🌽🐄Understanding GMOs in Your Beef

At Faithway Cattle, we’ve always believed in being open and honest about how we raise our cattle. Our cows spend their entire lives on pasture—roaming freely, grazing grass, and living the way cattle were meant to live. When it comes time to finish them, we feed grain. Why? Because we love the flavor, tenderness, and marbling that grain finishing brings—and our customers do too.

Now, you’ve probably heard a lot of talk about GMOs (genetically modified organisms). It’s a big, complicated subject, and like most things in agriculture, it’s not as simple as “good” or “bad.” So let’s talk about what it really means for your beef.

Why We Use GMO Feed

The truth is, almost all corn and soy grown in the U.S. today is GMO. These two crops make up the bulk of cattle feed, and because they’re open-pollinated, their pollen drifts on the wind. That means even if one farmer plants non-GMO corn, it can potentially be naturally cross-pollinated by GMO corn from a neighboring field. In other words, guaranteeing a truly 100% non-GMO harvest is nearly impossible.

On top of that, sourcing non-GMO feed in our area is extremely difficult. We’ve looked, and the reality is: there just aren’t many growers producing it nearby. The few that do sell non-GMO grain charge a premium—and for good reason. It’s harder to grow, requires more management, and has lower yields. But that cost gets passed down the line. If we bought non-GMO grain exclusively, the price of your beef would jump significantly. And we don’t want to put high-quality, local beef out of reach for families in our community.

Supporting Local, Not Global

Instead, we make a different choice: we buy feed from local growers—farmers right here in our area who we know and trust. Yes, it’s GMO feed, but it’s also locally grown, supporting our neighbors, our regional economy, and the kind of agriculture that keeps communities alive. To us, that matters a whole lot more than chasing a non-GMO label that we feel is almost impossible to guarantee in the first place.

The Bigger Picture

At the end of the day, our commitment is to raise healthy cattle, provide honest food, and stay transparent with you about how we do it. Whether it’s grass, grain, or GMOs, we believe you deserve to know the story behind your beef.

Our cattle live good lives on pasture. They’re finished on grain that gives our beef the flavor and marbling we’re proud of. And they’re fed with grain grown by farmers we know by name. That’s something we stand behind.

So while GMOs are part of modern agriculture for now, we focus on what we can do: quality care for our animals, supporting local agriculture, and putting our very best beef on your family’s table.

Thank you for trusting us, for choosing to buy directly from a family farm, and for caring about where your food comes from.

-Vanessa “The Beef Chick”