Why Where Your Bone Broth Comes From Matters More Than You Think
David Battisti, MScNShare
Not All Bone Broth Is Created Equal: The Honest Story Behind Our Sourcing
If you've ever cracked open a powdered bone broth product and wondered why it smells a little off, mixes watery, or seems to do absolutely nothing despite the health claims printed on the label, the answer almost always starts with sourcing.
That's not a knock on the category. It's just the reality of an industry where "grass-fed" is a marketing term, supply chains are deliberately opaque, and the gap between what's on the label and what's in the jar is wider than most brands would like you to notice.
At Farmalogical, we built our bone broth blend around one core belief: the quality of what goes into your body is only as good as the integrity of the supply chain behind it. Here's what that actually means in practice, and why it's harder to get right than most brands let on.
The grass-fed, grass-finished problem
You've probably seen "grass-fed" on dozens of protein and collagen products by now. It sounds clean, natural, reassuring. Here's something the industry rarely talks about: in the United States, most "grass-fed" certified cattle never actually finish on grass.
This isn't speculation. It comes directly from cattle buyers who work with beef sourcing at scale. The common practice is to raise cattle on pasture, move them to a feedlot to fatten up quickly (which changes their fatty acid and nutrient profile significantly), and then return them to pasture just long enough to qualify for a certification label. It's legal. It's widespread. And it defeats the entire point of seeking out grass-fed nutrition in the first place.
Genuine, lifelong grass-fed, grass-finished beef, the kind where the animal eats only grass from birth to processing, is extremely difficult to scale in the United States. The economics of feedlot fattening are simply too attractive for most operations to resist.
So where does that leave you? Reading a label that says "grass-fed" and having very little way of knowing whether it actually means anything.
Why New Zealand changes everything
True grass-fed, grass-finished beef at scale really only exists consistently in one place: New Zealand.
New Zealand's climate, land, and agricultural tradition are uniquely suited to year-round pasture grazing. The country's beef industry was built on small family farms, not industrial feedlots. The supply chain model works fundamentally differently from what you'd find in North America: a meat processor sends a truck on a weekly circuit to each farm, the farmer decides which animals to sell that week, they're loaded and transported directly to the processing facility.
No detour to a feedlot. No finishing period on grain. Just pasture, to truck, to processing. Exactly the kind of short, clean supply chain that preserves the nutritional integrity of the animal from start to finish.
This is why we source from New Zealand. Not because it makes a better story, but because it's the only place in the world where genuinely grass-fed, grass-finished beef at the volume we need actually exists as a consistent, verifiable reality.
Traceability you can actually verify
Sourcing claims are easy to make. Proving them is another matter entirely.
New Zealand operates under the NAIT system (National Animal Identification and Tracing), a government-established program administered by New Zealand's veterinary authorities. Every box of ingredient we use carries a serial number that traces directly back to the farm of origin. This is a regulatory requirement built into New Zealand's agricultural infrastructure, not a marketing claim.
When we say we know where our bone broth comes from, we mean it in a specific, verifiable, traceable sense. That's a level of supply chain accountability that most supplement brands operating in the US simply cannot offer, because their supply chains weren't built with that kind of accountability in mind.
What makes our process different
Sourcing is only half the story. What happens to the bone broth after it's made is equally important, and this is where many products cut corners in ways that affect both nutrition and taste.
Freeze-dried, not dehydrated
Most powdered bone broths on the market are dehydrated, which requires high heat and often requires the addition of a binder, typically maltodextrin, to make the powder flow and mix properly. Maltodextrin is a filler. It dilutes the actual nutritional content per serving and adds unnecessary carbohydrates with no functional benefit.
Our bone broth is freeze-dried: a gentler, cold-based process that removes moisture without heat damage. No binders. No fillers. Just concentrated bone broth, exactly as it came out of the pot.
Freeze-drying is also why our bone broth doesn't have the heavy, funky aftertaste you might associate with some broth products. The volatile compounds responsible for off-flavors are removed during the freeze-drying process, leaving something that actually tastes like broth, clean, light, and genuinely pleasant.
Bones and cartilage, not hides
Here's something most collagen brands would rather you not think about: a significant portion of the collagen protein powders on the market, particularly Type I collagen, is sourced from tannery hides. That's the byproduct of leather processing, which involves a substantial cocktail of industrial chemicals.
Our bone broth is produced from meaty bones and cartilage: the joints, knuckles, and connective tissue that make a traditional bone broth what it is. No hides, no tannery byproducts. Just the parts of the animal that have been valued for their nutritional properties for centuries.
Cryomilled at -60°C
After freeze-drying, we use a proprietary cryomilling process, grinding at -60°C, which keeps heat-sensitive nutrients, peptides, and bioactive compounds fully intact through the milling stage. The result is up to 97% nutrient retention, compared to significantly lower figures for conventional heat-based processing.
That's not a rounding difference. It's the difference between a supplement that does something and one that doesn't.
What you're actually getting
To be specific about what's in every serving of Farmalogical Regenerative Bone Broth:
- Grass-fed and grass-finished, genuinely, not as a label
- Pasture-raised on New Zealand family farms
- Organic practices (certification in progress)
- Non-GMO
- rBST-free (no synthetic growth hormones)
- No antibiotics
- Full farm-level traceability via the NAIT system
- Freeze-dried and cryomilled for maximum nutrient retention
We're not the cheapest option on the market. We built Farmalogical because we wanted something we could stand behind completely, from the farm in New Zealand to the serving in your mug. If you care about sourcing as much as we do, we think you'll taste and feel the difference.
And if you want to understand what those nutrients are actually doing once they're in your body, we've written about that too. Bone broth and skin health, bone broth and gut health, because sourcing is only the beginning of the story.
About the Author
David Battisti, MScN
David handles all things science at Farmalogical, research, content, and everything in between. He holds a Master of Science in Nutrition from NUNM (National University of Natural Medicine), one of the leading naturopathic institutions in the country, and has been working in health and wellness for over a decade.
David came to nutrition the way most people do, through his own body. As a lifelong athlete competing in soccer, sprinting, ultra trail running, and bouldering, his interest in nutrition grew from a desire to optimize performance while managing chronic asthma and allergies. That personal context shapes the way he writes about supplements: mechanism-first, evidence-honest, and without the hype.
David has worked in the health and wellness industry for over a decade, has worked with brands including Keto Brainz and has helped numerous clients reach their nutrition goals through private practice.