From Grazin’ Angus Acres Farm Profile

Despite the pouring rain at NYC’s Union Square Greenmarket, customer after customer stopped by to ask Dan Gibson from Grazin’ Angus Acres detailed questions about how he raises his animals. His new status as the first Animal Welfare Approved farmer in Greenmarket is something he’s very proud of and it shows in his conversations. Dan said he gets these questions all the time, but that’s why he loves having a farmstand at Greenmarket. He appreciates when people ask questions and come for tours on the farm. “Once they come for a tour of the farm,” he said, “they’re customers for life.”

While Dan is usually the person you’ll meet at the farmers’ markets, he doesn’t run the farm alone. He raises 250 head of cattle and 400 laying hens with his wife Susan, his son Keith and his wife Nicole and their partners Jim and Ilene Stark. Dan and his family are successful farmers even though they didn’t come from a farming background. Dan was a corporate executive in NYC and after 9/11 he decided to leave the corporate world. Two and a half years ago Dan retired to become a full time farmer.

When asked why his eggs are “so great,” Dan replied, “The hens are pasture raised and the eggs have an orange yolk that’s full of beta carotene and Omega-3’s. The hens are out and about all day long eating bugs and grass-they’re supplemented with 100% organic grain.” The fact that his animals are pasture raised is very important to Dan. He said, “‘Pasture-raised’ is key, ‘free-range’ is meaningless. All of our chickens are moved to fresh grass every day. We want our animals to have a longer life span and raising our cattle to a later age gives nicer tasting beef because it allows the animals to marble. We cultivate the best grasses, 100% Black Angus, best genetics.”

Grazin’ Angus Acres applied for the Animal Welfare Approved certification because as Dan recalls, “I was sure in my heart that I was doing the right things, not just providing a superior, safe and efficacious product and we were sure we were treating our animals with the respect that our customers in NYC and Albany would appreciate. I could talk about it all I wanted, but without the Animal Welfare Approved seal it wouldn’t [have the same impact].”

To investigate some of these issues, Animal Welfare Approved sponsored a one-week, three-city tour for the UK Dinner Lady, Jeanette Orrey.  Jeanette is credited with changing school food in the UK, and AWA sponsored this visit to promote cross cultural dialogue and share her experiences with people working to make change in several US school districts. Following two days in New York City, the tour continued south (via Amtrak), as Jeanette was guided along by AWA staffers Andrew Gunther, Brigid Sweeney and Beth Hauptle, joined Chef Bill Telepan and Nancy Easton, both of NYC nonprofit Wellness in the Schools. (Pictured above:  Nancy Easton and Chef Bill Telepan from Wellness in the Schools in NYC talk with Greg Strella, Farm Manager of Great Kids Farm, a part of the Baltimore Public School system.  The farm currently grows crops and raises chickens and goats.)

On Wednesday as the tour continued, we visited with the Baltimore City Public Schools’ Great Kids Farm and a Culinary Center where students in the program prepared lunch for us.  Tony Geraci has been lauded for the efforts he is making in changing food in the schools in Baltimore and his plans are impressive.  The visit was covered by the Baltimore Sun.

On Thursday we hosted a luncheon at the Arlington location of Jaleo (ThinkFoodGroup), and shared meaningful dialogue about school lunches with representatives from the Arlington, VA school district, Alex Ashbrook, Director of DC Hunger Solutions, Maria Enie and Brandi Horton from Vanguard Communications and others committed to childhood nutrition and school food. (Right:  Andrew Gunther, Jeanette Orrey, Nancy Easton and Bill Telepan on Amtrak to Baltimore.)

On Thursday, we visited Washington-Lee High School, a high school in the Arlington Public School system. Arlington is a county (and city) adjacent to Washington, DC, across the Potomac River. We were hosted by Amy Maclosky, Director of Food Service and Mary Beth Chambers, Assistant Superintendent, Management and Finance Services. We were impressed with the efforts being made by this school district and the openness to share information and desire to effect positive change. AWA is looking forward to working with Arlington to identify local farms and help raise awareness among the staff and students about “where our food comes from.”

The trip concluded yesterday as Jeanette traveled back to the UK. We are all looking forward to the next steps and for the opportunity to draw upon her many years of experience in making change happen. More in depth coverage of the trip will be featured in our next newsletter. (Right:  Jeanette meets cafeteria workers at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, VA.)

