

Remember: Natural does not mean organic. However, perhaps what you are really looking for is beef that is minimally processed yet provides other quality and cattle-care components. If so, that’s what we produce with Nolan Ryan's Guaranteed Tender Meats.