There are surprisingly few institutional practices that rely on promises and truth. There’s the Boy or Girl Scouts. The Pledge of Allegiance. Marriage. But a company making a pledge to their consumers? That just doesn’t happen. Then again, nothing EPIC Provisions does is considered normal by typical business standards.That’s why we’re proud to formally announce a monumental sourcing and transparency breakthrough that will shape the greater food industry for years to come: the EPIC Honesty Pledge.

Food sourcing information can be complicated—oftentimes, deliberately. But we’re bucking that trend. We’re choosing to be simple, upfront, and honest about where we get the animals to create our products, how they’re treated, and what they consume. And perhaps most importantly, where we have room to improve. In creating this living monument of honesty and fair treatment of consumers, we have laid the foundation to continue injecting hope and truth in a realm of business known all too often for murky, inaccessible, and misleading information. Besides, it’s never a good sign if a company has something to hide.

We created our Honesty Pledge for a couple different reasons. The first one is obvious: we’re damn proud of the places we source our animals from, and are more than confident we get our animals from the best in the business. To put it mildly, we’re incredibly fortunate to have such hard-working, ethical partners on board with daring initiatives like our Whole Animal Project and regenerative agriculture mission. But the second reason might be more important. We want to shine a light on our supply chain and help consumers understand how we’re pushing the massive meat industry to improve its standards. Do we still need need to improve our sourcing for certain categories? Absolutely. But are we confident our gold standard supply chains are growing by the day and pushing other producers to do better? You bet your ass. In the end, though, we’ll only achieve our goals if consumers are given the information and the opportunity to support the companies that do things right. It’s gotta start somewhere.

This wasn’t an easy feat. We tasked our Director of Operations, Kirk Blanchard, with tracking down every single EPIC sourcing statistic he could muster. Lucky for us, Kirk’s an overachiever. The end result of his tireless work alongside our founders, particularly Katie Forrest, is our animal-by-animal sourcing library, which details everything we know about the animals found in our products. And although not every aspect of our supply chain is flawless, the numbers are real. What you see truly is what you get—and they’re improving with every step we take.

Let’s face it: we aren’t perfect. Building out extensive supply chains and forging relationships with responsible ranchers takes time. But we couldn’t be more excited about where we are and where we’re headed. Our sourcing standards are higher than anyone else in this industry, and that’s not stopping us from pushing on towards greater heights. We’re going to keep the pedal to the metal and fighting for better business practices in every sector of our industry. Because in the end, transparency and honesty aren’t just industry ideals—they’re necessities for a healthy society.