Category Archives: Truth in Eating

Chinese Chicken?

As the farm-communications-personnel-person, I get LOTS of emails. One of those I received recently was introducing a business that offers the service of processing raw chicken into value-added, fully-cooked, ready-for-use products. Things like shredded or diced chicken; fried chicken legs or wings; filleted chicken breast; popcorn chicken and chicken nuggets.

OK, so what’s wrong with that?

Well, the business is based in China. And it reveals a very dirty secret that most Americans don’t know about. Six years ago, the USDA cleared the way for American-grown poultry products to be shipped all the way to China to be cooked and processed, and then shipped back to be sold in the US market.

How on earth they do it at a profit—that I cannot tell you. I guess some magic tricks are real!

But perhaps the most frightening thing about this whole ordeal is that you cannot know if this is the chicken you’re eating… unless you buy it directly from the source.

There’s a loophole, you see. Actually, it’s not really even a loophole. It’s a word game. Who could argue that this wasn’t a Product of USA, after all? It originated in the USA. No matter where it stopped and was processed in between, it did start as a USA poultry product. And so it can still be labeled as such when it’s ready to sell, even though the vast majority of American consumers would NOT agree that this is equivalent to chicken raised AND processed here in the USA.

(I know it’s hard to imagine anything worse than Chinese-processed chicken, but things are actually worse than that for beef, particularly grass-fed beef, which can be grown and slaughtered overseas, but as long as a little bit of packaging happens in a USDA plant, it can then be relabeled as “Product of USA.” It is estimated that as much as 80% of the grass-fed beef available through commercial outlets is imported, but a lot of it has a “Product of USA” stamp anyway. But that’s for another article…)

Yep. The USDA “affirms the equivalence” of processing plants in the People’s Republic. No further labeling is needed. It’s “the same” as USA-processed poultry. Hmph.

Sure, there are standards. There’s even some “periodic” pathogen testing, thank goodness! But we all know, deep down, no matter how much cheaper it is to have American chicken processed in China… something is seriously wrong with our food system if that’s what we’re doing.

The cure?

Find a good farmer. Just like you need a good mechanic, a good lawyer, a good CPA, a good doctor. Why would you willingly pay into a system that routinely cheats and deceives you? Would you keep going back to the mechanic who fills your car with crummy, tainted fluids instead of the stuff that is going to make your car last year after year? You’d be out of your mind if you let your mechanic treat you that way, no matter how little he charged you for his “services!” Or any other professional that is providing you with a life-giving service. So should it go with your food. You need a farmer you can trust and ask questions to!

Next time I want to tell you about Chinese pork… My, oh, my is it interesting!

When Natural Becomes Unnatural

So when does Natural become Unnatural?

One practically-unknown practice is egg yolk color enhancement. There is a product out there that is sold in much the same way as house paint. The farmer can get a little book of “chips,” and decide precisely which shade of yellow-orange he wants his eggs to be. He then calculates the amount of the powder he needs to add to the feed. Voila! Beautiful, appealing, golden yolks.

I think we could all agree that THAT is unnatural.

But what about “natural” methods of color enhancement? Some enhancement could be considered incidental and unintentional. For example, feeding yellow corn instead of white corn will impart an orange hue to the yolks… naturally? Sure. The chickens need to eat some carbohydrates. Corn is actually a pretty decent choice (assuming it’s not genetically modified!). If it happens to be yellow, the chicken can’t help but pick up those beta carotenes. It’s how she was designed.

But what about non-nutritive natural products that are added *just* to enhance color. That’s the only reason they’re there. Is that “natural?” A common practice is calendula petals. AKA Marigolds. Well, flowers are surely natural! The yellow in the flower ends up as the yellow in the yolk. Is it harmful? Maybe not. But is it NATURAL?

We have to ask … why? Why do we need to add that? Consumers are expecting a nice golden hue, and you even hear it said that the darker the yolk, the healthier the hen.

But isn’t that just a little like having an athlete on steroids? He couldn’t really do that without the crutch. It’s not natural strength. It’s artificial. Even if it’s a “natural” substance making things so.

So what about Shady Grove Ranch? Well, if you’ve been buying eggs from us for a while, you might remember that time a few years ago that it rained cats and dogs and maybe some elephants and hippos, too, and our egg-mobile got stuck on the downhill side of a levee that was bursting at the seams with overflowing pond water. The egg-mobile got stuck deep in mud, and the tractor with it. I think there may even have been a second tractor involved!

