By Becky St. Marie
Mammoth Times Staff/Special to
The Inyo Register
1-15-2009

The second chapter in the quest to raise alternative beef in the Eastern Sierra took place on Wednesday, Jan. 7 at Whiskey Creek in Bishop. Up to 30 people gathered to hear experts speak on “Building an Eastern Sierra Food System: Starting with Alternative Livestock.”
Alternative, or natural, livestock is 100 percent grass-fed throughout life as opposed to livestock that is fed corn – a food that is not part of the animals’ natural diet.
Nick Ranch describes his Certified Organic Grass Fed Beef as free of antibiotics, steroids or added hormones. His brochure says that grass-fed beef have been proven to be leaner than corn-fed animals and contain more Omega 3, vitamins A and E and Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA).
The movement to explore alternative livestock caught the attention of Kevin Carunchio, Inyo County administrator, who secured a grant to do a feasibility study on the prospect.
Carunchio explained that the purpose of the November meeting was to find out if there was any interest from local ranchers in pursuing the idea of alternative livestock. There was, so this month’s meeting was set to see if consumers have an interest.

It’s official, natural beef tastes better. At least, that’s what Inyo and Mono residents determined during a blind taste test last week. Photo courtesy Metrocreativegraphics.com

Those in attendance last week included Howard and (Inyo County Supervisor) Linda Arcularius, local ranchers; a representative from the Fort Independence reservation interested in using Native American land for alternative livestock and growing food; Reed Hearon, Mammoth Mountain Ski Area’s head chef; Ilene Mandelbaum, coordinator of the Lee Vining school and community garden; Kyle Oney, owner of Manor Market in Bishop; and others from various industries and interests in the community.
The first speaker was Jeff Schahczenski, program specialist for the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT), which is home of the ATTRA Project. The ATTRA is a National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service providing research, technical assistance and information to America’s farmers and ranchers.
Schahczenski’s job is to do the feasibility study and answer the question: Will alternative livestock work here?
The second speaker, Deb Garrison of the Central Coast Agricultural Network, spoke about the progress made in Central Coast communities. They have just gone through the processes that those in the Eastern Sierra are seeking to undertake and she offered practical advice as to how it can be done.
One of the main obstacles to raising alternative livestock is the lack of a local slaughterhouse (there are only a handful of slaughterhouses in the United States). Currently most of the local cattle is raised on grass and then shipped out, fed corn for a month and then slaughtered.
The solution, as found in the Central Coast, is to buy a mobile slaughterhouse so that the cattle can be slaughtered, or “harvested,” in the mobile unit on the ranches and then inspected by a USDA inspector who would work on the unit.
Garrison expected their mobile unit to be up and running in March after several years of planning.
Mary Canada of the Sierra Business Council talked about timing.
“With the global recession, now is the time to focus on changing the way we think,” she said. That includes becoming part of the local food movement. She believes it could be possible to eat locally.
“History shows that when Bodie was in its heyday they got their food from the (Owens) Valley,” said Canada, whose Think Local First program fits well into the meeting’s concept of local food, as well as local energy and sustainable business practices.
Canada then asked Reed Hearon, Mammoth Mountain’s head chef, to share his ideas on alternative livestock and getting food locally.
Basically, Hearon said that if the local food is available they will use it. For instance, Mammoth Mountain uses some 50,000 pounds of beef a year.
“Inspiration doesn’t always do all of it and the devil is in the details,” Hearon said. Yet the incentive is there for the ranchers, with Mammoth Mountain doing $20 million in food sales a year and spending $4 million on food.
“It’s a nutty system,” Hearon said about getting food from Los Angeles, where the purveyors get theirs from somewhere else.
It would make sense to him to get the food locally if possible. He believes if that happened it would give visitors another reason to come here – to dine on quality, locally raised food.
Nancy Matheson of the NCAT and Grow Montana spoke last about developing regional and local food systems. In Montana, she asked the question: Where is your food coming from? Then they did intensive studies to find those answers – discovering it was coming from all over the United States.
They learned that in 1941, 68 percent of their food came from  Montana; in 1980 the figure was down to 45 percent and by 2006 it was a paltry 10 percent. Thus their goal became to create Grow Montana – to have sustainable agriculture in their state.
The alternative livestock workshop was sponsored by the Inyo and Mono counties’ Agricultural Commissioner’s Office, Inyo County and Mojave-Desert Mountain RC&D.
The workshop concluded with wine and a beef tasting. Attendees were asked to vote between two steaks – one alternative beef from the Central Coast and another just purchased that morning from Vons.
Testers tasted, trying to guess which one was the alternative beef.
From the trays it was easy to see which one tasters liked most – tray B only had a few pieces left while the other had many.
Finally the votes were in – beef B was the favorite, and it was the grass-fed alternative beef.