MEAT+POULTRY - April 2015 - 18

BURGER REPORT

OVERCOMING OFF-FLAVORS
Allen Williams, a Mississippi-based consultant
of branded meat programs and a partner in
Winston-Salem, NC-based Joyce Farms, which
processes and sells grass-fed beef primarily
to restaurants on the East Coast, says there
are four off-flavors that can be created from
improper finishing.
The first is a "livery" flavor, which is created
from ranchers finishing cattle on forages that are
too vegetative and lush. "In other words, they are
too high in protein," Williams says.
Too much protein creates uric acid that leads
to a livery flavor in the carcass, he adds. The
problem can be corrected if cattle are finished
on mid-stage maturity forage that's high in plant
sugars and low in protein, Williams explains.
"The more-savvy finishers understand this,
but there are still pockets [of ranchers in the US]
that don't," he adds.
An off-putting metallic flavor has been
another issue. So has grass-fed beef that tastes
"musty" because of improper dry-aging of
carcasses, Williams says. Lastly, cattle finished
on noxious weeds such as ragweed and/or wild
onion, will have strong flavors associated with
those weeds.
The key to correcting these taste issues is to
finish cattle on a polyculture of forages, what
Williams calls "a salad bar of forages."
The good news is that finishing is improving
and Williams says most grass-fed beef tastes like
it should - it has a rich, beefy taste.

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MEAT+ POULTRY | 04.15 | www.meatpoultry.com

Sportservice, a St. Louis-based food, beverage
and retail management company.
Recently, Vina, Calif.-based Panorama
Grass-Fed Meats, one of the nation's top
suppliers of grass-fed beef at retail, announced
it's looking for another certified-organic plant
to process its products on the East Coast to
supply growing demand of the product in that
region. Panorama currently utilizes two plants
in California and Colorado. In 2005, Panorama
processed 12 head a month into grass-fed beef.
It now processes 200 head a week.
Allen Williams, a Mississippi-based
consultant of branded-meat programs and a
partner in Winston-Salem, NC-based Joyce
Farms, which processes and sells grass-fed beef
to restaurants on the East Coast, cites statistics
from the Wallace Center of the Winrock
Foundation that retail sales of domestically
produced grass-fed beef topped $400 million in
2013, compared to less than $5 million in 1998.
Williams notes the demand for grass-fed beef
has grown about 25 percent a year for the last
10 years, and that grass-fed beef will comprise
30 percent to 40 percent of the total beef market
sector within the next 10 years.
"Grass-fed beef will become more than a
niche product - no doubt about it," he says.

GRASS-FED'S ROOTS
The grass-fed beef movement is consumerdriven and has been since its inception in the
mid-1990s, Williams says. Back then, there
wasn't much marketing and promotion to drive
the category, and grass-fed beef was only in
demand in a few regions, such as the Northeast
and West Coast.
But when the first case of bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE) hit the US in December
2003, some consumers turned to grass-fed beef
based on the perception that it was a safer
alternative to its grain-fed counterpart.
"There was a strong uptick in sales,"
Williams says.
There was also a barrage of mainstream
media attention for grass-fed beef, which was
highlighted in food magazines and TV shows.
Grass-fed beef brands like Niman Ranch and
Panorama Meats took off.
"It was like having free advertising for
about five years," Williams says. "It helped
drive consumer awareness of the product."
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