Many farmers who produce high-quality products do not use market mechanisms that would allow them to differentiate their products and take the fullest advantage of price premiums. This paper describes a pilot program to develop and commercialize an origin-based collective brand for very high quality US beef. We hypothesized that, by using specific market mechanisms to differentiate the beef, cattle producers might be able to capture a greater share of price premiums often captured elsewhere in the marketing channel. Specifically, the pilot program analyzed the feasibility of two mechanisms for differentiating and marketing beef: a certification mark and a USDA Process Verification Program. The research indicates that small producers groups could reasonably protect high-quality products with a certification mark but large groups would be required to justify the high costs of a process verification.