During her stay, Orrey met with the following:

New York City Department of Education
Eric Goldstein, Chief Executive Officer for Nutrition and Transportation
Dianne Frankel, Director of Operations
Chef Jorge Collazo, SchoolFood Executive Chef
Stephen O’Brien, Director of Food and Food Support

Queens County Farm Museum, NYC
Amy Fischetti-Boncardo, Executive Director
Michael Grady Robertson, Director of Agriculture

Baltimore City Public Schools, MD
Tony Geraci, Director of Food and Nutrition Services
Greg Strella, Farm Manager, Great Kids Farm

ThinkFoodGroup, Washington, DC
Richard Brandenburg, Kitchen Director

Arlington County Public Schools, VA
Amy Maclosky, Food Service Director
Mary Beth Chambers, Assistant Superintendent, Management and Finance Services

(Above: Students in one of Baltimore City Public Schools’ culinary centers proudly prepared a delicious gourmet lunch for Jeanette and the other visitors!)

We are headed to Baltimore this morning on an early train.  Yesterday while meeting with Queens Farm we got a call from Tony Geraci (soon to be dubbed the US Dinner Man?!), Director of Food and Nutrition Services for Baltimore City Public Schools.  He prepared us for our reception at the train station in Baltimore, where we will be greeted by a camera crew from a Baltimore City High School.  The students are excited to meet us and we are looking forward to a productive day!  We’re going to have lunch prepared by high school students in the culinary program as well as visit with Greg Strella, the Farm Manager of the Great Kids Farm, actually owned by the school system.

More to come tomorrow.

We were joined by our friend Bill Telepan, of Telepan restaurant of course, and Nancy Easton, both with Wellness in the Schools, a non-profit working to support healthy school food in NYC.

Hosts:

New York City Department of Education
Eric Goldstein, Chief Executive Officer for Nutrition and Transportation
Dianne Frankel, Director of Operations
Chef Jorge Collazo, SchoolFood Executive Chef
Stephen O’Brien, Director of Food and Food Support

Queens County Farm Museum, NYC
Amy Fischetti-Boncardo, Executive Director
Michael Grady Robertson, Director of Agriculture

Baltimore City Public Schools, MD
Tony Geraci, Director of Food and Nutrition Services
Greg Strella, Farm Manager, Great Kids Farm

ThinkFoodGroup, Washington, DC
Richard Brandenburg, Kitchen Director

Arlington County Public Schools, VA
Amy Maclosky, Food Service Director

Jeanette Orrey is the School Meals Policy Advisor to the Soil Association. Jeanette’s achievements and guidance were central to the success of the Food For Life campaign and an inspiration for Jamie Oliver’s fight to improve school meals. Her life has been a whirlwind of training, lecturing, meetings with ministers and, of course, awards ceremonies. She has received recognition of her work from, amongst others, Radio 4’s ‘The Food Programme’ (2003); The Observer (2004); Good Housekeeping (2005) and the Guild of Food Writers (2006) for her book ‘The Dinner Lady’.

We’ve got to run off now to visit the Queens County Farm Museum and our friends Amy Fischetti-Boncardo and Michael Grady Robertson, but we wanted to post a few photos of our first day.

More to come!

Jeanette Orrey, UK Pioneer in Reforming School Lunches, Visits US

Animal Welfare Approved, the nation’s leading certification label for family farmers raising their animals with high welfare standards, is hosting Jeanette Orrey, the United Kingdom’s famous “Dinner Lady” (that would be a lunch lady on this side of the pond) the week of January 11th. Orrey is a leader in the U.K.’s efforts to provide school lunches made of fresh, local organic food. She will be visiting with school officials, farmers and proponents of healthy school lunches in New York City, Baltimore, Maryland and Arlington, Virginia.

According to Andrew Gunther, Program Director for Animal Welfare Approved, Orrey’s work in the U.K. dovetails nicely with the U.S. movement to educate children about food and improve school lunches. “Right now, U.S. work focuses very strongly on fresh fruits and vegetables,” he says. “Jeanette began by sourcing beef from local farmers for her school, so we felt her work would be of interest to her U.S. counterparts. Farmers in the Animal Welfare Approved program provide healthy, safe, nutritionally superior products which should be part of any child’s school-provided lunch. To this end, being a part of the dialogue regarding healthy eating by our nation’s youth and in our nation’s schools helps us to achieve our mission of promoting our family farmers while ensuring children receive the best food possible.”

