The hanger steak might be the perfect symbol for the struggles of the local meat industry.
It’s not as common as porterhouses or strip steaks, but for those in the know, the hanger steak is a flavorful option at a more modest price. But it’s a single, one-pound-or-so muscle from an animal that provides more than a quarter ton of meat. So what happens to the rest of the animal?
This is local meat’s dilemma: supply and demand don’t always match up. Restaurants want familiar or prized cuts of meat, but chefs won’t get that meat from nearby farmers unless they’re assured of an adequate supply. And local farmers who do supply key cuts to restaurants often have to find buyers for the rest of the beef or pork from their animals.
But Kevin and Yeonmo McCann, owners of McCann’s Local Meats, and the people at Headwater Food Hub see an opportunity to address both ends of the problem. The businesses are partnering on a new cutting and processing facility which should bring local meat, starting with beef and pork, into more restaurants and institutions.
The facility will also give small- and medium-sized farmers a central entity that they can sell their slaughtered animals to (the facility won’t have a kill floor). The operation will market the meat to restaurants and custom butcher it for them, too.
“To me, this is an example of food system development that is looking to the future and is looking toward sustainability,” says Chris Hartman, Headwater’s president.
The McCanns will manage the operation, which will be located on Headwater’s campus just east of Webster in Ontario, Wayne County. Headwater will distribute the meats through its existing wholesale network.
All of the meat will come from pastured animals and from farms that use humane practices.
“The farmers that we’re going to draw from definitely have the ability to keep up with our quantity, especially right off the bat,” McCann says. “In a lot of ways, hopefully that gives us the opportunity to scale up with each other.”
New York has been more of a dairy state than a meat state, though the numbers have shifted some. Statewide, farmers had 75,000 beef cattle in 1990 and currently have around 110,000, says Mike Baker, beef cattle Extension specialist for Cornell University’s animal sciences department. There are 625,000 dairy cattle in New York.
New York doesn’t have the high-capacity slaughterhouses that have developed in the Midwest, often due to consolidation within the meat industry. The state’s slaughtering, cutting, and packing facilities are generally smaller and geared toward farmers who want the meat divided into marketable cuts.
The Finger Lakes region has several such shops, but they are often inundated with work, says Stefan Schwartz, Headwater’s purchasing director. Some shops are booked up a year in advance, he says.
The McCann-Headwater facility is intended to provide relief to the bottleneck in the meat flow. McCann says that the facility is being planned with the objective of processing 30 beef cows and 90 hogs a week.
McCann’s Local Meats opened just after Memorial Day last year, and its owners set out to clue in local retail customers and select chefs to new cuts of meat. It’s an approach borne out of a deeper philosophy.
“On a retail level, the reason that I make as many different styles of product as I do is because it helps to fully utilize each animal as evenly as possible,” Kevin McCann says. “But the wholesale market is going to be a completely different — pun intended — animal.”
The McCanns and Headwater say that they want to translate that approach to restaurant and institutional customers. The McCanns are trained and experienced chefs, and they plan to draw on that background as they help area restaurants find the cuts they want, and as they work to introduce them to some of the unfamiliar cuts.
A Denver or ranch steak cooks and eats similar to a strip steak, McCann says. And a cross-cut beef flank can make a good substitute for veal shank in the Italian dish osso buco, he says.
The partners say that if they can build up interest in a greater variety of cuts among restaurants, chefs, and diners, it will increase the amount of local meat available. And if restaurants buy those cuts, farmers will get more value out of each animal.
“Restaurants and chefs as a whole, chefs want to use the best ingredients that they can find,” McCann says. “They want to use local ingredients and have been for a number of years, it’s just that the protein is the difficult nut to crack with that.”
This article appears in May 4-10, 2016.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing sustainable about meat. Or healthy, for that matter. “Local” makes people feel better on some level–it certainly did me for a while, as it somehow suggests a more humane, and environmentally friendly approach. Pasture-raised might provide a more “natural” life for some animals, but it’s an environmental nightmare. And the alternative is an inhumane life, while both end in inhumane slaughter.
I’ve observed more and more people responding to animal, environmental, and human health issues by moving away from meat consumption. Just my two cents.
It is impossible to have a situation, where 8 billion humans eat animals that are free range, sustainable, and killed “humanely”. It would take 2 planet Earths to have enough free range. So it is completely irresponsible to suggest this as sustainable future for food. Most animals raise for food are slaughtered in a small fraction of their natural lives. This isn’t humane. Killing someone, someone who wants to live…isn’t humane. And finally, If you truly are interested in “Spreading the Love”. Going Vegan and eating a plant based diet, is Love. It is healthy. It is sustainable. It is Humane.
There is no humane way to slaughter an animal as the industry would have us believe. Those two words are in exact opposition to one another. The restaurants that are progressive and want to cater to the current culinary desires are those that no longer look for the right way to do the wrong thing. Veganism is on the rise as are plant based dieters who are conscientious about the environment and/or their own personal health. Supply and demand are not going to match as the world progresses away from animal agriculture for a multitude of reasons and towards a plant based humanity.
The meat industry is the cruelest industry 8n the world. We must stop believing we are the only earthlings. If we have no compassion for the others we have none for our own. Regional meat matters not
Eating the corpses of dead beings is a custom that is coming to an end
Hmmm … five less meat consumers posting here equals more meat for the rest of us.
Medium rare, please, and not overwrought with sauces and seasonings that mask the deliciousness of the cut.
Thank you.
Eating meat locally produced has become a common way to rationalize that raising and killing animals can be done more humanely. However, local small farms sometimes have horrible living conditions for the animals. Recently ,a farm in Farmersville that was one of the major suppliers to local meat at the Buffalo Market was raided by the Cattaraugus Co. SPCA. The meat animals there were in horrible condition and lived in squalid environments. This is only a tip of the iceberg. Driving through the Western NY rural country side you can see small fenced in areas containing muddied cows, goats etc., all being raised for that “humane locovore meat market”. Humane, locally raised meat doesn’t exist
USDA projections are for over 380 million bushels of soybeans produced in the US in 2016. How much ground water used for growing, harvesting, cleaning and tofu production? How many insects and rodents killed during planting and harvesting? What’s the effects of all that land pushed into food production instead of layng fallow? Are there impacts to a vegetarian or vegan diet? Just because you’ve eliminated meat, don’t delude yourselves that you’ve no environmental impact.