Seacross Beef is Better— from Pasture to Plate

By Keller Northcutt

When she was younger, and like many other people, Mickey Steward never thought about where her food came from other than the grocery store. During her PhD program at Colorado State University, she touched a cow for the first time and decided she wanted to raise her own food. In the infancy of her and Randall’s ranching career, trial and error was their greatest teacher. 

“We were so ignorant at the beginning. We tried to pull a calf from our first heifer with a flashlight, bottle of olive oil, and a how-to book. Needless to say we bought a calf-puller after that,” laughs Steward. 

The journey to ranching led Steward to believe that well-cared for animals are not only more nutritious, but that it is also morally right to treat them with as much kindness as possible. A friend asked her, “Why do you care that your animals are happy if you’re just going to eat them?” To which Steward replied, “For precisely that reason: because we are going to eat them.” Knowing that an animal is being raised for food, Steward has tasted the difference between conventionally processed feedlot beef and beef raised and processed completely at home.

How does this make Seacross different? Steward learned from the Global Animal Partnership that the most stressful event for a cow is transport. After living their entire lives out in the pastures, it is incredibly stressful to be loaded into a cramped semi trailer and transported to a strange place with foreign sights, sounds, and smells. This stress directly transfers intto the meat. An animal raised at home on grass can be as tender as any grain-finished animal because it does not experience such stress.

Seacross cows never leave the ranch, and instead of enduring unnecessary stress, they finish their days eating fresh grass rather than corn, grain, or soy. At the time of processing, the cows are in a familiar place with their head in a treat bucket. They always have another cow companion with them and are harvested with the most humane methods. This means Seacross not only offers more humane and healthier beef, but it also has a lighter carbon footprint.

Mickey and Randall have spent 40 years raising the healthiest, happiest, and most genetically robust beef. They started direct market beef in 1993 - a hard sell in those days - and now offer as many as 4 animals per month to select families and customers. Customers can buy as little as a quarter beef for themselves or to share, or they can purchase the whole animal. Seacross cows provide beef for four people for up to a year. When you consider the ethics of eating animals, for the same amount of protein, 5 pigs or 100 chickens would need to be processed. Choosing Seacross beef means less killing of animals and disposal of waste, on top of all of the nutritional benefits of pasture-raised, grass-finished beef. 

The result is tender, mild-tasting, fine-textured beef. “I got into this because I wanted the animals to be treated well. It’s ethically right to be kind to animals, but it also makes a huge difference in taste and quality,” says Steward. “On top of everything we’ve learned, we realized the payout for better care for the animals is better tasting beef.” 

Perhaps the cherry (or butter) on top, is the way Seacross beef builds community. Their customers are connected to the animals, the land, and the people that raised the meat. As our society continues to lose rural and ranching ties, Seacross is maintaining the vital relationship between people and their food. “When a customer buys into an animal, they are also buying into their local land and community,” says Steward. 

With a maximum of 48 customers per year, Seacross builds lasting relationships in their community. “We don’t want to sell a pound at a time to 5,000 people in a grocery store. We want to facilitate connection to the animals and the land. Because our well-managed land is a carbon sink rather than source, people can also feel confident in doing good for the earth,” says Steward.

Through a lifetime of learning how to manage animals and land in an ethical and harmonious way, Mickey and Randall have built a name that their community trusts. By purchasing Seacross Ranch beef, customers are investing in happy animals, healthy rangeland, and their local economy. Now that’s a lifecycle worth supporting!

Learn more about Seacross’ sustainable ranching and beef, and place your order today.