My name is Adam Parks and I own Victorian Farmstead Meat Company in Sebastopol. The Rancho Feeding Corp. beef recall has had, and will continue to have, a profound effect on my business and the businesses of dozens of local ranchers and meat companies. Together, we’re part of a burgeoning movement toward local, well-raised and grass-fed beef (among other meats). Since there’s little information coming from the USDA or the owners of the processing facility in question, I decided to do my own research and share what I discovered so the public can make informed decisions about what they put on their dinner table.
The headline read, “8.7 Million Pounds of Beef Recalled!” Now while that sounds pretty scary, what stands out is the complete lack of anything scary at all. No pathogens discovered. No one reporting illness. No one finding any evidence of anything harmful in any single pound of the recalled meat. And why 8.7 million pounds? Well, 8.7 million pounds is 100 percent of the beef processed at Rancho during the one-year period of the recall. Of that 8.7 million pounds, I’d guess that better than 95 percent of it has been consumed. Not a single story or report of so much as a tummy ache as a result of any meat that came out of that plant. So why recall a year’s worth of beef from a small, local processor? The only reason I can figure is that there’s evidence of some sort of corruption. What areas of the system lend themselves to corruption?
Approximately 75 percent of Rancho’s business is in buying old dairy cows and slaughtering them to be further processed elsewhere for fast food hamburger and the like. These cows are often in poor condition and there’s significant pressure to hurry them through the system to be processed before they’re too weak or sick to pass the USDA inspection. This is an obvious area that lends itself to potential corruption. If a processor has already paid for a cow that turns out to be too sick to pass inspection, it’s out that money. I don’t know that this is what happened, but it’s the only place I can see any reason for abuse of the system.
The other 25 percent of Rancho’s business is “custom” kills for local ranchers who sell meat to the public and need their animals slaughtered under USDA inspection to do so. Local ranchers bring only healthy animals, as it makes no sense to pay a processing fee to Rancho for an animal the USDA inspectors onsite would reject as unfit. According to a Rancho employee I spoke with recently, in the 20 years he worked there, he couldn’t recall a single “custom kill” beef that was unfit for harvest. Moreover, there’s no chance for our “custom” beef to come into contact with or get confused with the cull dairy cows, as the animals we get back are individually tagged prior to processing and those tags stay with the animals/carcasses all the way through the process. Our custom kill animals are humanely harvested, one at a time, to maintain this integrity—and at a considerable expense compared to large-scale feedlot animals. So why would the USDA issue this blanket recall that includes all beef processed and deny the request for exemption we local ranchers made? It can only be because it wants to make a dramatic statement to the public that it’s “on the job.” Meantime, hundreds of thousands of dollars of local, well raised beef is being destroyed without any appeal, oversight or apparent concern by the government.
What’s the solution? Getting the current facility back up and running. There are already groups looking into making this happen. The challenge will be permitting, local regulations, state regulations, federal regulations and the fact that the land might have more value for development than for the meat processing business. We as a community need to lean on our locally elected officials to make sure the normal weight of Sonoma County bureaucracy is set aside. This can be taken as “lean on” (as in look to for support) or “lean on” (as in boot to butt) to get the job done. I guess that will be up to our elected officials.
I believe another part to the solution is to make sure the new processor is custom only, so there can be no hint of impropriety. In speaking with several sources, I’m confident that it’s viable to run that facility without the income from cull cows. Because of all the space in the plant that would be available, the plant could not only slaughter, but provide, much needed additional cut and wrap, beef aging services and maybe even a much-needed local USDA poultry processing operation. It will be up to the new owner to make sure the primary focus is on maintaining the integrity of the process so our local animals can be delivered to our local communities with complete confidence.
Now that you have some facts, some educated extrapolations and some potential solutions, what can you do? Start by voting with your dollars. Make sure you know where your meat is coming from. Get to know your rancher or local meat purveyor. Talk to your elected officials and let them know this is important to you. Be proactive. Otherwise, your alternatives will be to risk your family’s health with meat of unknown origin or become a vegetarian. You understand that becoming a vegetarian means no more bacon, right?
Adam Parks is the owner of Victorian Farmstead Meat Company in Sebastopol. Through his new butcher shop inside the Community Market at the Barlow in Sebastopol, as well as several Bay Area farmers markets, he’s a purveyor of local, well-raised grass-fed and finished beef and lamb, pasture raised pork, chicken, rabbit and duck. Ninety percent of what he sells is raised within about 25 miles of his farm in Sebastopol. For his full story and blog, check him out at www.vicfarmmeats.com or email him at adam@vicfarmmeats.com .