We finally had to just wait until the ground dried up to move the egg house. So the chickens ran out of live vegetation for a time. And the yolks told the story. They got quite pale that season. We tried to explain to our customers. We were and still are rather small, so we were able to speak directly with our customers about the issue, and they were generally glad to continue buying in spite of the lighter yellow they were seeing.

Where does that hue really come from, anyway? It’s supposed to come from the green pigment in live grasses! Anyone familiar with real pasture-raised eggs knows the richness of color they can see in springtime, but also the variation in color that is associated with natural husbandry.

That’s the story this photo tells. Here are 3 eggs, collected on the same day, from our two active flocks of laying hens.

That’s quite a difference in color, if you ask me! Maybe one of those chickens deserves a promotion for her go-get-em attitude. But I’d take a real pasture-raised egg, light yellow or otherwise, over an artificially-colored commercial egg any day.

Eggs are a little tight this season, but production is rising daily with the longer days. I’ve just replenished the online store inventory, and we’ll be here at the ranch all week, including Saturday, if you’d like to make a trip to the farm to stock up. We’ve got lots of other good stuff in stock, too!

Thanks for reading!

Jerica

Define Your Terms

Where Do Grass-fed Cows Come From?

No matter how badly you may want to farm, everyone knows cows don’t appear out of thin air—you have to buy seed stock from someone who’s already doing it. In our quest to continue expanding our beef herd, we’ve “shopped” around for cattle. Some of the herds we considered were as far away as Wisconsin, some were way down in central Texas, some were in Missouri or Alabama or Arkansas or Oklahoma, and some were scattered around East Texas, and of course, the closer to us we could buy, the better.

I can tell you first hand—cow-shopping is not like car-shopping or house-shopping. The cows keep making more cows just like them, so whatever characteristics they start out with, the babies will have also. With a car or house, if something doesn’t work right, you can just fix or replace the quirky parts. But you can’t change genetics, so if you buy a cow that’s not a good fit for your climate or operation, it’s just going to go downhill from that point.

Why are good genetics important?

Well, when it comes to cows, grain-feeding is a type of crutch. If a cow is “nice and fat,” in the dead of winter or in the heat of summer, if she’s been supplemented with grain, it’s very likely she will always need to be supplemented with grain in order to stay fat and healthy through the tough times of year. The benefits of really-grass-fed beef are too extensive to deal with in this post, so let’s just assume we’re wanting truly all-grass-fed beef that’s grass-fed all year long.

That’s where defining one’s terms comes into play.

On more than one occasion, even right here in East Texas, we’ve visited operations that, on the phone, assured us that they were all-grass, nice fat cows, very healthy, very clean.

What you’re about to read is exactly why you need to go visit the farm you buy from, at least once, and ask LOTS of questions.

We went to visit one farm, not too far from us, that had been recommended by the friend of a colleague. The owner drove us out to the field in his truck, and we were immediately suspicious of his claims to “grass-fed.” There were lots of trough structures around, and hardly any healthy pasture, in spite of the wet year and the not-too-hot temperatures up to that time. It was a large field, and when we finally found the yearlings, they came over to the truck, curious and searching.

Cattle are not particularly curious animals. Not like chickens or cats. They don’t come up to vehicles unless they are accustomed to doing so. Unless something has lured them. Unless they’re expecting a treat. That was our first clue. The cows were WAY too excited to see us.

We asked a few more questions. The truth finally came out. “Well, we do feed them cubes sometimes.”

How often?

“Well, just when we need to move them.”

Ok, so how often?

“Uh, just about every day.”

Oh. Every day. Every day? Our definition of grass-fed was clearly different than this man’s.

We drove a little farther in search of his breeding herd.

What’s that big tub over there?

“Oh, that’s just fly control we put out this time of year.”

Do all the cows get it?

“Well, no, just the yearlings.”

What’s in it?

“Oh, just a little bit of Ivermectin.” (an insecticide that is terrible for soil health)

Not that we were even remotely interested at this point, but perhaps just to try to get the guy to realize how ridiculous his own claims were… We asked about the “fly lick:” No protein? (aka soybeans and/or corn)

Wrong. A simple check of the label lists “grain by-products.” Cows don’t eat poison unless it tastes good. Apparently this guy’s definition for “all natural grass-fed” beef did not match ours or most customers’ definitions!

Needless to say… we didn’t buy any cows from that operation.

Buyers, beware!

Being in the industry, we know what we’re looking for, so the scariest thing about this whole incident was that the man had heard about the higher prices he could get for “grass-fed beef,” and clearly was contemplating marketing his beef accordingly.

