If you missed our Meat With A Twist party, you didn’t get to taste some amazing food/cocktail pairings. Worse yet, you missed WNYC’s Leonard Lopate announcing the first-ever Local Meat Hero Awards. The three recipients came from all over the country to be acknowledged.
First up was Daniel Hogan, of Heritage Foods USA, who has been key to getting policy changes enacted to benefit these independent meat farms, along with bringing more than $20 million into small, agriculture-related business.
Also receiving a Local Meat Hero Award was Dan O’Brien of Wild Idea Buffalo (outside Rapid City, South Dakota), who was quoted as saying, “There are many books written about the history of buffalo. They tell the story of the species’ rise to dominance of an entire continent; its subsequent fall from grace, and the beginnings of a comeback.” Dan has turned ranching into an environmental cause (which doesn’t mean his buffalo tastes any less amazing!).
Finally, Leonard introduced Chip Alleman, Chairman of the Board for both Glynwood and Local Infrastructure for Local Agriculture. Because the USDA requires use of one of its facilities, finding a USDA slaughterhouse that holds the same values as the sustainable meat community can be extraordinarily difficult. Chip and his colleagues have developed a unique and revolutionary modular mobile slaughterhouse, which they dub MHS: Modular Harvest System. In the spring of 2010, Glynwood and LILA launched the first mobile slaughterhouse to operate east of the Mississippi. Employing a pioneering design of four modules that come together to form a “mini processing facility,” the MHS is the first mobile unit of its kind. The MHS meets all USDA requirements — including for humane treatment of livestock — offering farmers the certification necessary to reach the broadest spectrum of markets in which to sell their products. It is a real-world model that demonstrates an innovative solution to address the acute need for accessible, humane, and high-quality slaughterhouses in the Northeast.
Congratulations to these Local Meat Heroes!
