Why does it come as a surprise to the beef industry that consumers are losing faith in products from the big packers?

Through a trade e-newsletter, I came across Tyson’s new Open Prairie Natural Angus branded beef, whose promise “is to produce wholesome beef the natural way”. 

We are obsessed with providing food that is as good as nature intended. We are devoted to our relationships with a passionate generation of farmers and ranchers who raise animals without added hormones or antibiotics while fulfilling an uncompromising commitment to quality and a healthy environment.

We are grateful for the land, and we’re here to pass along the best things it has to offer. We are committed to responsible management of our resources and are hopeful that our practices, from sustainable farming to smart packaging methods, will make a positive difference for years to come.

All this is obviously intended to give the impression of free-roaming cattle, sustainably produced by family farmers.  From the product specifications, however, the only real requirements that make this beef any different than generic are that is is nominally angus (i.e. black-hided) and that it received no antibiotics and apparently no hormone injections.  As far as I can see (and I have e-mailed Tyson for clarification, in case I am mistaken), there are no “sustainable farming” practices required.  In addition, while the cattle may be born and grown for part of their lives on farms and ranches (as are virtually all beef cattle), these cattle are finished in feedlots, just the same as most mainstream beef is.

Given the current structure of costs, subsidies and infrastructure, feedlot production is the cheapest way to produce beef.  My point is not that Tyson shouldn’t be selling feedlot-finished beef, natural or otherwise.  I resent the purposely misleading brand name and promotional material that implies that their feedlot beef is a viable (and lower price) alternative to truly pasture-raised beef produced by ranchers such as ourselves, for whom “respect for all life” and “sustainability” are more than just marketing gambits.

I often encounter reluctance to try local pastured meats (much less pay a premium price for them) because there is a general bias in this country that “grain fed” is higher quality.  I suspect most of Wild Type Ranch’s first-time customers buy our beef because of one or more of the following reasons; we’re local, no feedlots, no hormone implants, no routine antibiotics, compassionate animal care, environmental stewardship, grass/pastured meat health benefits.  Unless they’ve been referred by an existing customer, “quality” or “fantastic eating experience” isn’t usually mentioned.

I just returned from four days at the “Gourmet Beef on Grass III” conference. My head is swimming with ideas, inspiration and new questions.

The main focus of the conference was producing quality beef using sustainable methods.  It doesn’t happen without knowledge and planning,  but more and more ranchers are creating a “wow” eating experience for their customers.
Not all beef is created equal, however.  If you are a consumer, here’s the CLIF notes to getting good beef locally:

• Buy beef from someone who is knowledgeable about beef.  Great beef doesn’t just happen, it takes good management and good genetics.
• Ask what breed or kind of cattle are producing the beef.  Good beef is more likely to come from English breeds, which include Angus, Red Angus, Devon, Lowline, Hereford, Dexter and Shorthorn.
• Ask how old the cattle are when they are harvested.  Good beef comes from cattle that grow at a reasonably steady rate.  If the beef is from animals older than about 30 months,the flavor MAY be stronger than you like, and the meat is less likely to be well-marbled and tender.
• Ask if the producer has taste-tested steaks from the beef they are selling, or otherwise guaranteed tenderness.
• Ask for a guarantee (replacement or refund) on your beef.
• Pay attention to the brand you are buying.  Find beef you like and stick to that producer or brand. (then you won’t have to ask these questions each time!)

Great beef is out there, and more and more ranchers are producing it.  At this conference, we scientifically tested the tenderness of 12 different steaks from different producers (including 3 of ours).  All twelve scored in the “tender” category.  I challenge anyone to buy steaks from the regular meat case at twelve grocery stores that would score tender 12 /12 times.

Tenderness, in particular, is something someone growing cattle for the feedlot is not paid for, so will not breed into their cattle.  When you buy direct from the rancher, however, it is among our primary quality concerns.  That’s why our ranch has a strict policy of “if it’s not tender and juicy, we don’t sell it”.  We’re not alone among local brands.

If you haven’t ventured into the land of locally produced, pastured meat, take your CLIF notes, find yourself a good producer and get ready to spoil yourself for life.

