Meat + Poultry - September 2006 - 46

HIGH ON GRASS-FED BEEF
Cashing in
on the
'graze craze'
By Steve Bjerklie
meatpoultry@sosland.com

orthern California's steady
winter rains keep the smooth,
rounded chain of hills bounding Marin County's Chileno Valley
covered in thick, lush green grass
from December into May. The cattle
in Mike Gale's small Angus herd fleck
the hillsides like bits of gravel, grazing in that deep, almost sleepy calm
bovines settle into when they're chewing grass. "Back in the 19th century
there used to be 200 dairies in Marin.
The milk and butter they produced
was famous all over the state," says
Gale. "Now they are just a handful.
It's still the same grass, though."
The family of Gale's wife Sally has
owned this ranch since 1862. The Gales,
who had been living in Hawaii, came
to the family legacy in midlife. "We
kind of inched into the cattle business
in 1997 with six cows. Then we had
10, then 20. We were selling to a broker back then, and I had no idea what
happened to our animals after we sold
them," remembers Mike. "They went to
some feedlot somewhere."
Now he and Sally sell the beef
themselves - 100 percent grass-fed,
Chileno Valley beef. Their production
is miniscule, just 70 to 80 steers per
year, and their customer list is small,
just 200 individual buyers, most of
whom the Gales know personally. But
they and their little beef company live
on the fringe of the meat industry's
hottest market: high-end, high-quality 100 percent grass-fed beef.
Grass-fed beef has quickly become
a meat industry standout. While it's
still just a drop in the drop of the bucket, Steve Kay, publisher of Cattle Buyer's Weekly and MEAT&POULTRY's
contributing editor for beef, estimates
that all of the so-called "alternative"
beef niches such as organic, natural

Mike Gale and his wife Sally sell 100 percent grassfed beef from cattle they raise on the family ranch in
the Chileno Valley.
46 I MEAT&POULTRY I September 2006 I www.MEATPOULTRY.com

and grass-fed comprise about a $1 billion slice of the $40 billion total U.S.
annual beef market.
The segment has gained tremendous visibility thanks to the media
feeding the public's fascination with
the origins of the food we eat. The attention has caused an influential segment of the meat-buying public to
think about buying meat with their
conscience rather than just with their
stomachs or pocketbooks. Grass-fed
is the kind of supernova that could
change the entire beef universe.
Why does Mike Gale think grassfed has suddenly become the thinking person's beef? "Oh, I can tell you
exactly," he says. "It's because of that
article Michael Pollan wrote."

This steer's life
"No, I can't take credit at all," Pollan says apologetically over the phone.
"That blows my mind, really, that
someone would say that. Obviously,
though, there was a tremendous interest waiting to be touched. Frankly, the
rapidity of the growth of the grass-fed
market has been kind of a wonder to
me, too. But I think that all over agriculture you have people looking to
get into alternative approaches to the

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Meat + Poultry - September 2006

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