Short answer: exclusively from pasture-raised cattle in New Zealand and Australia, grass-fed and grass-finished, raised without antibiotics or added hormones. Every Rise organ product is freeze-dried at low temperature and packaged in Canada with bilingual labelling. Because our labels carry one ingredient each, the sourcing isn't a detail about the product. It effectively is the product.
People ask us this by email more than any other question, so here's the full answer in one place.
The standard, spelled out
Four commitments, all of them checkable against our labels:
- Pasture-raised cattle from New Zealand and Australia, named openly. The organs are freeze-dried and finished in Canada, and the origin is on the label.
- Grass-fed AND grass-finished. The distinction matters: "grass-fed" alone can describe cattle switched to grain for the final months. Ours stay on grass through finishing, because the organ reflects the whole diet, not just how it started.
- No antibiotics, no added hormones. Raised without either.
- Freeze-dried, not heat-dried. Low-temperature drying removes the water and leaves the nutrients, the least eventful processing step we could choose, on purpose.
Why single-ingredient labels raise the sourcing stakes
Here's the logic that shapes everything we do. A multi-ingredient formula can hide a mediocre input behind twenty others. A single-ingredient product can't hide anything: our Grass-Fed Beef Liver Capsules are beef liver in a gelatin capsule. That is the complete recipe. A serving of 4 capsules is 3,000 mg of freeze-dried liver, the bottle is 120 capsules for $39.99 (a 30-day supply, about $1.33 a day), and the product holds its NPN licence from Health Canada. When the label is that short, the quality of the animal is the only lever there is. Which is exactly why we're picky about it.
The same sourcing standard applies across the organ line: the five-organ Complex, the Women's formula and the tallow. The colostrum is the one deliberate exception: it comes from Canadian grass-fed, pasture-raised dairy herds, because Canada is where the supply we trust for first-milk actually is. One standard, every bottle.
What we won't claim
Honesty section, as always. We don't publish a named list of individual farms, and we won't invent one for a blog post. Supply comes from Canadian producers who meet the standard above, and the standard (grass-fed, grass-finished, no antibiotics, no added hormones) is the contract, not a farm's postcard. If a brand shows you a photogenic pasture but won't put "grass-finished" on the label, you've been shown scenery, not sourcing. We'd rather give you the checkable claim than the pretty one.
We also won't pretend "Canadian" automatically means "grass-finished." Most Canadian beef is actually grain-finished in feedlots; grass-finished herds are the minority here, which makes sourcing them deliberately the entire job.
How to verify any brand's sourcing story (including ours)
- Read the label for "grass-fed and grass-finished": both words. One is not shorthand for the other.
- Check the ingredient list: one food plus a capsule, or a crowd?
- Look for a country of origin for the cattle, not just a "distributed by" address.
- In Canada, look up the NPN in Health Canada's Licensed Natural Health Products Database.
- Email the founder and see what comes back. Ours is ray@risenutritions.ca, and he answers.
FAQ
Is Rise beef grass-finished or just grass-fed?
Both. Rise uses exclusively grass-fed and grass-finished cattle pasture-raised in New Zealand and Australia. The animals stay on grass through the finishing period rather than being switched to grain for the final months.
Are Rise cattle given antibiotics or hormones?
No. The cattle are raised without antibiotics and without added hormones, and that standard applies to every Rise organ product.
Is Rise beef from Canada or imported?
Canadian, exclusively. Rise is based in Toronto, sources pasture-raised cattle from New Zealand and Australia, and ships across Canada in 1–3 business days with bilingual EN/FR packaging.
Why doesn't Rise name its farms?
Because the enforceable part of sourcing is the standard, not a photo of one field. Rise buys from Canadian producers who meet a fixed spec (grass-fed, grass-finished, no antibiotics, no added hormones) and publishes the spec rather than a marketing farm tour.
Written by the team at Rise Nutrition, Toronto, Canada's single-ingredient ancestral nutrition brand. When the label has one ingredient, sourcing is the whole story. Questions? ray@risenutritions.ca