If you think this is just an isolated incident, here’s another story. Again, in a quest to find some good grass-fed genetics, Matt drove all the way to Kansas—that’s upwards of 8 hours one-way, with a 30-foot cattle trailer—only to find out that the seller had misrepresented the breeding heifers he had for sale. A two-day trip for nothing. Just an empty cattle trailer and a continued search for good animals. The industry is riddled with downright deceit!

It’s far worse in the supermarket, where buyers are very far removed from sources, maybe even a half-a-world away, and no one is asking the hard questions—there’s no one to ask!

Well, the label says, “Grass-fed.” They couldn’t call it that if it wasn’t true, right?

Pap-Pap (Matt’s dad) is an avid fan of murder mystery novels, and once shared this quote with me from Dorothy Sayers’ novel, “Murder Must Advertise:”

“Truth in advertising,” announced Lord Peter sententiously , “is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal. It provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow. Which incidentally brings me to the delicate and important distinction between the words ‘with’ and ‘from.’ Suppose you are advertising lemonade, or , not to be invidious, we will say perry. If you say ‘Our perry is made from fresh-plucked pears only,’ then it’s got to be made from pears only, or the statement is actionable; if you just say it is made ‘from pears,’ without the ‘only,’ the betting is that it is probably made chiefly of pears; but if you say, ‘made with pears,’ you generally mean that you use a peck of pears to a ton of turnips, and the law cannot touch you— such are the niceties of our English tongue.””

Define Grass-fed

The last nail in the coffin of truth-in-advertising of grass-fed beef is this: A couple of years ago the overseers of this particular industry (the USDA) quietly deregulated the term “grass-fed” (which was poorly defined even at that time), stating that they’d decided it was really a marketing claim, and that companies should be able to define it for themselves, and customers could just visit individual brand websites to find out what the internal meaning of “grassfed” is for a particular company.

Since most consumers want to do a big research project in the middle of their grocery shopping expedition… Not!

The best way to be sure is to define your terms, ask lots of questions, then buy from a farm you can trust and visit. And when you do go, make sure the cows don’t follow the ATV like the pied piper, looking for “candy!”

So… want some really grass-fed beef right here in East Texas? Here are some easy meal ideas for this summer!

Easiest Crock-Pot Beef Roast Ever
Grass-fed Burgers
Beef Tips with Rice

Organic Egg Deception

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An interesting little story came out last week about the day-to-day practices of a major brand of organic eggs. The article subtly criticized the confined quarters that offered no apparent access to outdoors, and gave readers some insight into how the actually-quite-deplorable practices still meet organic standards.

There will always be your occasional outbreaks of over-and-above corruption, like the CEOs who got caught repacking and selling expired eggs, which led to a food illness outbreak, and ultimately their imprisonment.

But that is not what this is.

This is just a brief and not-very-widely-reported peep under the veil of regular, approved, organic production that reveals not an acute problem, but a deep, festering, chronic misuse of customer trust and understanding.

Organic Egg Rules

Sure, the rules sound really good: access to fresh air, outdoors, direct sunlight, with “continuous total confinement indoors” being prohibited. But it is so easy to just have in mind to “check the boxes” of compliance, while missing the mark entirely. Anyone could make the case that 2-inch holes drilled in the side of a building at floor level provide “outdoor access” to the chickens because they can stick their heads out there. If you stuck your arm out a window, is your arm inside anymore? No! Of course not! So doesn’t that mean you now have “outdoor access?” If your arm could breathe, it would be breathing fresh air, wouldn’t it? You have to concede the argument.

But is that really meeting the intention of the standard?

What about the next provision? “Direct sunlight” sounds good, but then again, one could argue that this whole side of the building with the chicken-head-holes faces south and gets 6+ hours of sunlight per day. Not that the environment actually benefits from the sanitizing and Vitamin-D-enhancing properties of the sun…. Still–we have access to direct sunlight. Check!

I have it on good authority that a certain major organic egg producer complained that higher-ups were trying to force them to allow actual pasture access for their hundreds of thousands of hens. “That would require us to be buy more land, and it’s too expensive!”

Instead of thinking in terms of scaling down size and scaling up quality, the producer was only interested in figuring out how to fit the square peg into the round hole. Checking the boxes. Minimal compliance. Is that the kind of mindset you want for the person manufacturing your kids’ car seats or the roof of your house? But we so often accept this quality of management in our everyday consumption of nutrients by continuing to support these kinds of food systems. The best-but-cheapest eggs. The biggest green sticker on the package. The one with the most healthy-sounding claims.

