As farmer's we are curious about how
other farmers do their work. When we take a drive we always crane our
necks as we pass other farms. Some we want to emulate, the ones that have
vibrant, bright green grass and healthy animals. Others make us
cringe, those are the ones where the animals are up to their knees in mud and
feces, and the pigs are eating doughnuts.
We sell "pasture-raised"
meats and eggs. In the past several years, the term "pasture-raised"
has become increasingly popular. Unfortunately, both the green-grass-farm and
the poo-doughnut-farm described above can be marketed as
"pasture-raised." Right now there are no qualifications that must be
met in order to call one's product "pasture-raised." We're not huge
fans of government regulation, and jargon isn't particularly important to us.
However, as a farmer who sells "pasture-raised"
meats, I feel I owe it to you (as a consumer) to tell you that
not all pastures are created equal. In my opinion, calling an animal raised
on baked goods in a sloppy poo mess of a field
"pasture-raised" is a stretch (at best). People say "know
your farmer," which is great, but I say take it further and know your
farmers' pasture. I know it's annoying, and that it would be much easier to
pick up any old package of meat labeled "pasture-raised," but
next time you're on a drive start craning your neck to check out those pastures
on the way by. Buy from the farms whose animals are grazing on grass, not
turds, and you'll get a tastier, healthier piece of meat, as well as supporting
a farmer who takes the time to care for his/her animals and land.
 |
| In case you hadn't guessed...ours is the green grass kind of farm. |
I could go on and on about this, but
fortunately Twilight Greenaway already
has in this article, which is worth reading:
‘Pasture-Raised’: Can This Under-the-Radar Food Label
Go Legit?
As the
beyond-organic term becomes more popular,
concerns
arise about maintaining its true meaning.
April 5, 2013
Visitng the pasture-raised tukrey
at Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm. (Photo: The Washington
Post/Getty Images)
“Pasture-raised.” In recent years
these descriptive, evocative words have become synonymous with the real thing:
Meat and eggs produced on open fields, generally at a scale that is both humane
and ecologically friendly. In other words, it has become the
anti-factory-farming label, more likely to show up in places like farmers
markets and websites advertising animal shares and meat CSAs.
And when it comes to meat, some
producers (and their customers) see “pasture-raised” as a step beyond organic.
That designation has some standards in place for the animals’ access to the
outdoors, but organically raised livestock still often relies heavily on
grain-based feed rather than grass and the other wild foods (and bugs) found on
open pasture.
Pasture-raised has gone hand-in-hand
with practices that are transparent and integrity-filled since 1996, when Joel Salatin used the term in his book Pastured
Poultry Profits. But here’s the catch: it may not always. “Pasture-raised”
has no rules, no formal definition, no regulation, and therefore no enforcement
behind it. And just like “free range,” a term which likely started out as a
legitimate claim and now has come to mean very little, “pasture-raised” may be
on the verge of mass appeal—and the eventual dilution that comes with it.
In fact, as “pasture-raised” and its
cousin “pastured” begin appearing in big grocery stores, on everything from
meat to milk and egg cartons, it’s already beginning to raise a number of
complicated questions.
Marilyn Noble at the American Grassfed Association admits that a
great deal of the meat she buys directly from the local farmers in her area is
labeled “pasture-raised” —especially if it’s chicken or pork, which cannot
technically be grassfed (a term that
only applies to ruminant animals, such as cows, sheep, and bison). But it’s the
relationships she has with farmers—and the transparency that allows—rather than
the label that keeps her coming back.
“If you see grassfed on a label,” she adds, “it means that the animals were
fed nothing but grass and forage from weaning to harvest. And usually there’s
been no confinement at any point during their lives. It’s a very broad
definition, but if you see it on a label, you know it’s been approved by The Food
Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS)
and has meaning behind it. Pasture-raised means whatever the person using it
wants it to mean.”
