Animal Care & Pasture Claims Bulletin · No. 1 · October 2026 · From Farm Animal Transparency (FAT)
The note for beef ranchers on what farm websites say about animal care
By Dirk Adams, with the assistance of AI
Farm Animal Transparency (FAT) read the websites of 2,803 farms and ranches that sell beef directly to the public and wrote down, word for word, what each one says about how its cattle are cared for. We counted a second thing separately: what each site says about where the cattle live — pasture, range or feedlot.1 566 of the sites came from our grass-fed beef survey; 2,237 are ordinary freezer-beef and ranch-beef sellers we found through state beef council and buy-local directories, so the count is not tilted toward farms that market themselves on how they raise animals.
1 Why two counts: “pasture-raised” tells a buyer where an animal lived. It does not say how the animal was handled, weaned, hauled or doctored. A ranch can be on grass all its life and say nothing about care, or say a great deal about care and finish on grain. Keeping the two apart is what lets the numbers below mean something.
What the websites say about care · four kinds of claim
Most sites say something about animal care, but usually in general words. “Humanely raised,” “raised with care” and “happy cows” are the most common phrases. They are sincere, but they give the buyer nothing to check. About one site in five goes further and names what the ranch actually does: low-stress handling, Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) training, letting calves stay with their mothers, weaning across a fence, a short haul to a nearby processor. A small number show a third-party welfare seal.
Table 1. What 2,803 beef farm and ranch websites say about animal care, by kind of seller (share of each group)
| Claim on the website | All farms | Grass-fed sellers | Ordinary direct sellers | Cow-calf ranches |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shows a welfare certification seal | 2% | 7% | 1% | 2% |
| Names at least one care practice | 20% | 14% | 22% | 31% |
| General words only (“humanely raised”) | 44% | 46% | 43% | 37% |
| Says nothing about care | 34% | 33% | 34% | 30% |
| Number of farms | 2,803 | 566 | 2,237 | 1,001 |
Cow-calf ranches = sites that say the ranch keeps its own cows and the calves are born on the place. Columns overlap: a cow-calf ranch may also be a grass-fed or ordinary seller. Percentages may not add to 100 because of rounding.
Saying nothing is not doing anything wrong. A third of these ranches never mention handling at all. That is a fact about their websites, not their cattle. Ranch websites are built to sell beef, and most cow-calf operators would no more describe their weaning pens online than describe how they fix fence. The survey cannot see into any pasture or corral, and it does not grade anyone. What it can show is who is telling the buyer, and it turns up something worth knowing: cow-calf ranches were about twice as likely as grass-fed marketers to name a specific care practice (31% against 14%), and ordinary freezer-beef sellers were in between (22%). Grass-fed marketers were the most likely to stop at general words.
What the websites say about pasture · a separate category
Pasture talk is far more common than care talk. More than half the sites say the cattle are raised on pasture, and about one in eight says they spend their whole lives there and never see a feedlot. Many ordinary sellers state plainly that calves grow up on grass and are then finished on grain, which is an honest description of most U.S. beef.
Table 2. Where the cattle live, as stated on the same 2,803 websites (share of each group) — counted separately from care
| Pasture claim on the website | All farms | Grass-fed sellers | Ordinary direct sellers | Cow-calf ranches |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Whole life on pasture (“never see a feedlot”) | 13% | 17% | 12% | 17% |
| Pasture-raised, no whole-life statement | 40% | 50% | 37% | 35% |
| Pasture first, then grain finish (stated) | 17% | 6% | 19% | 24% |
| Grazing or land care only, nothing about the animals | 7% | 12% | 6% | 5% |
| Nothing about where cattle live | 24% | 15% | 26% | 20% |
Where wording was borderline, the survey used the more cautious category. Three random re-checks found the pasture categories accurate to within a few points.
The care practices ranchers name · what a buyer can actually check
Table 3. The specific care practices named most often on beef ranch websites (number of farms naming each; a farm can name several)
| Care practice named on the website | Farms |
|---|---|
| Low-stress handling | 166 |
| Shade, water or shelter provided | 137 |
| Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) trained or certified | 122 |
| Herd health or vet plan | 86 |
| Calves stay with their mothers | 73 |
| Short haul / nearby processor | 64 |
| Small herd, individual attention | 62 |
| On-farm or mobile slaughter | 36 |
| Natural or late weaning | 31 |
| Calving care described | 31 |
Seals and contradictions · two things FAT will follow up
Seals. 57 sites show a third-party animal-welfare certification, mostly Animal Welfare Approved by A Greener World, plus a few Certified Humane and Global Animal Partnership marks. The survey recorded what the sites display; it has not yet checked each one against the certifiers’ own lists. Several sites show a logo with no text, name an old program title, or apply a seal to their eggs or pork rather than their beef. FAT will check them before publishing any certified list.
Contradictions. On 138 sites, the farm’s own wording pulls in two directions, most often “100% pasture” or “grass-fed and finished” on one page and a grain finish on another. Most ordinary sellers who finish on grain say so plainly; the problem is mixed messages, not grain. These are listed in the survey workbook for the farms to see and fix.
Rancher to rancher
If you treat your cattle well, and nearly every cow-calf operator I know does, the buyer can’t see it unless you say so in plain words. One sentence naming what you actually do counts for more than “humanely raised”: “we wean across the fence,” “our crew is BQA certified,” “calves stay on the cow until fall,” “it’s a 20-mile haul to a family processor.” Say what you do and the survey counts it in the next issue.
How the survey was done: farm websites were read October 20–27, 2026. 566 sites came from FAT’s grass-fed beef survey list; 2,237 were taken in listing order from state beef council and buy-local directories and from neutral searches such as “freezer beef for sale,” never from searches for welfare or pasture words. Duplicate sites, dead sites, non-beef farms and sites that block automated reading were set aside. Every claim is recorded verbatim; in a random check, every quoted passage was found on the farm’s site. The survey reports what websites say. It is not an inspection and makes no finding about how any farm treats its animals. Companion cattle-market analysis for Montana: Honest Cattle · honestcattle.net.
Farms that state what they do appear in the FAT App — the free iPhone app that reads a meat label at the counter and tells the shopper, on the spot, what the producer discloses about how the animal was raised, fed and processed. It is the only label scanner built around producer disclosure rather than brand marketing, and direct sellers who disclose are what it exists to surface. Free on the App Store: apps.apple.com/app/id6757405468
Rancher to rancher — I’m Dirk Adams, a 40-year cattle rancher near Wilsall, Montana. Farm Animal Transparency (FAT) is a nationwide, free, public-interest research project on what meat labels claim and what producers actually disclose. It carries no advertising and charges nothing. More FAT research on meat labels and what producers disclose is at farmanimaltransparency.com/fat-research. If anything above misreads your farm, email me at dirkadams@farmanimaltransparency.com.
Dirk Adams
Farm Animal Transparency