Beef from the
Heart-Shaped Heartland

Flag of Uruguay

For all of the legendary history associated with the beef business in America — cowboys on the range, the Chisholm Trail, fording the Rio Grande — today some of the very best products come from other parts of the world.

Argentina, of course, made a big name for itself with its grass-fed beef, which became widely available in the US about 15 years ago. Australia and New Zealand are also big producers of high-quality beef, and in fact Sprouts used to carry quite a bit of Australian meat.

But the real up-and-comer today among those in the know is Uruguay — the small heart-shaped country wedged between Argentina and Brazil, which has an extremely high literacy rate (over 97%) and a long tradition with livestock and agriculture. Indeed, Uruguay is today one of the best sources for grass-fed organic beef, which in our estimation is simply the most flavorful, tender and succulent kind. (It also cooks 30% faster than grain-fed beef.) Indeed, when our meat team conducted blind taste tests of domestic grain-fed and grass-fed organic, Uruguayan grass-fed organic, and Australian grass-fed organic, Uruguay won, hands down (better than they did in the World Cup semis, incidentally).

Uruguay

We're certainly not the only ones who have jumped on the Montevideo bandwagon. Wegman's, which many people regard as the best-run supermarket company in the country, recently switched to Uruguayan beef (see news link below). Similarly, two of the most upscale Bay Area grocers, who used to carry Uruguayan organic, have scrambled to find more of it now that Sprouts has introduced it in our Sunnyvale store. The fact is that with a large surge in the demand for organic beef (the USDA first allowed beef to be certified as organic in 2002), growing chains like Sprouts are having an extremely hard time sourcing enough quality product at the right prices... and that has created a boom market for the Uruguayans. Uruguayan organic beef is imported into the US by highly reputable companies like Sommers Organic. The Grateful Harvest beef program, which uses Uruguayan beef, produces six to eight times more organic beef than any domestic source.

In the US, in order for meat to be certified as organic, many rules must be met, including:

  • The animals must be born and raised on certified organic pasturelands.
  • The animals can never receive antibiotics or growth hormones.
  • The animals must be given a diet of only organic grains and grasses, and must be given unrestricted outdoor access.

All organic beef must also come from cattle originating in facilities that are carefully monitored, with traceability that allows inspectors to understand all the details of handling, feeding and processing from the birth of the animal onward.

These stringent standards apply to ALL organic beef sold in the US, regardless of where the animals were raised. If it has the USDA organic certification — and our Uruguayan beef from Sommers Organic does — then it is subject to the very same guidelines, inspections and standards as meat that was raised domestically.

Beyond that, the Uruguayan organic cattle, almost all of which are of English genetic heritage like Herefords and Angus, are raised with very high ethical standards. Producers and processors adhere to strict codes of animal welfare and humane treatment. And the Uruguayans have earned a strong reputation for sustainability — they placed 3rd out of 146 countries in a 2005 index of world environmental sustainability developed by Yale University and the National University of Colombia.

Certainly it is true that shipping organic beef from Uruguay to the US creates a somewhat larger carbon footprint than is desirable. But for a company the size of Sprouts, the alternative would be to source higher-priced organic beef from multiple places around the US and then ship it to our 52 stores... and that wouldn't necessarily be any better for Planet Earth. Moreover, when foraging animals like cattle are given grain diets (as opposed to the natural grass diets that the Uruguayan animals get), it requires huge amounts of fossil fuels to produce and ship the grains to the feedlots. And the cows produce a great deal of methane gas. Talk about global warming.

To learn more about this terrific product, and the people and processes behind Uruguayan organic beef, here are some good articles to read: