The Chicken or the Industry

There's no shortage of issues surrounding the labeling of chicken.
As more consumers become aware of the issues surrounding the industrial production of chicken, we've seen terminology and meaning drop left and right. Cage-free, free-range, free-roaming, free-running, naturally raised; each term comes and then gets swallowed whole by an industry that eagerly promotes the age old imagery of chickens wandering freely on farms in the place of what they really offer: cage-free barns with minimal access to over-run "pasture".
The wording gets tricky and the reason is simple: chicken is a commodity. The market dictates a cheap price, huge breasts, and wording that looks good enough to pass off as legitimate.
And the competition is fierce. Conventional CAFO operations are massive. They are federally subsidized and can produce a butcher weight chicken in 5 weeks by just cramming them full of junk. And when that massive bird inevitably no longer tastes like chicken, they inject them with "chicken flavor".

The jump to "free range" chickens cost those corporations money, but they can cut every corner and still charge more when the customer thinks the chicken they bought was humanely raised. But if you're buying chicken in the $1 per lb range, humanely raised is out of the question.
Despite what the market dictates, it's not cheap to raise chickens, and it's definitely not cheap if you want to raise them as chickens instead of products.
It's unfortunately the case that what a chicken wants needs clarification, but that's where we're at. Chickens are like people, in confinement they will flock and act mindlessly and often viciously. In CAFO's they're debeaked because they'll attack each other. This has less to do with the nature of a chicken, but with the circumstance of confinement. They need space and they need to move. They're natural foragers and they're inclined to spend their mornings wandering around eating grass and the insects that crawl throughout it.
Contrary to what the chicken industry loudly proclaims, chickens are also not vegetarians. It's become increasingly common to see chickens and eggs marketed as being given "vegetarian feed". That's good in the sense that CAFO operations will typically dump agricultural byproducts into their chicken's diets as a cheap feed. That often includes other ground up, confined chicken remains.
Obviously that's not healthy. But the flip side isn't ideal either: to drop animal proteins from their diets and pour soy into their feed instead. What chickens need non-coincidentally is what chickens want: bugs!
The chickens raised by LFFC farmers get just that: they typically follow bio-dynamic principles and are free to roam on farms following organic, grazing dairy herds. The cows eat the grass and leave behind the perfect residue for an insect feast. The chickens follow, spending their time chasing the insects, getting their proper nutrients, and contributing to the cycle of turning dung into a naturally nitrogen rich fertilizer: chicken crap.
The result is a chicken that takes longer to grow, is not reliant upon hormones and antibiotics to survive an overcrowded, unnatural barn, can forage for as much of it's diet as possible, and can act like a chicken.
In the end, you get the inevitably less-than-surprising result: they taste like the real chicken that the industry has to spend so much money trying to emulate.

But there's more to it.
Beyond the way that the chicken is raised, you have the chicken itself. The standard chicken that winds up battered and fried in buckets or on your plate at fine restaurants is actually the same bird: the Cornish Cross. This white feathered bird looks like it was meant to: over-stuffed. They're fast growing, breast heavy feed converters.
It's a scientific wonder that a bird can reach a butcher weight in 5 weeks, but that doesn't mean it's healthy. But the Cornish Cross wasn't bred for health, it was bred to be churned out in a factory like setting, quickly, efficiently and cheaply. All of which weren't done with the Cornish Cross's interests in mind.
The problem is that, as consumers, that plump breast is what we know. And that's hard to compete with. The problem is that, if those chickens weren't butchered at that early age, the breast is unsupportable and it will ultimately be the demise of the bird. If left on their own, the rapidly expanding double breast will become to heavy for the less-than-rugged legs of a bird that was bred without foraging in mind and they will simply sit and eat.
And that's only in the time it takes for a heritage breed chicken to just barely get to a butcher weight.
That's not to say that a Cornish Cross can't be raised well. There are plenty of farmers out there (including LFFC members) that raise Cornish Cross successfully on pasture. They aren't as hardy of a bird, but they can still get around and forage, it just becomes harder as they get larger. Our farmers never let them get so large that they can no longer walk or move, but it's in the breed that their massive size becomes more laborious.

That is why we promote heritage breed chickens, because they're healthier, tastier, hardier chickens.
The problem is that they have the disadvantage of having to compete with their confined, industrialized cousins. It's not a matter of taste, but of economics: that large, cheap breast dominates our idea of what a chicken is. An irony that is often sadly unnoticed.
When the local foodies, the concerned parents, the activists, and interested eaters start asking questions, the industry responds. They don't mean it and they'll certainly cut corners, but it means that more questions need to be asked.
It's not just a matter of how the chickens are raised, but what kind of chicken we want to eat. Do you want a large breast of a chicken that tastes like chicken because it was cheaply produced commodity with additives? Do you want the Cornish Cross raised on pasture? Or do you want a heritage breed chicken raised on pasture?
LFFC currently offers the latter two, but we have a lot of interest in being open and honest about what we're doing. In terms of health and hardiness, you can't beat the heritage birds. But until everyone is ready, our farmers will continue doing our best to let Cornish Cross chickens live their lives as chickens and let the heritage breeds show them the way.

The benefits of grass fed beef and bison.

Devon/Red Angus Crosses at Tussock Sedge. Photography by Yank.

