Meat + Poultry - May 2008 - 31

As reported by Steve Bjerklie on www.MEATPOULTRY.com

delicious flavor. "She asked, 'What's that I'm tasting?' 'You're
tasting the Coast,' I told her," remembers Brian.
"What we do is counter-intuitive to people who are used
to the boxed-beef business," he continues. "They call us
and want to buy x-number of head and sometimes I have to
tell them I don't have the cattle, even though they're willing to pay a premium. Sometimes they say, 'Can't you just
buy some cattle and put the Hearst name on them?' and I
tell them no, I have to grow these animals sustainably."
While using some very traditional cattle-production
techniques that date back to the 19th century and even
earlier, Hearst Ranch isn't afraid of science, Kenny is quick
to point out. "We've DNA'd our whole herd. We can take
any steak with our name on it and I can tell you exactly
where it came from. We embrace science."
For now, more than the occasional potshot some industry
crank hurls Hearst Ranch's way regarding its old-school production practices, Kenny is concerned about the USDA standard for grass-fed beef, which he thinks is too lenient. "Where
we're going to get into trouble as an industry, I think, is that
grass-fed should mean strictly grass and nothing else. You
make that definition too broad, and you kill the adjective you
want. Look what happened to 'natural,'" he comments.

Breeding in flavor
Mangalista pork puts the lard back in
Imagine pork so delicious - not to mention fatty - that it
drives otherwise sane people into madness. Consider the
possibilities just for bacon, not to mention the Easter ham.
Families sharing breakfast won't know what hit them.
Heath Putnam, a former financial-services executive ("derivatives was
my game"), knows of this
kind of pork. It comes from
a breed of hog called the
Mangalitsa (the fi rst two
syllables rhyme with "tonga"), and he raises the only
herd of them in the western hemisphere on a farm in eastern
Washington state. He sells the meat at two Seattle farmers
markets as well as to ultra-high-end restaurants, including
the French Laundry in Napa Valley and Le Gourmand, the
Herbfarm and the Stumbling Goat Bistro in Seattle.
"These are the kind of pigs that make people go cra-

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MEAT&POULTRY

May 2008

www.MEATPOULTRY.com

Kingston, NY USA

www.wolf-tec.com

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Meat + Poultry - May 2008

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