By CINDA CHAVICH

If you’re the kind of person who hopes the meat they are eating once led a free and happy life, you would feel quite smug about digging into a steak from Francis and Bonnie Gardner’s  Mt. Sentinel Ranch south of Calgary

With five other southern Alberta ranch families, the Gardners have formed the “Producers of the Diamond Willow Range” and market their organic beef under their own label across the country. The privileged bovines in their herds roam over a strip of some of the most beautiful scenery in the country, steep golden foothills that are jammed right up against the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.

This is the quintessential free range – just like you would imagine it in your dreams. And these ranchers are offering consumers what more are dreaming of these days, high quality Canadian beef that is free of growth-promoting hormones and antibiotics, produced in a way that is friendly to both the earth and the animals.

They are pioneers in a business that is largely dominated by a more high-volume, industrial style of food production, their numbers so small that the Alberta Cattle Commission (ACC) says they are too insignificant to measure.

But with the Canadian market for organic food reaching $1 billion annually and growing by an estimated 20 per cent per year, and customers in Europe and Japan demanding beef that is drug-free, it’s a niche that more and more Alberta ranchers are exploring.

“The land has always been organic anyways,” says Francis Gardner whose historic family ranch is made up of wild, rough fescue grassland that has never seen a plough. “We produce beef that comes off these hills, putting the natural system to work. It’s a natural spin off to a natural piece of ground.”

While Mr. Gardner and his producer partners have gone the certified organic route, ranging their cattle freely in the foothills, then fattening them on organic grain in a feedlot, there are other ranchers taking their beef, and their land, off drugs in other ways. At Canadian Rangeland Beef, Maurice Moore is marketing “all natural beef,” non-organic and grain-fed in feedlots, but without the addition of growth hormones, “for the health conscious consumer who wants something a little better.”

On the other end of the scale are the members of the “grass-fed” movement, raising cattle solely on grass, with no subsequent trip to the feedlot to be fattened on grain. Like the certified organic ranchers, their beef is raised without antibiotics and growth hormones but they say 100 per cent grass feeding takes the process one step further.

“There is organic beef around but the next step is grass-fed,” says John Cross who runs cattle on the A7 Ranch in the foothills just east of the Gardner’s spread.

Mr. Cross has just begun to convert his cattle operation to a purely grass-fed one, selling his beef directly to consumers and to Dylan and Colleen Biggs,  who are retailing grass-fed beef under their own TK Ranch Natural Meats label in Calgary health food and Safeway stores.

The Biggs run their own animals on a chunk of wild grassland near the Saskatchewan border and Mr. Biggs is an expert in LSHT (low stress handling techniques). In workshops around the province, he has been teaching ranchers like Mr. Cross how to humanely handle their animals, quietly herding them on foot without the use of fear, stock prods or other physical force.

Such animals are not only healthier and happier, says Mr. Cross.  Reducing stress helps them to gain weight and makes for a tender final product on the plate.

Animals are what they eat, he adds, and wild grasses are natural foods for ruminants like cattle. Grass-fed beef has the added advantage of being rich in heart healthy omega-3 fatty acids – two to six times that of grainfed meat – which are derived directly from the grass. Omega-3s are the essential fatty acids (EFAs) found more commonly in fish and flax seed, and which experts say are dangerously deficient in the North American diet.

Free range grass is high in omega-3s, and the meat of grass-fed animals is also high in these  EFAs, writes Jo Robinson in her book Why Grassfed is Best (Vashon Island Press, 2000). Grain, while it fattens animals quickly, is hard for cattle to digest and throws off the balance of omega-3 and omega-6 EFAs, she adds. It also negatively affects the chemistry of the animal’s gut, making it the perfect breeding ground for acid-resistant strains of e.coli bacteria that are most dangerous to humans.

“Every day that an animal spends in a feed lot, its meat contains fewer and fewer omega-3 fatty acids,” Ms. Robinson writes. “When the animals are taken off fresh pasture and fed ingredients poor in omega-3s (such as grain), their tissues gradually lose their store of these potentially lifesaving fats.”

While producing food for a growing niche market is important for ranchers like Mr. Gardner, Mr. Cross and Mr. Biggs, it’s more than money that is luring these beef producers out of the exponentially-bigger conventional cattle business. All of these ranchers are also driven by principals of grassland management and conservation.

Mr. Cross, the grandson of well-known Calgary businessman and pioneer A.E. Cross, takes a holistic approach to ranching on the A7, from his energy-efficient home and power-generating wind mill, to his commitment to “holistic resource management”.

The point is to preserve the grassland.

“What I’m trying to sell is healthy land, clean water, clean air, and clean and healthy food products,” he says. “Because the grass plants are only exposed to animals for a short period, they stay healthy. The alternative is using fossil fuels and chemicals and that doesn’t fit my values.” 

With miles of portable electric fences, Mr. Cross divides his big 13,000-acre ranch into mini-pastures and moves his cattle from one patch of fresh grass to another every 2-5 days.

This gives the wild fescue, timothy and brome grasses 60 or more days to regenerate between grazing, says Mr. Cross, preserving the prairie while feeding the animals in a purely natural way.

