SPECIAL REPORTS

ADVERTISEMENT

Super Natural

Page 1 | 2 | Next Page »

Pigs rooting, cattle grazing—how Bill Niman set out to redefine the “natural” in “natural meat”

Barbecued spareribs and juicy steaks hot off the grill are all-American pleasures, iconic dishes on our national table. Americans appreciate good meat, eat a lot of it, and expect it to be abundant and low in price. Yet, few hungry diners cutting into a thick pork chop think much about their dinner’s back story: who raised that hog, where and how?



But there is a story, and it’s often not pretty. Getting cheap meat to our table takes an enormous environmental and social toll, damaging the health of our water, air and soil and the fabric of our rural communities. If you have ever driven by a crowded, smelly cattle feedlot or heard about hogs raised in confinement, you might have been tempted to give up meat entirely. But conscientious omnivores are finding alternatives among growers who raise meat responsibly and humanely.

Going Beyond “Natural”
Enter Bill Niman, a California cattle rancher and the founder of Niman Ranch, an alliance of farmers and ranchers, which produces top-quality beef, lamb and pork while helping sustain family farms, dual goals that the company achieves in an environmentally sensitive and humane manner.

Niman began raising hogs and a few cattle on 11 acres in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, in the early 1970s. He sold the meat to friends and neighbors, and demand grew one pig at a time. By the early 1980s, he had several prominent Bay Area restaurant customers—Chez Panisse and Zuni Café among them—and a reputation for producing quality meat. Eventually, the company grew into a network of sheep and cattle ranchers in the western states, all of whom agree to follow Niman Ranch protocols in their operations. A separate business established in 1998, the Niman Ranch Pork Company, runs a bit more like a traditional cooperative and is half-owned by the 450 family farmers who supply it.

Niman Ranch is not alone in the natural-meat business, of course. The niche is booming and will continue to grow with every scare about mad-cow disease. But Niman argues that the term “natural” is so overused and liberally defined in the meat world that it is virtually meaningless and even misleading.
 
The USDA requires only that meat labeled “natural” contain no artificial ingredients, colorings or chemical preservatives and be “minimally processed”—a phrase open to wide interpretation. In practice, meat producers commonly use the term to refer to meat raised without antibiotics or growth hormones.

To Niman, the USDA requirements are “just the bare minimum.”

“I think ‘natural’ should also mean that the animal is allowed to live a reasonably natural life,” he says. “One in which it can express its instincts.”


For pigs, that means being able to root in dirt, wallow in mud and construct their own nests for birthing. For cattle, it means being raised on pasture until maturity. And for cattle, sheep and pigs, it means that mothers can remain with their young instead of being separated soon after birth—a common practice on so-called factory farms. A natural system would also allow cattle, sheep and pigs to live in groups, in keeping with their deeply rooted herding instinct. “A pig alone is very sad,” says Phyllis Willis, an Iowa hog farmer who is part of the Niman Ranch network.

“I’ve never heard anyone from any other company define ‘natural’ this way,” admits Niman, “but it seems important to consider the way an animal lives when you say the meat that comes from it is ‘natural.’ How can antibiotic-free pork from a pig that was raised in a metal confinement building be called ‘natural’?”

Some of the practices used by some natural-meat producers would probably surprise consumers, says Niman. Many so-called ‘natural beef’ producers feed cattle a high-protein petroleum by-product called urea when the grass is poor or as a feedlot supplement. Cattle in some “natural” beef programs never eat a blade of grass or taste their mother’s milk. “I feel confident that no consumer of ‘natural beef’ would consider that ‘natural,’” says Niman.

Page 1 | 2 | Next Page »