Accompanying Orrey on her journey will be Animal Welfare Approved staff, Bill Telepan, chef/owner of Manhattan’s Telepan Restaurant, and Nancy Easton, a New York City teacher for 20 years. Telepan is a long-time Animal Welfare Approved supporter and a board member of Wellness in the Schools. Wellness in the Schools is a grassroots organization that promotes children’s environmental health, nutrition and fitness within the New York City public schools. Easton co-founded Wellness in the Schools and serves on its board. The New York City school system serves approximately 1.1 million students.

“We’re excited to join the conversation about the best way to serve safe, nutritious and delicious food in schools,” Gunther commented. “Each country faces different challenges in achieving the same goal and everyone is looking forward to talking shop and exchanging ideas and stories. It’s a coming together of those dedicated to serving great food in schools.”

During her stay, Orrey will meet with the following proponents of healthy school lunches in addition to visiting a number of schools in each of the three school districts:

New York City Department of Education
Eric Goldstein, Chief Executive Officer for Nutrition and Transportation
Dianne Frankel, Director of Operations
Chef Jorge Collazo, SchoolFood Executive Chef
Stephen O’Brien, Director of Food and Food Support

Queens County Farm Museum, NYC
Amy Fischetti-Boncardo, Executive Director
Michael Grady Robertson, Director of Agriculture

Baltimore City Public Schools, MD
Tony Geraci, Director of Food and Nutrition Services
Greg Strella, Farm Manager, Great Kids Farm

ThinkFoodGroup, Washington, DC
Richard Brandenburg, Kitchen Director

Arlington County Public Schools, VA
Amy Maclosky, Food Service Director

Jeanette Orrey is the School Meals Policy Advisor to the Soil Association. Jeanette’s achievements and guidance were central to the success of the Food For Life campaign and an inspiration for Jamie Oliver’s fight to improve school meals. Her life has been a whirlwind of training, lecturing, meetings with ministers and, of course, awards ceremonies. She has received recognition of her work from, amongst others, Radio 4’s ‘The Food Programme’ (2003); The Observer (2004); Good Housekeeping (2005) and the Guild of Food Writers (2006) for her book ‘The Dinner Lady’.

Luckily, there is one simple step all restaurants highlighting their ties to farmers and sustainability can take to make sure patrons feel a sense of trust in the menu and the mission. They can be transparent. Much like the nutrition labels that now appear on packaged food, restaurants should spell out on their websites and menus what production practices they tolerate (raised in confinement? pesticide use?) and how they determine if a farm or supplier meets its standards.  Any farm-to-fork restaurant worth its prime rib should be able to tell you the exact farm a given menu item came from or if its backed up by a highly reputable label, like Animal Welfare Approved. If it’s not printed on the menu, ask the server; “I don’t know,” is never acceptable.

Rather than trying to obscure the issue restaurateurs would be doing themselves a favor by being up front and honest with the customers.  A simple notice, “Our famous pork chop is not available this week because we were unable to source pastured pork,” may disappoint customers on one level, but it elevates the trust and shared commitment between the restaurant and the patron.  Farm-to-fork restaurants are about good food that doesn’t come from bad places. Losing the trust of diners will ultimately do more harm than good to restaurants and farmers.

Grassfed beef from two Animal Welfare Approved farmers has gone head-to-head with conventional beef in separate taste tests. The results are in and, well, to be modest, SMACKDOWN!

This past summer, AWA supporter Chef Bill Telepan issued a challenge to Mark and Dr. Patricia Whisnant of American Grass Fed Beef—bring him some grassfed beef that he deemed worthy of using in his famous burger and he would make the switch from the beef his customers had come to love.  And so, on  a muggy New York City afternoon, a small crowd gathered to see the gloves come off as 100% grassfed took on heavyweight conventional grain-fed. In a stunning upset, Chef Bill declared the 100% grassfed beef the winner, bestowing the crown of onion rings and French fries that top the famous Telepan burger on the Whisnant’s American Grass Fed Beef.