“There’s a lot of moving and one person is responsible,” says Mr. Cross. “I don’t employ cowboys. It’s grass management work – I have one grazier.”

It is the preservation of the open rangeland that drives Francis Gardner, too. The patch of unbroken rough fescue that makes up his ranch is a wild grass that is significantly higher in protein and nutrients than other introduced species. It is the grass that once fed the wild plains buffalo which wintered here, and it is a part of the prairie he wants to keep intact.

“People have a way of turning the world to their use and that cannot go on forever,” says Mr. Gardner who received the Alberta Cattleman’s Association first environmental stewardship award in 1992 for his environmental ranching ethic and is a founding member of a non-profit society dedicated to protecting the ranchland from subdivision and development. “The land is self sustaining and self renewing if we allow it.”

While the ranchers producing organic, natural and grass-fed beef are careful not to claim that their meat is healthier than conventionally-raised beef, they say it gives consumers another choice.

Meat that is “certified organic” must meet specific guidelines including no chemical fertilizers, no artificial hormones, no non-organic feeds, no antibiotics and no genetically modified organisms (GMOs), says Mr. Gardner.

While “natural” producers like Mr. Cross and Mr. Biggs follow their own strict protocols, the word “natural” is not strictly regulated and may be used by almost anyone.

Consumers still need to ask questions, ranchers say, to determine exactly how an animal was raised before paying a premium price for this kind of designer beef– a price that can easily be 50-100 per cent higher at the meat counter.

“As consumers, we can police it by being vigilant,” says  Mr. Cross.

While beef industry groups like the Alberta Cattle Commission insist that conventional cattle production methods are safe and humane, there is clearly a perception among a growing number of consumers that it is healthier for both their bodies and the planet to eat food that is grown organically or at least “naturally” without drug and chemical inputs.

Many have lost faith in governments to guarantee that new technologies – like GMOs and irradiated foods – are completely safe to eat.

Bob McDonald, director of the Canadian Organic Advisory Board, says that’s what makes certified organic products popular – they offer a guarantee that certain standards have been met. But he says it’s healthy to have a “highly stratified” food system, where there are a multitude of choices.

ACC’s Marty Carpenter says Canadians already enjoy the best beef at the best prices via the conventional system. Beef consumption is up in Canada – 5 per cent in dollar sales in 1999 over 1998 – and steak is trendy again in restaurants.

He says he can see organic and grassfed beef gaining popularity among a small group of chefs and consumers, but it will be a long time before the Alberta cattle industry embraces the organic movement.

“No, I don’t think we will be opening up an organic division just yet,” says Mr. Carpenter, pointing to the 1.2 billion kg of conventional beef produced in Canada every year. “If people have disposable income, they will buy that. It’s an alternative. But I still think it’s in its early days.”

SCOOPING THE NEW BEEF

Grassfed and organic  beef is still a rare commodity in Canada. You will have likely have to seek it out in the gourmet or natural food stores in larger centres or buy it directly from producers at farmers markets or from the farm.

There are only about 500 grassfeeder farms in Canada and the U.S, many listed on the website, www.eatwild.com. Grassfed beef is only available fresh in the fall so most of the product is sold frozen.

Grassfed beef is lean with a more robust beef flavour. Alberta rancher Colleen Biggs recommends cooking her grassfed meat to a maximum internal temperature of 150*F/65*C (medium rare – use  a meat thermometer to check). She also suggests cooking the meat low and slow, roasts at 300*F/150*C after an initial searing. Less tender cuts should be braised.

STEAK SENSE

Calgary steakhouse chefs cook a lot of steak every day. They learn how to cook a steak to perfection every time just by learning how it feels. Here are some tips to cook your own perfect steak:

Choose a good cut for grilling or broiling– t-bone, rib eye or porterhouse – with a Canada AA or AAA grade (this indicates the degree of fat marbelling and the juiciness of the final product). The steak should be at least 3/4 inch thick.

Find a good butcher and ask for beef that has been dry aged for 14-21 days (most beef today is wet aged in plastic bags).

Make sure the grill or broiler is very hot. Sear the steak on one side before turning to sear the other side. When the juice is starting to show on top of the steak it’s done to a perfect medium rare.

Handle your steak with tongs, not a fork which will puncture the seared crust and allow the meat to dry out.

Use “the rule of thumb” to test a steak for doneness. Try pressing the flesh below your thumb when your hand is relaxed. That’s the spongy texture of a rare steak. Now touch your thumb and index finger together and press the spot again. It will feel firmer, like a medium rare steak. Using subsequent fingers test the feel of a medium well, well done and truly overcooked steak. It takes time, but anyone can learn this slick way to sear a steak.

Cinda Chavich is a Calgary-based food writer and author of the best-selling Wild West Cookbook (Robert Rose, 1998), The Best Pressure Cooker Recipes (Robert Rose, 2001) and High Plains: The Joy of Alberta Cuisine (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2001).

Copyright Cinda Chavich 2000

(a version of this story appeared in the Globe and Mail newspaper in November 2000)