11 Years of Giving A Damn: No Feedlots, Ever.
Mike Salguero
September 2026 · 3 mins readWhy that’s always been our philosophy and why it matters more than ever.
Eleven years ago, I launched ButcherBox. I started it because I didn’t trust the meat I was buying, and not only did I want my own family to have trust in the meat we ate, but I imagined many other people were faced with the same problem. What started as a hobby business quickly transformed into what I now believe to be my life’s work of fixing the meat industry. Today, we’ve delivered more than 2 billion meals to people’s tables across the U.S. The question I asked myself eleven years ago about whether I could trust the meat in the grocery store matters more right now than it has in a few years.
Scouting a farm in Western Massachusetts and getting a firsthand education on how the way cattle is raised directly impacts the animal itself, and the meat that ultimately ends up on our plate.
If you’re reading this, hopefully you’re buying your meat from ButcherBox, but if you’ve bought ground beef recently from a grocery store or even seen it, you know that the price per pound is higher than we’ve seen in a very long time, if ever. Meat inflation has been running close to 3 percent this year, cattle herds across the world are shrinking, ranchers are getting squeezed by the industry, and consumers are getting squeezed at the register. It takes 22+ months for a cow to grow to the size it needs to be sold for meat, longer if the cow is raised exclusively on pasture. This isn’t an overnight problem we can fix.
When I first learned that 97 percent of beef in the U.S. comes from cattle who have spent time in a feedlot, I was surprised. It surprises most people outside of the meat industry when I share it. Every cow that is raised for beef starts out the same, on pasture with its mother for the first six months of its life and then generally another year on grass. What happens after that is an important piece. Almost all of them get moved to a feedlot to expedite the growth process—where disease pressure drives antibiotic use, which end up in your food. Only 3% of the U.S.-based cattle are kept out of a feedlot, able to graze with space and grow naturally. What this means is that when someone tells you their beef is trustworthy, you usually have no way to check without certifications like Global Animal Partnership or Certified Humane.
Cattle roams free on our farm partner Teys’ pasture in New South Wales, Australia, where the multi-generational farm runs on a commitment to land and livestock.
A lot has changed at ButcherBox over the last eleven years, but the one thing that has never moved is our sourcing standards. Our pasture-raised, grass-finished beef is sourced from Australia and our pasture-raised, grain-finished on pasture beef is sourced in the U.S. Regardless of which product you choose, there are no feedlots, ever.
When I think about ButcherBox, I tend to think about it as part of something bigger than one single order. Right now, more than ever, there is a real opportunity for us to push the meat industry toward even more transparency than we have over the last decade. Whether you’ve been here for eleven years or just joined, remember you are part of a movement that is making a difference in the industry, especially for the animals, the ranchers, and most important of all, your own health.