This is a very convoluted issue, and the reason it will never be straightforward is because you can’t define standards specific enough to enforce true quality, without alienating 90% of good producers. Our various climates, land profiles, farm size, labor force, and ingenuity, necessitates highly customized solutions to pasture-based farm production. You really can’t even say how often the chickens ought to be moved because even that varies based on time of year, rainfall, hen age and breed, and paddock conditions.

I once wrote that running a farm is like flying a spaceship. Developing production standards specific enough to cover all scenarios would be like trying to write a step-by-step protocol for every maneuver your spacecraft and all its personnel might ever make during a trip to the moon. It can’t be done. There are simply too many variables. Even if it could be done, maybe it shouldn’t because it just might accidentally eliminate a really fabulous small-time farmer.

I know you’re busy and just need to know how to wisely feed your family. I could talk all day about this because it’s such an important and interesting issue, but I won’t bore you with the ponderings of a pasture-farmer. Here’s the takeaway, as pertains to eggs in particular:

Cage-Free Eggs

“Cage Free” means eggs were produced “by hens housed in a building, room, or enclosed area that allows for unlimited access to food [grain], water, and provides the freedom to roam within the area during the laying cycle.” Notice: no actual outdoor access of any kind. Does not address GMO feeding practices or drug use at all. Practically meaningless in the poultry world.

Free Range Eggs

The term “Free Range” requires “outdoor access” but does not define what that means. Remember your arm-out-the-window idea? Lots of abuse happens with this term. Does not address GMO feeding practices or drug use at all. Practically meaningless in the poultry world.

Organic Eggs

Slightly better than Free Range in terms of GMO feeding and drug use, but as seen above the the infamous example of the largest organic egg producer in the nation (supplying over 10% of the organic eggs sold in the USA!), it’s very easy to check the boxes and not actually have a substantially better product for the price.

Pasture-Raised Eggs

This one is dangerous because, just like “Grass-fed” for beef, it is considered a marketing term and is not officially defined or regulated. In the states where we are licensed to sell eggs, there is effectually no oversight regarding label claims, leaving it to whistleblowers to report on false advertising, which virtually never happens. Yes, we use this term because we feel the mental image it invokes is accurate to describe our operation, and we try to maintain transparency by allowing farm visits and answering consumer questions. But in practice, industry use of the “Pasture-Raised” term doesn’t speak to the conditions of the pasture, feeding standards (i.e. GMO or not), drug use, or rotation of the environment.

Why Animal Rotation Matters

If you’ve ever kept chickens or a dog in a small permanent outdoor “run,” you’ll understand that it doesn’t take very long for the “pasture” to turn to a manure-caked desert. Sure, the hens may actually be outside in cases like these, but we feel the main benefit to having hens on pasture is that they can consume living vegetation to increase their nutrition and detoxify their bodies (chlorophyll is an excellent detoxifier!).

But the chickens have to keep moving to new ground to keep the pasture healthy and growing, and that’s where it gets really complicated and expensive to produce eggs truly “on pasture,” especially for very large producers. Not saying it can’t be done on a large scale, but there are a LOT more hurdles to outdoor production than indoor. For example, the nest boxes have to be close to the chickens at all times. Chickens won’t walk to a barn from out in the pasture, so their coop has to move with them, and be large enough to provide roost space and shade during the heat of the day. But a traveling coop means you have to go out to the coop to get the eggs, then carefully haul them back in to where you can grade, candle, and package them. How do you drive across the pasture with thousands of eggs without breaking any?

Then there are considerations like getting water and food out to the chickens (no, contrary to popular belief, chickens can’t survive on grass alone–could you survive on only dry salad?), and keeping predators away from the hens. Everything LOVES to eat chicken. It takes some major thought to eliminate predation by owls, hawks, crows, skunks, opossums, coyotes, dogs, bobcats, bears, snakes, etc.

But even the deployed state of the adult chickens isn’t the only infrastructure question. You can’t put baby chicks in the same living conditions as adult hens and expect them to survive. They need warmth and protection from the elements, and an extra degree of predator protection. So you have to have separate facilities for babies, and then another living situation for the “teenagers” that haven’t begun laying yet, and perhaps are too small to stay inside a mobile net fence. And you have to move the hens from space to space as they grow up and have new and different needs. It takes 6 months to get that first egg. No wonder eggeries just keep them in a single building their entire lives. It’s just simpler.

