I don't know if anyone here cares enough to go to the trouble/expense of
getting beef from cattle fed no grains, but I remember how it was more or
less impossible to find no added-feed beef on the mainland and, well...

I mentioned awhile back that there is plenty of pastured-only beef to be
found here on the big island with its year round grazing potential. With
some aging its reputation as tough and leathery is entirely unfounded.
While there is little marbling, there is plenty of surface fat on the
better cuts--sometimes a full inch or more on New York strip. Melisa and I
have no trouble eating 15 lbs a week of this stuff when we buy it--rarely
cooked though.

Anyway, in talking to my local butcher (a great fellow who started a coop
to promote the local beef) he tells me that there is a jerky outfit in
Denver who is "importing" frozen eye of round and that the shipping comes
out to be about 40 cents per pound. Since there are direct flights from
Honolulu to most major mainland cities, he thinks that beef could be
shipped fresh to most anywhere on the mainland for close to that shipping
price. The catch is that one pays for a container which holds about 300
pounds on meat. So if you bought only 100 pounds the shipping price pound
would be about a $1.20/lb. You would need to deal with it from the
receiving airport onwards.

So if you don't mind frozen (and have the freezer space) you could possibly
deal with 300 pounds between a couple families. Or if there was a larger
group living in the same area you might be able to swing it fresh (since
this meat will age well over 12 weeks no problem). An order might be all
prime cuts (like strips and ribeyes) or an unprocessed side which your
local butcher could cut to your specs, perhaps even strips of round for a
huge batch of room-temp jerky. The bone marrow is the best I have ever
tasted, but I don't know if it would be worth including a bunch of marrow
bones in an order since most of the bone is inedible (though I suppose it
could be ground somehow...?)

It will take some asking around to get the actual contacts needed on this
end, but I'd more than happy to find out the details if there is some
interest among a group of listers here--pretty hard I'd imagine since it
seems to be a pretty far flung bunch here (though the LA raw food support
group might put their heads together??). But I thought I should mention it
as an option if anybody might be interested.

(Of course, I have no financial interest in any of this.)

If anyone does have interest or more questions, it might be best to post
them to the list (not to me privately) so folks can see who is curious (and
where they live). In other words, I don't really want to organize
anything--just help anyone else who might...

Cheers,
Kirt

Secola  /\  Nieft
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