It’s a story in the spirit of the Old West. In those days, pioneers and dreamers headed for the Great Plains and wide open spaces to find new lives—many of them raising cattle. A whole ecosystem evolved around this enterprise, including the now famous cowboys that were paid to move herds thousands of miles to market.
In recent times, driven by the quest for cheaper beef, cattle ranching has shifted to an industrial model. Cattle are raised in cramped conditions, fed grain and meal made from animals, and given antibiotics to ward off disease and hormones to speed growth. Long gone are the hearty ranchers who made their homes on the range, where animals roamed over hundreds of acres.
Or are they? One look at an organization such as the Country Natural Beef Association and you definitely get the impression that those days are actually far from gone. Or, maybe they’re coming back.
The story starts in the 1980s when interest rates were going through the roof, beef prices were low and ranchers were going broke. At that time Connie Hatfield—wife of Doc Hatfield and co-owner of their Oregon ranch—decided to go into Bend, Oregon, their nearest decent-sized urban town, and find out what beef products were wanted but couldn’t be obtained by consumers. She discovered that people wanted a product that was not fed any antibiotics, was not given any hormones or implants and was raised humanely. So began the Country Natural Beef Association—founded by Doc and Connie Hatfield and consisting of 14 ranch families. In 1986, they processed 3 head a week. They’ve now greatly expanded to around 800 head a week, and their rancher base is about 120 ranch families scattered across 11 western states.
“It’s a beautiful model where there are no employees; no bricks and mortar,” Dan Probert, Country Natural Beef Association’s executive director, told Organic Connections. “All money goes back to the ranch families to keep them sustainable. We actually run the co-op on less than 3.7 percent of gross sales, which pays my salary, marketing’s and everyone else’s. Doc and Connie had the vision and created it with no greed. Everything goes back to the ranchers. It’s a neat system.”
The main focus, of course, is the product. It is third-party certified for humane animal practices and environmentally sensitive land management by Food Alliance, a leading non-profit organization that certifies farms, ranches and food handlers for sustainable agricultural and facility management practices. The cattle are free-ranging for the first 14–18 months of their lives. And, of course, they are not administered any hormones or antibiotics.
Humane, compassionate handling of livestock in an environment well suited for beef cattle is an initial requirement of membership. The reason the company has such a wide distribution of ranching areas is because they want only ranchers with an “extraordinarily strong land ethic, including respect for their plants, animals, land and people.” Furthermore, they require that each cow with her calf, and the yearling that calf grows into, has lots of space; their average is 70 acres per individual cow/calf unit per year. Each ranch is entirely separate and the acres per individual cow/calf unit will vary greatly, depending on the unique environment.
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The ranchers in the organization go one step further. “One thing that our members subscribe to is we don’t purchase any cattle,” Probert said. “Each rancher has to become a member and own those animals from birth all the way to the point of processing. The reason we do that is we think it gives a lot more credibility to our claims; we’re not buying cattle from somebody who has a signed affidavit saying, ‘To the best of my ability these are the things that I have done.’
“That control also goes beyond the scope of the animals and takes in the environment. As we work together as a co-op of ranchers, we have environmental stewardship guidelines and fair labor practices as well.”
A Competing Marketplace
Because of consumer demand, some of the bigger players in the beef industry are also now offering beef raised with no hormones or antibiotics. But there’s a catch. “One of the big differences is that those companies are buying cattle at auction yards, video sales and direct ranch sales,” Probert explained. “They basically buy the cattle and the rancher signs an affidavit that says, ‘Yes, they’re natural.’ I think that’s a core differentiator. It’s my opinion that anyone who doesn’t have control of those animals all the way back to the ranch, and has a long-term relationship with the ranch, can’t really make a claim about stewardship. And even beyond the health of the animal, there’s the health of the land aspect, which I don’t think can be addressed where a company buys cattle.”
But a big player isn’t what the Country Natural Beef Association wants to be, anyway. “It’s not me saying it,” said Probert. “Connie Hatfield says, ‘We want to be that niche, that specialty product that is like the dirt in the corner of a room that Tyson’s mop can’t reach.’ So we don’t really want to compete on volume. We want to have ranches in our group that share our philosophy and then continue to expand our customer base, which also cares about those things and is willing to pay for them. To blow out the world and double our size really isn’t our goal.”
So Country Natural Beef continues at the level that works best for them, secure in the knowledge they will always have a market. In addition to supplying consumers through retailers, they also service Burgerville restaurants in the Portland area, one of the nation’s very first fast-food chains offering only local, sustainable ingredients.
To find out more about Country Natural Beef, visit their website at www.countrynaturalbeef.com.
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