How You Can Know For Sure

This concept of discussion applies to all aspects of natural livestock production, not just eggs. People want to know what brand is best because then they don’t have to think about it either–they can just check the box. But there is no one-size-fits-all answer to regulation of animal farming practices. This question bounces around constantly among pastured poultry producers, because it would be so much easier to have that one magic word to describe what it is that sets us apart from the rest. But some things have to be done the hard way, the old fashioned way. We can’t microwave this one.

I believe the best way to handle the accountability issue of food production is for you to find a farmer you can trust and build that relationship with. Local farmers are often excluded from the mainstream marketplace because there are many bureaucratic hurdles that a small-scale producer cannot overcome, and they need avid and loyal supporters to continue producing the superior quality products on a smaller, but better, scale.

You have a doctor, a lawyer, a mechanic, a pastor. Why not have your personal farmer, too?

Where’s Waldo?

Someone is trying to trick you.

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Someone is trying to trick you.

They have started using this marketing word, and it’s working. What’s the word?

Local.

“Local” is the new “healthy.”

But my, oh, my, how the falsehoods abound.

(Quick disclaimer: I don’t think “local” is the only criteria for good food. I think rearing practices trump nearness of raising critters or veggies. Every crop-duster and chicken CAFO is local to somewhere. But we definitely need to address this Local Love issue because I think it has gotten way out of hand.)

Take, for example, the giant Geico billboard we saw while driving on a delivery one day. It has the famous little lizard, and it says, “We’re local!”

What does that even mean? That they have a local office you can go spend money at that ends up at HQ in some huge metropolis out of state, just like every other national multi-billion dollar company? Does it mean they have a local phone number so you don’t have to pay for long distance….which pretty much doesn’t exist anymore anyway, except for international calls? It’s so ambiguous that it’s practically meaningless, and yet it sounds so good.

Following is another good example of the misuse of the term.

A pasture-based farmer colleague of ours near the Ozarks in Arkansas snapped this photo of some apple cider for sale. The sign on the display says in prominent lettering, “Farm Fresh. Locally Grown.” The subheading states, “Proudly Supporting Ohio Farmers.”

I guess management forgot that they are a mere, oh, 700 miles away from Ohio. Then you check out the fine print and discover that the cider is actually a product of Michigan! If any of the signage is even remotely true, you’re looking at a distance traveled of over 1200 miles. Thank goodness our “local” schools and shopping centers are closer than that!

Grocery stores are especially bad about abusing the attractive marketability of supporting local farmers. Matt once stopped into Kroger and noticed, again, the prominent “We support local farms!” signage, which you see at so many stores nowadays.

We’re always looking for more locations to serve our customers via retail sales–we’d love to sell our products through Kroger! So Matt decided to ask about it. He flagged down a manager and introduced himself as a local farmer, and inquired about how to initiate the process to become a vendor for their store. The manager looked dumbfounded and said, “I have no idea.” She even went to ask their buying manager there at the store, and his reply was the same. They were so unfamiliar even with the concept of buying from local farms that they didn’t even know where to begin or whom to ask.

Question: If these stores are really selling these wonderful local products from dozens or maybe even hundreds of local farms–because you know, by nature of buying local, there have to be LOTS of farms spread across the nation–why don’t the people who DO THIS FULL TIME know how to get an actual real-live local farmer in touch with the right people to start selling his real-live local products there?

I’ll tell you why. It’s not really happening. They are trying to trick you.

It’s not just grocery stores.

There are a lot of restaurants and restaurant distributors using the same sort of marketing language. They get a couple of poster children farmers, and maybe they really buy a few things from them (or maybe not…) and then they head straight for mainstream, Big Ag suppliers.

Why don’t they just do what they say they’re doing?

I don’t think it’s that hard to figure out. People like the idea of buying local. They like even better the idea of local being fresher and healthier. But money talks, right? Bigger farms (aka CAFO operations–confinement animal feeding operations) are cheaper to operate and have economies of scale on their side. Plus there’s that convenient advantage of separating the consumer from the supply chain by moving the supply chain farther away, and so the food system begins to operate like a money laundering operation.

Restaurant Q buys from Distributor X, who buys from Natural Hub Y, who buys from Brokers A, B, and C, who buy from Farm Co-ops H, I, J, K, who buy from some obscure farms out in Farmland that no one really knows much about, and definitely no one ever visits. Somebody said the farms are pasture-based, and we can surely assume that they’re reasonably close by…

I won’t name names, but I know of two in particular, right here in Texas, that tout their “local” and “pasture-raised” products. One sources beef direct from Australia, citing that American producers can’t meet supply and standards simultaneously.