Kinderhook Farm, by way of Marlow and Daughters butcher shop, was the next to step in the ring, going up against a supermarket cut in the Village Voice’s Battle of the Dishes: Grass-fed Local Steak versus Supermarket Steak. The purpose of the taste-off was simple: while the animal welfare and environmental benefits of grassfed are clear, does it really taste better than conventional?

It was barely a contest as grassfed leveled a knock-out on its opponent. From the beginning, the Kinderhook steak was a stand-out: “It [conventional] had a grayish cast, while the steak from Marlow and Daughters was a rich brownish red, with a firm texture and cream-colored fat.” Kinderhook then went on to a swift and decisive finish, notably for practically cooking itself and developing a gorgeous brown sear, knocking the supermarket steak out of competition.

Chef Bill raves about 100% grassfed beef’s “great, deep beef flavor.”

The Village Voice’s Sarah DeGregorio enthuses, “This is probably how beef used to taste, before we all got used to flaccid, fatty, vaguely-tasty-but-characterless industrial meat.”

Don’t we all want a winner on our dinner plate?

Read the Village Voice’s Battle of the Dishes: Grass-fed Local Steak versus Supermarket Steak

Read Chef Bill’s Tips for Cooking 100% Grassfed Beef

AWA farmer Craig Rogers, Chef/Owner of VOLT Bryan Voltaggio, Chef Graeme Ritchie and Chef Steven Halliday

Many people have become familiar with Bryan Voltaggio as one of the dynamic season six competitors on Bravo’s Top Chef—but did you also know he’s a committed supporter of humane farming and serves Animal Welfare Approved lamb at VOLT, his highly regarded Frederick, Maryland restaurant?

Animal Welfare Approved recently joined AWA farmer Craig Rogers on his delivery run to VOLT (Craig supplies VOLT’s lamb) and had the opportunity to speak to Chef Bryan about the program and its farmers. “Chef Bryan was excited to meet with us and hear about our mission,” reports Beth Hauptle, Director of Marketing and Public Relations. “He is interested in offering more Animal Welfare Approved products on his menu and we were able to put him in touch with additional Animal Welfare Approved farmers.”

Animal Welfare Approved is proud to have Chef Bryan among the chefs who enthusiastically support our program. A visit to his restaurant, where the staff is knowledgeable about the origins of the food being offered and the farms are listed on the menu, highlights the growing importance to the culinary community of establishing relationships with farmers. We wish Chef Bryan much luck as season 6 of Top Chef progresses, but he’s already a winner to us.

Dear members, supporters and friends,

On Labor Day, more than 20,000 people came together in all 50 states to tell Congress it’s time to give kids real food at school. If you went to an Eat-In, we’d like to say thank you. And if you’re one of the Slow Food Chapter Leaders and Eat-In Organizers who put incredible time and energy into the 300 Eat-Ins that took place nationwide, we’d like to shout thank you — you made the day possible.

Check out some of the incredible photos.

The momentum helped us surpass our Labor Day petition goal – there are more than 20,000 signatures online, another 10,000 on paper, and many more still coming in. That’s a huge show of support. When Congress starts debating the Child Nutrition Act this fall, we’ll be able to take those signatures to legislators and make a strong case for reform.  (Sign the petition.)

In the meantime, please take a moment to share some of the photos and stories of the Eat-Ins with your friends, and invite them to get involved. This movement is growing stronger by the day, and there will be plenty to do in the next phase of the Time for Lunch campaign.

She writes…

“To bring real change, policymakers need to look at the system more holistically — because everything, as foodies see it, is connected. Federal subsidies of grain and corn make it cheap to produce meat. Industrial meat production, which takes advantage of cheap feed, is responsible for about one-fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases. Eating too much meat and too many processed foods made with corn products such as high fructose corn syrup has contributed to the sharp spike in obesity over the past 30 years.

Michael Pollan, the author of the bestselling ”The Omnivore’’s Dilemma” and the spiritual leader of American foodies, summed it up in an open letter to the new president in the New York Times Magazine last October. He urged Obama to make ”reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change.”

Linda Maggio, an Animal Welfare Approved farmer in North Carolina commented on a recent blog of ours with some ideas.

How do you think we can best affect change?