The meat you eat, is it time to partner with a landowner?
 

Recently, the national retail food-marketing platform has undergone a cause and effect transformation, fueled in part, by informed consumer demand for fresher and healthier food options. Arguably, consumer awareness is in response to the 24/7 format of chef /doctor hybrid cooking shows focusing on clued-up healthy food choices. Mediatized to enlist viewers, public concern is apprehensive over the supply chain related to food safety, health, and medical issues as they correlate to the impact of industrialized farming methods maximizing production through genetic engineering and pharmacological processes as both unhealthy for human consumption, and not sustainable.

Supporting factors effecting consumer reaction are the processes employed in the harvest and storage system consequences utilized in the food chain after harvest. In the week ending January 08, 2015 the USDA accounted for the following: http://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/sj_ls711.txt

Just four companies, combined, processed the mean 697.8 million poundage of meat slaughtered. They handled 52% of the beef (321.2lbs), 51% of the pork (373.2lbs), and 50% of the poultry market in just 22 plants, averaging 231K animals per plant, with 57.29 animals per second processed. The USDA inspects less than 1% of all meat products. Sanitation, e-coli, and salmonella bacteria concerns are driving visceral consumer reaction to resource locally.

Bison
 

Bison don't count for inspections.

Maybe we need to get a few of them.

Going to shoot a wild boar or sow in March- Homemade sausage time!.

lol There's a big herd of those things out here. I see 'em every time I go to the library.

You've got a library?

TR

6-month old Shotgun News in the outhouse! :p

That is not the sight I had in mind. Dusty the librarian. Ugh.:eek:

lol Mrs. Dusty can read.

Way down here in little 'ole NZ our family has been focused on eating healthy, fresh, and as local as we can for a long time.

Our #1 concern after reading how China(a huge global source of processed, packaged, and canned foods) is going thru Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" meets Bladerunner, we don't knowingly let ANY foodstuffs from China in our house or in our children's stomachs.

You might be surprised at how hard that can be.

Food labeling can be intentionally deceptive and misleading.

We've learned that repeatedly just with peanut butter for our oldest.

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The other thing that gets me is only 22 plants processing half the protein consumed in the US.

I'd be worried not just about USDA, but external threat assessment as well.

I've found a local farm that raises grass-fed, grass-finished Black Angus, then sells it from a shop on-site. For New Years dinner, I prepared a standing rib-roast that I purchased there... It was AMAZING.

USDA labeling means exactly squat given the lack of real inspections and regulations you can drive a truck through... "Buyer beware" the American way.

Oh yes they are...... just about any animal consumed that is "farm raised" (not wild) can and will be inspected. The bison you see at your grocery store has most likely been processed at a USDA inspected plant. Stores will not sell it otherwise, remember, this is America, we sue each other for everything. Now if you purchase a bison direct from the farm then no, there will be no inspection.

I also think what that poundage means is that our supply of farm raised beef/pork is doing very well. Our pork is so clean that the USDA lowered the cooking temp to 140 degrees, you can now eat pink pork.

And unless you're eating med rare or beef tartare regularly I would not worry about e-coli.

I live in cattle country, and a large percentage of the locals buy either 1/2 a beef or more at a time. Some raise their own, others hook up with a farmer/neighbor who has some pasture. They call the local locker plant, and set up everything from pickup to hanging time to how and which cuts are to be made.

The difference in taste is significant. Also, being able to tell the locker plant how long to hang the beef gets you a much more tender steak than what you might purchase at a supermarket.

Some of the locals have started raising buffalo as livestock. They do really well on a diet of grass only.

My uncle always said, "I'll never eat a cow I've not looked in the eye." And has stated similar sentiment about the taste/tenderness of the meat he gets from his own animals compared to that bought at the supermarket (to which he said, "I made that mistake once - never again.")

More praise for the small farmer
 

We purchase many pork products direct from the farm. A brother and sister run the operation and invite you to inspect anything on the farm that you wish.

You pull in - drive a half mile or so and turn the corner and there are literally hundreds of hogs walking around the farm.

The small processing facility (the cutting, trimming, salting portion) is remarkably clean considering the 4-8 folks working at a time and the huge slabs and cuts that they work on. The farms sells mostly wholesale (they supply to WholeFoods Market) but allows walk-in customers to review the white board for what is available that day (snout to tail) they smoke to order. Better to call ahead to see what they have. It feels good to pay cash and hand the money directly to that hard working farmer. Nice folks. Great products.

I'll also reinforce the observation that flavor and tenderness of this small farm's product is superior to most supermarket pork.

You actually get to see the hogs? In Iowa we only get to smell them. :D Oh for the days of free range pigs.