Which Ruminant Is Best For Making Organ Supplements?

Many companies claim that their organ supplement is the best because it comes from a specific type of animal, such as beef, bison, lamb, sheep, buffalo, elk, reindeer, or venison, etc. Is one animal better than the other for making an organ supplement, though?

Which Animal Is Best For Making Organ Supplements?

The short answer is that all of those animals can be used to make good or bad organ supplements. When fed a varied diet of wild grasses from properly managed pastures, organs from all of those animals will have very similar nutritional values. What will make the difference between the products is how they were made from start to finish.

These are the factors that truly make a difference:

• Where the animals were raised.

  • Ethics plays a significant role in the production of organ supplements, but most people are unaware of the major ethical issues surrounding organ and collagen supplements. Many come from, let's just say, less than ethical sources. For example, JBS is one of the largest suppliers of collagen peptides, and they are involved in a whole host of horrible things.

• What the animals were fed.

  • While most companies claim their organ supplements are made from grass-fed cattle, there is a big difference in what that means from company to company, as there is not a lot of regulation of that term.

    • Here are some examples:

      • Alfalfa pellet fed

        • Many cattle are kept in feedlots, but instead of grains, they are fed enriched alfalfa pellets. This counts as grass-fed, but it’s not real grass-fed. These animals are not given access to pasture and don’t eat a varied diet. Certainly not what we would consider grass-fed.

    • Sorghum grass-fed. 

      • Many farms grow sorghum grass to feed their animals. This grass is higher in sugar and lower in nutrients than wild grasses. This is not what we would consider real grass-fed. These cows fatten up faster, but they don’t get the benefits that a diet of wild grasses gives. 

    • Sprayed and synthetically fertilized pastures

      • Many animals are grazed on pastures that only have a couple of types of grasses and are sprayed with synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Often, they have too many animals on too small an area of land, so nitrites are used as fertilizer to stimulate the growth of the grass because of overgrazing. This leads to significant water pollution from the nitrite fertilizer runoff. This is becoming a problem in many places, including New Zealand. This is not how grass-fed should be done.

    • Real Regenerative farming and pastures with lots of different grasses

      • The ideal way to do grass-fed is real regenerative farming (not the fake stuff a lot of companies are doing) on properly managed pastures that have a wide variety of grasses and plants for the ruminants to eat. 

      • These pastures should not be sprayed with synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides, and no synthetic fertilizers should be used. 

      • Real regenerative pastures are nourished by the cattle as they break up the soil with their hooves and leave their droppings behind. 

• Abattoir practices.

  • Ensuring the animals have low stress and are kept calm during the journey (which should be as short as possible) to and at the Abattoir is important. This helps to keep cortisol and other stress hormones low because higher stress hormone levels can negatively impact the quality of the organs. Since most companies don’t produce or make their own raw materials, most of them have no idea about these processes. Look for companies that have a direct relationship with the farms and abattoirs, so they can verify and ensure these practices are being done correctly.

• Freshness of the organs

  • Most organ supplements are made with raw materials that have been sitting in warehouses for a long time and are anything but fresh. You want to choose manufacturers that produce their own products in small batches, which are used quickly from freshly harvested organs, not those that are produced in huge batches and stored for long periods of time.

• Many organ supplements use defatted organs.

  • Many of the best compounds in organs are found in the fat. If the fat is removed, then those compounds are removed. These companies claim that if they don’t remove the fat, it will go rancid. The fat will only go rancid if improper manufacturing processes are used. Instead of removing the important fats, they should use better manufacturing methods. 

• Drying process

  • How the organs are dried is very important. Traditional spray-drying and other high-heat drying methods can damage essential compounds in the organs. Regular freeze drying can also be too fast, potentially damaging fragile constituents, akin to freezer burn. A slow and low freeze-drying process, lasting over 48 hours, is the best method for drying and preserving the organs. Check out this blog to learn more about the best way to freeze-dry beef organs.

• Milling process

  • Traditional ingredient milling involves significant heat and friction. Many important compounds in organ meats are sensitive to this heat and friction and can become degraded. 

  • To best preserve the nutritional value of the organs, they should be cryogenically milled. This is a cold milling process, using nitrogen, that protects the fragile constituents, thereby avoiding the problems associated with traditional milling. Check out this blog to learn more about the best way to mill beef organs.

Each of those steps needs to be done properly to get a great organ supplement. It’s important to choose organ supplements from companies that are vertically integrated (sourcing, drying, milling, encapsulating, and bottling all done in-house), so they have control of the entire process and have a direct relationship with the farmers. This allows them to ensure each step is done correctly. Very few companies make their own supplements. Most have middlemen and contract manufacturers source and make the products for them. There are tons of companies jumping on the organ supplement trend, and having products private and white labeled for them. That’s where one manufacturer makes the same products for lots of different companies, who then put their own labels on them, while proudly proclaiming how much better their products are than everyone else's. 

While many companies advertise that their organ supplements are better than others because they come from a certain type of animal, it’s really nothing more than marketing. Instead, look for companies that are doing all the right things, rather than spending most of their money on advertising. 

Cattle grazing in the Lake Eyre River Basin of Australia.