This is a post that’s been begging to be written ever since the NY Times article came out.  In fact, I could write several posts, but I’ll restrain myself.

Ground beef is the protein backbone of the American diet.  For such a food staple, people are surprisingly ignorant about how it is processed.  Even Chowhound admitted surprise that the hamburger patties in the article were formed from a number of sources, including fat trim and scraps.  The ground beef you typically buy (unless you typically buy locally from a known source) is blended from multiple slaughter facilities, and is primarily the fat and scrap trim and/or cull cows (primarily dairy) and bulls.  The time between when the trim is cut and the beef is ground is typically several days.  Carcasses in most plants are not tested for contaminants (such as E coli), only the beef after its ground.

As a youngster eating homegrown beef, I remember tasting the meatloaf mix before it went into the oven.  It would be insane to do so with typical commercially available ground beef.  Even then, I was taking some risks, but probably less than eating at a typical buffet line.

This year our ranch will sell between 15,000 and 20,000 pounds of packaged beef, about 40% of that in the form of ground beef, hamburger patties or chili beef.  Each package is from a single animal, with a known health history and slaughter date (not to mention pedigree and name), ground and frozen on the day the carcass is cut.  We sell beef from pedigreed Angus stock, completely raised on pasture, no hormone implants or routine antibiotics, on a ranch dedicated to humane animal treatment and environmental stewardship.  Our retail price for a single pound is $5.00; for 10-packs it’s $38.00.  We charge significantly less to wholesale outlets, restaurants and institutions.

Yet, we still struggle to find outlets for our beef.  The grocery chains typically are not anxious to deal with a local supplier for a single food item.  They also want to sell fresh product, delivered weekly, rather than the frozen beef we sell, which is harvested every 2-3 weeks.  Restaurants are struggling with their margins, and even at prices near-zero-profit margins for us, we still are more expensive than mass-market ground beef.  We can’t compete with 60 cents/lb trimmings and $1.20/lb “recovered lean” from melted fat trim (main components of the Cargill burger in the article).

Which points out one of the conundrums of our food system.  Mass production, utilizing discarded resources (cull animals and trim), centralized processing and distribution all lower food prices.  Add on the convenience factor of dealing in large volumes, and beef like ours hardly stands a chance.  Given information and a choice, at equal prices, and equal availability., I like to think a majority of consumers would choose a product similar to our Wild Type Ranch beef.  I’m thankful to all my customers who are willing to go the extra mile (sometimes literally) to do so.

From my very first post, I’ve maintained that local/alternative/progressive or whatever label you want to use is not an either/or choice for American Agriculture. Deputy Secretary of Ag, Kathleen Merrigan, said it very eloquently and completely yesterday as she discussed the KYF2 (Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food) program more in-depth.

Our food production and distribution system has some serious flaws, but it also has some parts that work pretty well.  Not everyone can afford $4-$5/lb chicken.  I sometimes wax evangelical on food-system reform, but I still believe it’s got to work into the system, not wholesale replace it.  We (farmers) can’t see each other as enemies, just because we use different practices.  All farmers ARE rock stars.  Thanks deputy secretary Merrigan

Other posts on the subject:

Living between Sesame Street and the Meatrix

Local Meat, friend or foe to animal agriculture?

What should we eat, and how should it be produced?

Jenny at Nourished Kitchen commented that enjoying fruits and veggies is the key to getting kids to eat them and eat healthier.  She says it as well or better than I could.  I especially enjoyed her comments about the long-term effect on food preferences of eating a varied diet when breastfeeding.

I am lucky to have boys with broad tastes and an appreciation for good nutrition.  Two things I think have helped immensely:
First, the family garden:    My boys help plan the garden, choosing species and varieties they want to eat.  Our garden time is treated as special time with Mom, not a chore.  Sure, they might not always be the most help, but hearing them have adventures as they pull paths through the weeds to rescue “John Porter” (a tomato variety) is better than hired help any day.   Choosing varieties such as purple carrots, purple beans and red lettuce, growing and harvesting make eating them a celebration, not a chore.  Add in having them help cook it, and you’ve made huge strides in expanding their palate.