Here's a great resource regarding the health benefits of grass-fed beef and bison.
All of our beef and bison is 100% grass-fed.
This is a central element of what LFFC is doing in terms of raising the overall healthiness of the foods that we eat and the land that these animals are raised on. We're proud to say that through decades of industrial agriculture removing anything natural or healthy from the animals we eat that there is a strong resurgence of pasture oriented farmers who are really putting the work into doing it right.
Our beef and bison farmers use tall grass rotational pasturing methods. This helps to build up topsoil and offer up a more readily available, high quality feed for the animals without saturating the land with chemical fertilizers or shipping in expensive synthetic additives.
They put a lot of work into ensuring that without using grains all the animals are getting a strong finish. And it's a difference that you'll notice immediately when you look at the steaks we sell.

So read up, get educated, heal yourself and the land; one meal at a time!
http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm

Thanksgiving Turkeys!

It's that time of the year...
     Once again we'll be offering organic, pastured turkeys for your holiday meals. We're offering pastured turkeys fed a certified organic feed and given no antibiotics or artificial hormones. These aren't your "free-range" yet raised in barns turkeys, these are all rotated on pasture on certified organic farms.
     We're currently taking pre-orders for all of our wholesale and buying club customers for $10 per bird. The sizes are small (10-14 lbs), medium (15-18 lbs), large (19-22 lbs), and extra-large (23 lbs and over).

We'll always do our best to guarantee sizing, but there's a chance we might extend the size ranges within 2 lbs per bird. Cut off for sizing will be November 11th. There will be more birds available after that date, but at that point sizing will be first come, first served.
     We've had some issues with sizing before, but we've been monitoring the turkey sizes more closely this year. We're looking at average size being in the medium range.
     The reason that we can't guarantee sizing 100% has to do with the nature of nature.
     Our bird's health and well-being takes precedent over offering birds in a factory style certainty. In order to offer sizing the way larger, even "free-range", suppliers do, they have temperature controlled environments, feed rationing, and limited space. It's not necessarily rocket science, but it's more science than farming.
     That is, however, not how we operate. We like to keep our birds happy. That means that they're on pasture, encouraged to forage, given space to move, and don't have their feed rationed out to them. This means a fluctuation in weight that can't be equated the way that a CAFO operation can.
     And that's just how we feel it should be.
     That said, we'll do the best we can to get sizing lined up, but we will also have some freshly frozen turkeys if you need to ensure that you get a smaller size turkey if we don't have as many available.

If you're looking for something a little more edgy than the traditional holiday turkey, we have a limited amount of ducks, very limited amount of geese, and heritage breed chickens. All raised on pasture with a supplemental GMO/hormone/antibiotic free feed.
     Interested in ordering? Existing customers can place their turkey deposits with existing wholesale or buying club orders. But if you're not an existing customer, go to lancasterfarmfresh.com to find out how to buy from the co-op. You can also email: lffcmeats [at] gmail (dot) com.

Don't let the sticker fool you...

A number of you are probably familiar with our vacuum sealed packages with a very plain looking butcher sticker on them. It conveys little to no information about the animals that are raised for the co-op which might mislead customers to think that there's nothing separating LFFC meats and any other local or conventional meats.
   This, fortunately, couldn't be farther from the truth.


The plain labels on our meats are a by-product of bureaucratic hold ups and some slow moving processes within the food industry at large, but nearly endemic to the small farmers of the world. It's a situation that we always hope to rectify, but it's a long and slow process.
   It's what's not on the labels that matters most: our standards.
   Lancaster Farm Fresh Co-op, and the farmers that it represents, are an anomaly in this modernized world, the unifying goal is to produce high quality products that are ecologically responsible, locally centered, sustainable, and, most importantly, ethically sound. In a market saturated by profit-driven consequences, there's a steady demand on well-intentioned farmers to slip under the heavy hand of market demands. While we strive to keep our pricing affordable, we don't cut corners to make sales.
   The meats and poultry that are offered by LFFC are based in a pasture-driven philosophy. Our animals are always pastured and all efforts push towards maintaining each animals natural behaviors. We don't want to just offer up an ideal image, we strive for the ideal.
   We use the following standards as a starting point and constantly build with the best ecological and humane interests in mind;


*All animals shall be on pasture.
*The pasture will provide the highest possible percentage of each animal's diet.
*All efforts must be towards enriching the pasture with a diversified growth and maintaining pasture health. This means cycling pastures, encouraging the growth of native plants, and offering as much acreage for pasture as possible.
*Absoluetly no GMO feed. No hormones, no antibiotics. Sick or injured animals should be treated by natural methods and practices. If those fail, animals should be treated humanely and pulled from production.
*Absolutely no debeaking of poultry. No physical alternations to inhibit an animal's natural behavior. No docking of tails or ears. Any dehorning or castration must be done immediately and no later than when an animal is older than 6 weeks. Dehorning and castration must be done humanely, quickly, and dehorning should be done without cutting. 
 *Absolutely no confinement of animals. If an animal must be quarantined for health reasons, it can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
*When animals are in-doors, they shall have ample space, light, and access to water.
*LFFC seeks to transform conventional farming practices and encourages all farmers to attain the highest humane and/or organic standards for all animals, whether sold through the co-op or not. 
*Animals must always be treated humanely. Period.


To put it simply, the meat we sell is the meat that we would eat. Raised to the highest standards, ecologically sound, local, and humane. It's a difference that you can taste.
   So don't be fooled by the often lacking information on our pricelist or the wanting labels on our meats. The purpose of this blog is to fill in those blanks and open our doors, so to speak. 
   If you have questions, please ask them.
   Thanks, 
   LFFC Meats and Poultry