Where’s the beef FROM? The Country Natural Beef Co-op

By Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel, 4-24-07

I don’t often eat meat, but while I was in Portland this weekend, my husband and I went on a romantic date and I decided to splurge at the French inspired, Carafe Bistro. I ordered the burger. It was the only meat that was clearly marked as Oregon grown. The price influenced my decision too. I wanted a glass of expensive Oregon Pinot Noir, so I ordered the $9 burger rather than another, more expensive, entree.

It arrived as thick as my fist and was topped with a home-made, well-buttered bun. In one bite, I was swooning. I could not contain my satisfaction. It was, in fact, the best burger I have ever had.

When the waitress leaned over to fill our water and ask how the meal was, the juice oozed from my mouth. I focused long enough to tell her how good it was when she reminded me that it was Oregon meat. I nodded in a stupor.

“We get it from Oregon Country Beef,” she smiled.

I smiled too, devouring flavors of what the French call terroir, eating the tastes of a locality.  I was satiated by Oregon.

Alas, I may have eaten all-natural meat from another state.

Oregon Country Beef is a cooperative (co-op) that began in the 1980s when the commodity market was sending so many ranchers into bankruptcy. The co-op was formed to market beef in the state and connect buyers with suppliers. Oregon ranchers also formed the cooperative to serve the growing market for lean-beef raised in a more sustainable way.

As demand grew, Oregon Country Beef partnered with ranchers in other states including Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Colorado and New Mexico to form a larger cooperative called Country Natural Beef (opens pdf). 76 ranching families now participate in the co-op in eight western states and Hawaii. While the co-op still gets sixty percent of its meat from Oregon, it sources the rest from these other states.

The co-op serves solely as a marketing outlet and as members, ranchers own their cattle until it is sold to retailers rather than sell the cattle onto the commodities market. Often, cattle is actually sold to a processor and then bought back by the rancher and finally sold to the retailer.

In order to join, new members must be sponsored by a current member, and all must agree to follow Country Natural Beef’s principles:

• Humane care for livestock, native plants and wildlife is a priority
• Healthy land is biologically diverse
• Land management decisions are based on long-term health
• Growth-stimulating hormones, feed additive antibiotics, genetically modified grains or animal byproduct feeds are never used
• Thoughtful grazing will benefit land, ranching families and society.

The members have also agreed that while they can go natural and follow these principles, they can’t afford the feed required to go organic.

While this co-op has worked successfully for many ranchers in Western states, with sales topping $40 million a year, even its members agree that this model may not work for everyone. Instead, it is a model that needs to be constantly examined rather than sold to other growers or parts of the country.

At first I was a bit dissapointed to learn that my meat may have come from another state, but eating meat from a ranching cooperative provides other benefits.  The co-op meat didn’t go through the common chain of factory farms and processing that play back each day like an episode of The Meatrix. The cooperative has also provided success for over seventy sustainably-minded ranchers around the west. Perhaps the meat was so good because it came from and was marketed by an entire community of thoughtful ranchers. And it couldn’t hurt that once the meat arrives at the Carafe Bistro, the chefs carefully grind it in house…with a hand crank.

I was certainly paying for those extra layers of labor from the cattle ranch to the kitchen, but it was worth every single bite.

Look for the Spade & Spoon column here every Tuesday. If you have article ideas for Spade & Spoon (www.newwest.net/spadeandspoon), email kisha@newwest.net.

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