Farmer’s Market video series: 4 Bar S Ranch

Melanie Stutt, butcher at 4 Bar S Ranch, has an interesting story to share about what happened when food was in short supply in her local area because of forest fires.  Watch this video to hear more about 4 Bar S Ranch, how it operates and what happened when Barriere, B.C. caught fire.

Meat on campus: a microcosm

Local meat without added hormones or antibiotics is what the people want to buy, but it’s not always what’s cost-effective.

Jason Cochran is a faculty member in the Retail Meat Processing program at Thompson Rivers University (TRU).  He handles most of the meat ordering for the program, as well as for the neighbouring Culinary Arts program.

The program runs the Meat Store, which is open every Thursday on campus to sell the cuts of meat the students have made.

The customers want local meat, Cochran said, and so that’s what’s in the store, but, “the local beef actually costs me more than the feedlot beef.”  It comes from a ranch just north of Barriere.

The beef the culinary arts program uses on the other hand almost all comes as boxed beef, and it’s from a slaughterhouse in Alberta.

It’s feedlot beef, Cochran told me, and there’s a 99 per cent certainty the animal has been fed hormones and antibiotics throughout its life.

When you buy boxed beef, he said, it could be from three or four animals from anywhere in Alberta or even B.C. mixed up together.  The majority of B.C. beef, he told me, is shipped to Alberta to be slaughtered.

There are two local provincially-inspected slaughterhouses according to Cochran however.  One is called Kam Lake View Meats, and is located in Kamloops.  The other is Rainer Meats and is situated north of Barriere.

Cochran said local beef can be difficult to source because he needs a consistent source of meat.  He also listed the need to trust the supplier and to have a relationship with them as concerns.

The majority of the beef comes into the meat cutting program in the fall he said.

In a typical program year, Cochran will order 15 to 16 cows, which will cost approximately $40,000 altogether.  This would make each cow approximately $2,500.

The two other main types of meat in the Meat Store are chicken and pork.  Each come from a different slaughterhouse in the Lower Mainland.

The chicken is entirely hormone and antibiotic-free, whereas the pork gets one treatment of antibiotics in its lifetime.

Besides operating the Meat Store, the retail meat processing program also sells sides of beef, bulk chicken, does customer orders, and processes meat for both hunters and some local farmers.

Reader ideas

Quoted from feedback to this question:

What do you want to know about food? The food system? What sorts of issues concern you? Interest you?
What do you think is important that you don’t see being covered in mainstream media?

• I want to talk about class and food more. About how poor people can’t afford to eat all the “Right Things.” And how to feed the world sustainably without making more class striation and cost prohibitive products.

• Pork production! Pigs are intelligent like dogs and they are treated savagely.

• Where does my food come from?  How does my food choice impact other folks economically, environmentally, socially, da da da?

• The decline of food quality. Not only are we eating less nutritional foods but more interesting is how natural foods are becoming less nutritional. Modern agriculture is degrading the food quality of natural foods.

• Race and food access, environmental racism, and racism in the alternative food movement!!!

• I think about how if more people choose gluten free lifestyles the healthier they will be.

• The disgusting things they put in food (modified ingredients, artificial flavours, fillers, sugar, sugar, sugar, etc!) including labels and the fact that the food policy doesn’t require items to be labelled as GMOs… food policy is kinda scary.

• The legality of growing your own food in your own garden. http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/michigan-woman-faces-jail-for-growing-vegetables-in-her-front-yard/

• David Suzuki’s “The Nature of Things”, (22 Jan 2012) aired an episode in which Obesogens were discussed [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesogen] and their effects on world obesity rates, contaminated seafood, bPH-A and bPH-S, food supply, etc. It was quite interesting: featured Canadian content in the way of Canadian food scientists.

• Topsoil depletion. Road kill efficiency. The stuff in this video. http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxIowaCity-Dr-Terry-Wahls-Min

What do you want to know about food? The food system? What sorts of issues concern you? Interest you?

• How healthy is salsa? Is it a good substitute for other foods? Can you get salsa with protein?

What sorts of food issues do you think are important that you don’t see being covered in mainstream media?

• Corn. Its frickin eveywhere.