Where to Buy Meat
660 Million Pounds of Imported Beef Is Coming. Here's What That Actually Means, and Where We Buy Ours.
You've probably seen the posts. "660 million pounds of imported beef are coming to shelves." Some of them are accurate. Some of them are designed to scare you.
Here is what actually happened, what it means for your family, and what I do about it.
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What was actually announced
On August 24, the administration announced 90 days of tariff relief on beef imports. Up to 300,000 metric tons, which works out to roughly 661 million pounds, can come into the country without the usual out-of-quota tariffs. The stated goal is to bring down the price of ground beef.
A few things worth being precise about, because the details matter:
The government didn't buy 660 million pounds of beef. It removed a tariff for 90 days. Whether that beef actually shows up is up to the companies that import and sell it.
Imports were already at record highs before this. The U.S. imports a lot of beef every year, mostly lean trim that gets blended into ground beef. This is more of something that was already happening, not a brand-new practice.
Imported beef is inspected. It can only come from countries whose inspection systems the USDA has deemed equivalent to ours, and it's reinspected at the port of entry. This is not a food safety story.
It's a "do you know where your beef came from" story. And that one is worth paying attention to.
Where imported beef actually ends up
Most imported beef isn't sold as a steak with a foreign flag on it. It's lean trim, and it gets blended with fattier domestic trim to hit the right ratio for ground beef. That package of 85/15 at the grocery store can be a mix of cattle from several countries, and nothing on the label has to tell you that.
That's the part I care about. Not because imported beef is unsafe, but because you can't make a choice about something you can't see.
The label that changed this year
As of January 1, 2026, the USDA's "Product of USA" label means something specific: the animal was born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in the United States. Before this year, that label could go on beef that was simply packaged here.
Two things to know about it:
If you see "Product of USA," it's real now. That's a meaningful improvement.
But the label is voluntary. No brand is required to tell you the country of origin on beef. So a package with no label doesn't mean imported. It means you don't have the information.
Which brings me to what I actually do.
What I look for
Regenerative organic. In plain terms: the animals are raised on pasture, the land is managed to rebuild soil rather than deplete it, and it's organic underneath, meaning no synthetic pesticides or herbicides on what the animals eat. Regenerative Organic Certified is the formal version of this and it's the highest standard I know of.
Grass-fed and grass-finished. These are not the same thing. "Grass-fed" on its own can mean the animal spent most of its life on pasture and was then finished on grain. Grass-finished means grass the whole way through.
A brand that tells you the ranch. If a company can name the farms it works with, that's the most useful piece of information on the package, more than any single certification.
No feedlots, no routine antibiotics, no added hormones. Baseline.
Where we buy ours
I'm not going to tell you to throw out what's in your freezer. But when you're restocking, these are the three we use.
Nourish Food Club
This is where most of our beef comes from. Nourish works with a network of small regenerative farms and holds them to a standard they call LowPs: low in polyunsaturated fats, phytoestrogens, and pesticides. Their beef is 100% grass-fed, the livestock are raised on pasture with rotational grazing, and their feed is corn- and soy-free and formulated in-house, which is rare. It's a membership model with a one-time $1 lifetime fee, and they ship nationwide. They also carry raw A2 dairy, pastured eggs, and sourdough, so one order covers a lot.
Force of Nature
Grass-fed, grass-finished, and raised on pasture year-round, with no feedlots, added hormones, or routine antibiotics. Most of their beef comes from family ranches in California, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Oregon, Montana, and Oklahoma. In the interest of full transparency, since this whole post is about imports: they also source a small amount from Land to Market or Regenerative Organic Certified ranches in Australia and New Zealand, and they say so on their site. That's exactly the kind of disclosure I want from a brand. They sell online and in a lot of grocery stores, which makes them the easiest of the three to find.
StarWalker Organic Farms
A fourth-generation family farm in Northern California, and the first Regenerative Organic Certified beef producer in the country. They're also CCOF Certified Organic, Real Organic Project certified, and USDA Organic. What makes them unusual is that they process on their own land at their own USDA-inspected facility, so the animal is born, raised, and processed in one place by one family. That's about as traceable as beef gets. They ship direct from their website and sell whole and half animals if you have freezer space.
The bottom line
The 660 million pounds is real. The panic isn't necessary.
What this moment is actually good for is the habit it builds: turn the package over, look for the label, and if there isn't one, ask. Buy from someone who will tell you where it came from.