Andrew Gunther, Program Director of
the third-party certifier Animal
Welfare Approved, agrees.
“The problem with ‘pastured’ and
‘pasture-raised’ is that they’re very bucolic. Someone comes up with a nice
phrase to evoke a feeling in their production system, and someone else will
come along and steal it.”
Case in point? The NatureRaised line that Tyson
Foods plans to release this month. The new antibiotic-free product can be seen
as a step in the right direction for the chicken giant, but it’s very likely
the birds are raised a very long way from anything Nobel or Gunther would
recognize as pasture.
“The [pasture-raised] brand has been
below the radar,” says Gunther, “and it’s beginning to be on more people’s
radars. But if people want to use it with depth and meaning, they have to
protect it.” And that, he adds, can only happen by defining it on a formal
level—and enforcing that definition.
Kelley Escobedo,
who co-owns South Texas Heritage Pork with her husband, Mark,
uses the term to describe her products. “I tell people to look for
pasture-raised, but I also tell them to get to know your farmer, because I’ve
seen farmers use that term very loosely,” she says.
And although the Escobedos started farming—like many do—so they
could do things their way, she also now recognizes the value of formalizing
(and regulating) the labels we put on our food.
That said, it would be especially
tough to regulate a term like pasture-raised, because, as Escobedo puts it, “different farmers are
working with so many different environments and conditions. What if it’s
snowing for a big part of the year? And animals being outside is less healthy
for them?” On the other hand, farming has made her a very savvy shopper.
“When I look at this as a consumer,
I don’t want to just see a pretty pictures of pastures. I want to know how the
animals are actually are raised. So if there was a way to incorporate the
terminology around pasture into some kind of official labeling, it would help
consumers a lot.”
Just to make things extra confusing,
meat, eggs, and dairy producers all appear to have different uses for the term
pasture-raised. In the case of eggs, Vital Farms is working to define it as its
corporate brand on their own terms. A relatively new national company, Vital
appears to be genuinely pushing the limits of what a nationwide egg brand can
do by working with a number of smaller farms and holding up a stringent-sounding
set of pasture standards, and the use of certified-organic feed. The down side?
An uninformed consumer might take the answer to the question “What is
pasture-raising?” on their Frequently Asked Questions page to apply to all
foods made by companies that make that claim. And, again, that opens up the
market to imposters and opportunists
looking to get in on the latest buzzword.
In the case of dairy, the national
co-op-based brand Organic Valley, has recently begun using the term
“pasture-raised” on some of their products and in their marketing materials. However, according to Eric Snowdeal, Organic Valley’s Milk and Cream
Product Manager, the company sees “pasture-raised” as applying to all organic
milk.
According to Snowdeal, Organic Valley was instrumental in pushing for the
current organic milk pasture guidelines, which were decided on back in 2010, and require that
all organic-milk-producing cows spend at least 120 days of the year grazing on
pasture, and get at least 30 percent of their remaining food from pasture (in
the form of hay or silage). Organic Valley has heavily embraced pastoral
imagery and much of their packaging is now covered with cows, grass, and happy
farmers.
“Grazing and pasturing is a
fundamental principle of organic farming,” says Snowdeal.
“It’s inherently different from non-organic milk—and that’s what we want to
communicate to people.” And although many of Organic Valley’s cows live in
places where they can graze for an even larger portion of the year, and the
company prides itselves on going above
and beyond that standard, Snowdeal says
he wouldn’t be bothered if another big brand, like say Horizon, started using
“pasture-raised” too. “That could be a raised boats for everyone kind of
thing,” he says.
Related Gallery
Twilight Greenaway is
an Oakland-based freelancer who has been writing and editing for the web since
2000. Her articles about food and farming has appeared in the New York Times, the Bay Citizen, Smithsonian.com,
Civil Eats, and on Grist, where she served as the food editor
from 2011-2012. @twyspy | TakePart.com
·
To see the article where I
found it go to:
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