Second, a supportive school program.  The Montessori school they attended for the past three years made lunch part of the curriculum.  It was delightful to have my then-5-year old lecture me about needing to have fresh vegetables, not canned for dinner.  They are now in public school, they have a great perspective on the school lunch menu.  They will often choose to take their lunch based on what they helped prepare or on the “junkiness” of the school food.  I realize I am indeed lucky to have children opt for homemade meatloaf over the school corndog and tater tots.

Selling at the three local farmer’s markets is usually a high point of my week.  After three years, Wild Type Ranch has a solid customer base.  It’s like catching up with friends, as I ask about how the roast turned out that they cooked for visiting family, how the steaks cooked for the hot date, or about someone’s ailing wife who has been absent for a few weeks.

Even though each of my markets (Sun City, Georgetown and the Vineyard at Florence) is only open a few hours, participating in a market day is pretty much a whole-day event.  There is the 90 minute drive each way to the market, an hour to set up and 30 minutes to take down, not to mention the packing and unpacking back at the ranch.   Even the shortest market is an 7 hour commitment.

Lately, attendance at the markets has been dismal.  Not just for me, but for all the vendors. It’s a chicken-and-egg problem, if you’ll pardon the pun.  Taking 7 or 8 hours out of a day and $25 worth of gas to sell $75 worth of beef (that probably cost $50 to produce) is not a sustainable business plan.  So, fewer vendors show up.  Less vendors, less variety and less reason for the customers to show up.

A farmer’s market really is a community function, and it takes the community to make it function.  One of the markets in which I participate is a brand-new market.  The vendors there attend, knowing that each week will likely be a wash.  We do so as an investment in the future of the market.

If you enjoy the occasional visit to the local market, make it a point to become a regular.  The benefits reach far beyond your plate.

A new USDA initiative was recently launched (thanks, SlashFood) designed to reconnect consumers with their food and to stimulate local food economies. The $65 million dollar “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” program aims to break down some of the barriers that keep local food systems from thriving.

It’s great to see the USDA getting involved in embracing local food, rather than seeing it as a threat.   Wild Type Ranch produces pastured beef to sell locally, but half of our business is raising top-quality breeding stock, most of which is used as parents of more conventionally-produced beef.   I often feel that I’m one of the few who don’t see the two businesses as antagonistic.

I hear both sides of this issue, at the farmer’s market, at cattle sales and around town.  Getting consumers in touch with producers has got to help with understanding some of the conventional production systems that sometimes unfairly come under criticism.  Having the USDA embrace local food economies has got to help conventional agriculture see that anything that promotes ag, helps keep farmers on the land and farming and educates consumers is good for all agriculture.

Kudos, USDA!

About six weeks ago, Wild Type Ranch (our family business) harvested its first European-style, pasture-raised, milk-and-grass-fed veal.  It’s been a lesson in the workings of ag-bureauracracy.

99% or more of the veal harvested in this country is “milk-fed veal”, meaning it is primarily from dairy bull calves removed from the cow at birth, fed only milk replacer (or sometimes milk) and confined.  This produces the very pale, very tender veal Americans have come to expect. 

Pastured veal is left on its mother and is free to graze alongside her in the pasture up to the point of harvest.  Pastured veal is darker and has more flavor than confinement veal, but is still very sweet in flavor and very tender.  The first of our own veal loin chops we tasted were some of the best, most elegant meat I’ve ever had.

For our first harvest, I was told by our local inspector (with whom I have a positive relationship) that I could not use the word “veal” to label the cuts on the package. The chief inspector for the state said veal had could not be raised on pasture, based on the FSIS FAQ on veal, which talks only about the commonly available veal.  Never mind that the USDA specifially defines 4 classes of veal, including “non-special fed veal” that includes pasture-raised.  So, that first harvest got labelled “ground beef”, “beef cutlets”, etc.  At each farmer’s market I had to explain to each customer buying the veal that it really was veal, and that they should write on the label (I’m technically not allowed to add anything to the approved label), to make sure they didn’t get it mixed up with their beef.

