Make Mine Rare

Choosing your porterhouse steak can be tough these days. So here's a quick primer to help you find the beef:

All-natural. There's no official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) standard regulating the use of this term.

Certified Black Angus. Industry sets the definition to help guarantee consistent taste. USDA enforces the definition, which includes the cattle's color, the marbling of its meat, neck size, age and more.

Certified organic . It can take five to seven years for ranches to qualify for this designation, making this beef some of the priciest. Cows must be fed certified organic feed or grass for the last three months of their pregnancy. Calves can eat only certified organic food. No hormones or antibiotics allowed. No feeding them plastic pellets for roughage. One hundred percent organic hamburger means all organic meat. "Made with organic meat" means the meat is organic, but other ingredients in the food may not be.

Free-range. No USDA definition exists yet, but the department announced in May that it intends to draft a standard for free-range beef and noted that not all free-range cattle will be solely grass-fed.

Grass-fed. Proposed USDA standard calls for these cattle to receive 99 percent of their food (after weaning) from grass. Also called "grass-finished" beef.

Standard. Nearly all cattle is grass-fed until about two months before slaughter, when they go to feedlots to consume corn, barley or other grains. Grain helps change fat from yellow to white and adds marbling. Antibiotics and hormones may also be used.

-- Sally Squires