Like I said, I’m not going to name any names, but I’m just going to leave this link right here for you in case you want to read about it.

The other is a restaurant supplier actively marketing their local, pasture-raised farm products in a major Foodie city in Texas. They have a lovely little website with a prominent menu item, “Why local?” and they go on to answer the question by defining local as farms located “within one day drive from [their city.]” OK, so that sounds pretty reasonable. A day trip to the farm, right?

Well, it just so happens that this Texas farm-to-table group uses for its main supplier of pork a co-op of farms …in Iowa.

Is that meeting their definition of local? It’s a 15 hour drive to Iowa without pigs. And navigating downtown Big Texas City with your livestock trailer would add at least another hour or two, not counting stops. I don’t know many folks that can make a 15+ hour drive in one day without livestock!

In college, I moved from my hometown in South Mississippi to Ithaca, New York, to do an internship with a metallurgical testing company there. In the early days of MapQuest, I staked out my route and highlighted my paper atlas, said goodbye to my mother, and started out early. I made it 11 hours the first day, and I was so exhausted and delirious that I could barely order a meal at McD’s before stopping for the night (back before I knew better). I wouldn’t have made it all the way to Iowa in one day… I would not call that “local.”

Now, if you’re my crazy hubby, who once drove from Longview, Texas, all the way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in one go, you might say it can be done. But gee whiz! Who wants to leave at 6 A.M. and arrive at 9 P.M. (not counting stops!) and call that a “local” farm! Not to speak of whether or not they meant that you were supposed to be able to return home in the same day… Buying pork becomes a full-fledged business trip!

By the way, I have forbidden Matt from doing any crazy long driving now. That was back in his “bulletproof” days…

But you can see how ridiculous the use of this term “local” has become. Granted it might not be out of the realm of possibility if we were all “driving” Lear jets around. Lear jets full of pigs for restaurants…

What this trend means is that you, the buyer, must be oh, so cautious, and not get sucked in by the fancy marketing and attractive buzz words. Worse, people often read “local” as synonymous with “grass-fed” or “hormone-free” or a whole host of other non-applicable terms.

How should we define local?

Polyface Farm, home of Joel Salatin and his family, is probably the most well-known farm like ours. A truly loco-centric, rotationally-focused real-deal type farm. They define their local food-shed as those customers that can make a day trip to the farm and back home again after spending a bit of time browsing the farm, viewing the operations, and shopping in the farm store.

So for most folks that means less than a 3 or 4 hour drive. That sounds pretty reasonable to me. Honestly, anything beyond that would just seem ridiculous. I mean, for us, that would mean buying from farms near Houston, or on the other side of Dallas–that far-reaching of a “food-shed” would be a stretch, to be sure, but it could be done if we had no other options. But you bet your biscuits that I wouldn’t be looking at Iowa or Ohio or Michigan for “local food.”

When buying local isn’t possible

Please don’t hear what I’m not saying.

If you have to ship your food in because there really aren’t any decent rotational-pasture-based farms near you, do it. It’s worth it for your health.

If all you care about is low price, and Iowa pork is cheaper than Texas pork, fine. Capitalism wins, right?

But what gets my goat is when companies are deliberately deceiving customers through marketing schemes that say, “We support local farms!” when they really don’t–they’re just like everyone else, buying through the handful of Giant Food Suppliers and giving consumers the illusion of local, small, diversified economies. And finally, even if it really is local, that doesn’t make it healthy.

What if there’s not a good local farm? Simple! Take your signs down!!

How can you know the truth?

The best way to know is to go SEE it. Meet the farmer. Know your source. It’s worth it.

There is good news.

I hate leaving you with all bad news. So here’s the good news. We’ve been working hard to get our products into some restaurants in the area (and of course we so much appreciate all of our local stores that really DO support local farms!). Here are two restaurants that have recently put our pork on their menu. More coming soon!!

Restaurants Featuring Our Products

Wine Country Bistro in Shreveport, Louisiana
El Cabo Verde in Shreveport, Louisiana

Our Wonderful Retailers:

Granary St. in Longview and Tyler
Vitamins Plus (inside Drug Emporium) in Longview, Tyler, and Shreveport
Jack’s Natural Foods in Longview
Sunshine Health Foods in Shreveport and Bossier
The Farmer’s Wife in Mt. Pleasant
Flour Child Fine Foods in Texarkana