Not willing to give up, I persevered and ended up speaking to a woman in D.C. at FSIS.  As it turns out, FSIS has approved a national label for Strauss Free-Raised veal, which is very similar to ours.  She kindly backed up my assertion that our pre-weaned calves were indeed veal.  I thought my problems were solved.

Round 3:  I have submitted my “production protocol” that documents our veal is veal and have been granted permission to use veal cut names on the label.  The catch:  Now that it is veal, I can no longer use my “Wild Type Ranch pasture-raised natural Angus beef” label.  The reasoning: This is veal, so it can’t be beef.  So, now I have to go through the time and expense of designing, submitting for approval and printing a new label. 

What was beef 6 weeks ago because it wasn’t veal now isn’t beef because it is veal.

In another 6 weeks, maybe I’ll get to label it as such.

See our previous post on veal for background information. 

The latest E. coli-related beef recall has prompted me to stop unpacking moving boxes long enough to post.  Obama Foodarama is urging people to “avoid beef like the plague“, pointing out that the recall is voluntary, so there is no guarantee that the recalled beef is actually being pulled from the shelves.  On top of that, of course, is the issue of traceability and identifying exactly where all the contaminated beef ended up.   The identifying establishment ID and processing time stamp do not usually appear on the final consumer package in ground beef and most individual cuts, and certainly not in any cooked products. 

There’s no reason to avoid beef if you know your producer, who knows the date, time, steer and processor from which the ground beef came.

The inside of a muscle or cut of beef is relatively sterile.  It’s only the surface that typically harbors bacteria.  Ground beef is particularly susceptible to food safety issues and recalls for a couple of reasons.    In ground beef, any bacteria on the surface of whatever is being ground gets thoroughly mixed in during the grinding process.  Part of what goes into ground beef tends to be scraps and trimmings, which have lots of surface area and have been handled more than say, a rump roast.   In addition, most ground beef is ground in batches containing meat or trimmings from a large number of cows.  More cows = more chance that one of them will be contaminated. 

And to add a final couple risk factors:  Ground beef is often not ground at the site where the animals are slaughtered, but at a secondary processing plant, further obfuscating the trail to the source.  Even in the few grocery stores that grind their own ground beef, it is a common practice to grind cuts that are nearing their “use by” date.

BUT, rather than go without your hamburger on the 4th of July, you can minimize your risk by purchasing ground beef through local producers.  Our own Wild Type Ranch ground beef, for instance, is ground from a single animal and is packaged and frozen within a short time of its being cut from the side of beef.  When we sell a package of ground beef, we know which animal it came from, when it was processed (and can usually tell you its name and pedigree, if you ask).  This is fairly typical among the producers you meet at the local farmer’s market, or through Local Harvest or Eat Wild.   

Ground beef produced like we do ours does not have that kind of icky smell (reminds me of sour feet).  I was so sensitive to that smell after growing up on home-grown beef that I became a vegetarian while I was away at college!  And the flavor is as different from grocery store ground beef as a homegrown tomato is from a grocery store tomato.

If you can’t get to the farmer’s market, the next best alternative is to purchase roasts (chuck, rump, etc) and grind them yourself using a grinder attachment on your mixer.

Functional Foods are defined as foods that, in addition to nutrition, offer distinct health benefits.

The term usually brings to mind “added” features, such as enrichment with probiotics, omega-3’s, or other components that are added through processing.

I was pleased to see that 4 of the 5 “best functional foods” listed by the New York Dietetic Association are whole, unprocessed and readily available.   Pro-biotic enhanced yogurt was the only processed food to make the top 5, and it came in at number 5.   As an added benefit, they all are on my list of favorite foods!

The other foods were

Number 1:  Salmon (Omega-3 content for heart and brain health)

Number 2:  Whole-grain Oatmeal (fiber for digestive health and lowering risk of heart disease, cholesterol, diabetes and cancer)

Number 3: Blueberries (antioxidants for protection against free radicals and anti-aging)

Number 4:  Low-fat milk (high levels of calcium and vitamin D for strong bones, regulating blood pressure and heart rate)

Looks like a breakfast of oatmeal cooked in milk and topped with blueberries, with a yogurt lunch and salmon for supper is a top rate menu for the day!