Good Food

GOOD BEEF & WHERE TO GET IT

“Eating is a political act.”

This is an arbitrary sampling of websites on an exploding network that provides info on everything from products sold directly online to general background on agribusiness-food issues.  Selling direct has become big business, so has the dissemination of information about food. Change is a-foot. We are no longer polarized into producers and consumers but brought together in a new alliance of farmers, distributors and eaters who understand that all of us can help control from the ground and water up what will sustain the health of our wholesomeness of ourselves and of the world we live in.

Where to buy good beef in Manhattan:

Florence Meat Market: A pocket-vest family-owned butcher shop at Jones Street in Greenwich Village in Manhattan cuts your beef to order.

Ottomanelli’s Meat Market: Three generations of Ottomanellis have been providing customers with good beef cut to order at their Bleeker Street store in Greenwich Village.

Lobel’s: From five generations of butchers, the Lobel family has been enthroned at their butcher shop on Madison Avenue in New York’s Upper Eastside for the last 50 years and they have reigned supreme. Their online store also supplies not only prime but  grass-fed and Wagyu.

Where to buy good beef and bison on the Internet:

  • www.chilenobeef.com: Mike and Sally Gale run a beautiful family-inherited ranch in the Chileno Valley, inland from Point Reyes near Petaluma, California. They now sell quarter, half and whole pasture-fed beef online for those who can handle that size. But even if you can’t,  the website is worth a peek just for the photos of what a ranch can look like with its pastures, barns and lovingly restored Victorian house.
  • www.lobels.com: A famous family-run New York City butcher shop on Madison Avenue that sells both the highest quality and diversity, including a line of grass-finished beef.
  • www.debragga.com: A family-run wholesaler in Manhattan’s Meat Market District, DeBragga & Spitler has long furnished the top restaurants of New York with prime Angus beef and is now selling that beef online.
  • www.lacensemontana.com: One of the oldest and largest ranches in Montana, near Dillon, which now raises and trains quarterhorses, also  provides grass-finished Angus beef online.
  • www.ranchfoodsdirect.com: Mike Callicrate raises cattle in Nebraska and finishes them in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at a meat-packing facility and retail store. Products now include bison.
  • www.grassfedtraditions.com: Providing grass-fed bison and grass-fed Galloway and Angus cattle  from small farms in Wisconsin, this company distributes many kinds of pastured livestock.
  • www.lasatergrasslandsbeef.com: Dale Lasater, whose father developed the Beefmaster breed, was an early proponent of grass-fed beef and of preserving the prairie lands at his farm near Matheson, Colorado.
  • www.tallgrassbeef.com: Bill Kurtis is using his celebrity television presence to sell the message of grass-fed beef and prairie conservation through his distributing company, Tall Grass Beef, headquartered in Sedan, Kansas, formed of many small ranch partners.
  • www.oregoncountrybeef.com: Doc and Connie Hatfield of eastern Oregon pioneered cooperative ranching and distribution, beginning with 14 ranchers which has expanded to 96. Their aim was to get ranchers directly together with eaters. Their website lists stores and markets where their product is sold, mostly west of the Mississippi.
  • www.heritagefoodsusa.com: Related to SlowFoodUSA, and headquartered in New York City, the marketing company was set up to sell heritage meats online and thus help promote independent family farms that treated animals humanely and increased breed diversity.
  • www.grasslandbeef.com: Formed of many small ranches under the logo Wellness Meats, headquartered at Monticello, Missouri, the company focuses on health issues.
  • www.hearstranch.com: The famous family-owned Hearst Ranch in central California, near the Hearst Castle at San Simeon, now provides online sales for its grass-fed beef.
  • www.harrisranch.com: The family-owned Harris Ranch Beef Co. is just one of the enterprises of the Harris Ranch in Fresno County, California,  that sells many of its products online. While their beef is not grass-finished, it is of good quality.
  • www.snakeriverfarms.com: Located in Boise, Idaho, this family-owned ranch specializes in a Wagyu/Angus cross for excellent Kobe beef sold online.
  • www.newgrassbison.com: In Kansas City, Missouri, Jeff Adair’s company is a relative newcomer in producing grass-fed bison to be sold online direct.
  • www.buffalogroves.com: Marlene & David Groves have pioneered the return of grass-fed buffalo herds to promote all kinds of buffalo products, besides meat, from their ranch in Kiowa, Colorado.

A sampling only of where to find good beef sold not online but at local greenmarkets and restaurants:

  • www.ecofriendlyfoods.com: From many small farms in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Bev Eggelston’s  group supplies good meats to some of Manhattan’s and Washington, D.C.’s best restaurants, as well as markets in the Washington/Virginia area.
  • www.grazinangusacres.com: a family-owned ranch in Colombia County, N sells grass-fed Angus at local greenmarkets.
  • www.newyorkbeef.com: A small cooperative of grass-feed ranchers sells to NYC greenmarkets.
  • www.marinsunfarms.com: David Evans at Point Reyes Station in Marin County, California, supplies his butcher shop and market with grass-fed beef from a number of local small farms, including his own,  dedicated to preserving the area.

Where to find out more

The following websites are all committed to explaining and furthering community-based sustainable agriculture and local food systems. All of them combine education with practical activism.

  • www.eatwellguide.org: Our best and most comprehensive guide, state by state, to show you where to find local, sustainable and organic food in the US and Canada. They list ranchers, farmers, butchers, stores and restaurants to create a parallel universe to the industrial one. Their main website has three subsites:
  • www.slowfoodusa.org: A grassroots movement that began in Italy several years ago to resist actively the MacDonaldization of the planet by fast food, Slow Food USA has grown rapidly. It has  implemented fresh ideas about sustainable living and eating through such adjuncts as www.heritagefoodsusa.com.  The motto of the movement is Good, Glean and Fair.
  • www.foodandwaterwatch.org: A national non-profit consumer organization, with headquarters in Washington, D.C., which focuses particularly on agribusiness polices that affect our water resources in relation to raising sustainable wholesome food..
  • www.organicconsumersassociation.org: A long-lived and important watchdog association that provides a national overview on the latest developments that threaten a healthy food system. It provides details state by state.
  • www.leopoldiastate.edu: Located in the center of the country at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture has long been  a resource and education center for all food and agricultural issues. As a Fellow of the Center and a Director of Stone Barns, Fred Kirschenmann writes a regular column for their online newsletter.
  • www.stonebarnscenter.org: A non-profit working farm of seasonal organic crops and livestock, with the goal of connecting farm-to-table. Formerly part of David and Peggy Rockerfeller’s estate in Pocantico Hills near Tarrytown (45 minutes north of Manhattan), Stone Barns combines the farm with an education center and Dan Barber’s acclaimed Blue Hill restaurant to provide a model of community-based agriculture.
  • www.glynwoodcenter.com: A 225-acre working farm, gardens, conference center 60 miles north of Manhattan  in the Hudson Valley, dedicated to sustaining local agriculture and educating community leaders.
  • www.farmandfood.org: A regional project for the greater Hudson-Mohawk Valley in New York state.