Cattle on a green pasture with clouds in the sky

We are very picky about the beef we sell.

Pre beef comes exclusively from Australia, New Zealand, and select regions of the United States where climates allow cattle to graze on nutrient-rich grasses year-round. These regions also uphold some of the world’s strictest standards for animal welfare, environmental sustainability, and meat quality.

Pre's 15 points of Curation

To ensure we can provide the best grass-fed beef in the world, we select our sources using 15 points of curation including source, breed, diet, taste, tenderness, quality, marbling, color, size, and weight.

Our 15 Points of Curation

Our beef is sourced from select areas in the world with ample rainfall and where the daytime temperature ranges from 50° - 70°F depending on the season. This is the perfect place for grass to grow and absorb nutrients – and these are passed onto the cattle as they munch on it!
We only use steers and heifers for our beef. Steers are castrated males and heifers are un-bred females and these provide the most tender, most marbled, and best tasting beef. We never use bulls or cows, which are both used for breeding.
We only use British breeds of cattle as they are smaller and provide more tender beef. Other breeds, like tropical breeds, for example, are usually much tougher.
Just like humans and all other animals, cattle naturally produce the hormones. The term “no added hormones” means that our beef is not given additional, non-naturally occurring hormones to promote growth. Factory farms often have to do this in order to unaturally speed up growth.
We never use sub-therapeutic antibiotics on our cattle. If an animal gets sick, they are treated with antibiotics by a trained veterinarian and are removed from the herd until the antibiotics have left their system.

Antibiotic use is extremely uncommon in the areas that we source from, as pastoral farming practices limit an animal’s exposure to disease. Since cattle are not packed together in giant factories, disease spreads more slowly and is less dangerous. New Zealand and Australia have some of the lowest rates of antibiotic use in the world.
Our cattle are never finished on corn or other grains to help them gain weight, which is a common practice at some other farms. Instead, our cattle are kept on pasture for their entire lives, munching away on grass – just like Nature intended!
Not only are our cattle grass-fed and finished, but they are also pasture-raised year-round. The regions we source from can keep cattle out on pasture all year long because of the climate. Other places on the planet have to resort to grass pellets and other alternatives when the weather turns.

We also practice rotational grazing, meaning that cattle are moved from one pasture to another to allow the grasses to regenerate, so our animals always feast on the most nutritional grass possible.
"Marbling" refers to the intramuscular fat that flows throughout a piece of beef. We have specific, numerical scores that we adhere to to ensure consistency. Too little marbling, and the meat can be tough and chewy. Too much, and you just won’t get enough protein or meat. We treat our marbling like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Not too much, not too little—just the right amount for the perfect, flavorful steak.
Did you know that grass fed and finished beef will have a more ivory color of fat compared to the extremely bright white fat of grain fed beef? This subtle yellow color is thanks to beta-carotene, the same compound that gives color to carrots. That’s just another sign of how nutritious Pre beef is. You won’t find this fat color in grain-fed beef.
Meat color is a great indication of how stressed an animal was prior to slaughter, and it relates to pH level of the muscle.

When meat is too dark it's because the pH level remained high. A stressed animal will use up its glycogen reserves (energy) while dealing with the stress so that after slaughter there isn’t enough glycogen to be converted to lactic acid, which lowers the pH level of the muscle.

Because the pH remains high, the meat becomes a dark purple or black color. When cooked, this dark meat can be tough, dry, and will usually spoil faster. We adhere to strict meat color parameters, which ensures our cattle were not stressed prior to slaughter.
Ossification is the process of bone formation. The more bone that has formed in the spine of an animal, the more stressed that animal’s life was.More cartilage and less bone indicates an animal lived a happy and nutritionally balanced life.

Our “ossification score” is a method of checking the bones of a slaughtered animal to look at its age, stress levels, and overall quality of life.

While many people look at the age of the animal, we prefer to look at its quality of life. A young animal that has a high ossification score probably lived a very stressed life. And a more mature animal that has a low ossification score lived a great life, enjoying pasture and happily eating up all the delicious grass.

That all adds up to the best meat possible. In fact, while young cows are often prized, older cows that have seen less stress may provide more tender meat.
We talked a little bit about this above in reference to meat color, and pH is important to monitor to ensure animals are not stressed prior to slaughter. It also keeps us on track for tender, juicy steaks. Muscle fibers with a pH that sits outside of our tight range can have a hard time holding onto water, which causes moisture-loss when cooked.
Animals should be treated with respect. And it’s no coincidence that happy, well-treated animals result in delicious, high-quality, nutritious beef. The countries that we source from have strict legislation relating to humane treatment, and closely follow the internationally-accepted Five Freedoms:

1. Freedom from hunger and thirst

2. Freedom from discomfort

3. Freedom from pain, injury, and disease

4. Freedom to express normal behaviors

5. Freedom from fear and distress
At a minimum beef should be aged at least 21 days to develop flavor and become tender. Our beef subprimals are vacuum packaged immediately so that the enzymes naturally present in beef can break down the muscle fibers and tenderize the meat.

For us, this aging process happens while our beef is in transit from New Zealand or Australia to The United States.
There should be no guessing when it comes to cooking Pre beef. We cut all of our steaks to a fixed weight, which means every steak you buy from us will be the same weight, every time.

No more “price per pound” when you go up to the butcher counter, which inevitably leaves you with a big, thin steak you don’t know what to do with. And we go one step further to measure and control the size of our subprimals allowing us to cut steaks at a consistent thickness too. We’ve done all the work behind the scenes to help you confidently cook your steak to the perfect doneness every time.

We pride ourselves on being a grass-fed and grass-finished beef brand. Our beef is wet-aged and shipped in the subprimal form by sea freight which has a lower carbon footprint than air freight. All of our beef is cut, trimmed or ground in The United States. The beef sourced from the areas in the United States is transported to us by truck.

Transportation

Black and white cattle on a pasture in New Zealand

In Australia and New Zealand, there are currently no mRNA vaccines that are approved for use in cattle or any other livestock. The vaccines given to cattle in these countries are traditional types of vaccines, such as killed or modified-live vaccines, that have been used for many years to protect cattle from infectious diseases.