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“The money and political power of Wall Street has stolen America’s food system, bankrupted our farmers and ranchers, mined our soils, polluted our environment, wasted our precious water, and left us with expensive industrially produced food that makes us sick.” – Occupy Wall Street Food Day, December 2011
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Above: Ranching Reboot – Episode 4 – Mike Callicrate, owner of Ranch Foods Direct, sat down with us to talk about all manner of things from cattle markets, to public food spaces, the Bander, his feedlot and the pathway he built to market.
He shares valuable lessons learned from fighting against the commodity production system and how he’s built his own pathway to the consumer.
We talk about small community slaughter plants and public meat spaces and what that could look like going in to the future. We discuss environmental challenges, the food police and what it means when a Dollar General comes to town.
- This Cattleman's Got A Beef
Photo: Sean Cayton - 2003People producing good food from happy animals, while improving the environment, shouldn’t have to fear the government.
Photo above featured in a 2003 article: This cattleman's got a beef, Mike Callicrate and Ranch Foods Direct take on the big meat packersby Kathryn Eastburn Categories
Food Policy & Law
E. Coli Confessions Part I
by John Munsell | Oct 11, 2011
Opinion
Editor's Note: This is the first part in a series written by John Munsell of Miles City, MT, who explains how the small meat plant his family owned for 59 years ran afoul of USDA's meat inspection program. The events he writes about began a decade ago, but remain relevant today.
They say that confession is good for the soul. I've been involved in a series of ugly events since my plant in 2002 recalled 270 pounds of ground beef contaminated with E.coli O157:H7 and now want to admit the embarrassing truth for public review. moreTags
- advanced meat recovery
- antibiotics
- beef checkoff
- Big Food
- BPI
- Callicrate
- Callicrate Beef
- Callicrate Cattle Co.
- Cargill
- Chipotle
- Colorado Springs
- COOL
- Dudley Butler
- e. coli
- Eric Schlosser
- fast food nation
- food Inc.
- Foodopoly
- GIPSA
- HSUS
- IBP
- Industrial Agriculture
- JBS
- McDonald's
- meat packers
- Mike Callicrate
- Monsanto
- NCBA
- OCM
- Organization for Competitive Markets
- pink slime
- R-CALF
- Ranch Foods Direct
- Rick Hughes
- Smithfield
- Sodexo
- steroids
- Sysco
- Tom Vilsack
- Tyson
- U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance
- USDA
- Vandana Shiva
- Walmart
- zilmax
National News Supplement
Good job, Mike and all. I had hoped to be there myself but couldn’t get away this morning in time. Thanks for standing up for us.
Al Davis
Independent Cattlemen of Nebraska
Came in toward the end. Hope you have a link so I can hear it all and share with others. Particularly interested in the Wild Lands Project and Agenda 21 to take the land and think many groups outside of rural communities need to hear that woman talk about it so they understand what’s up and not think this is about conservation or environmental protection but a new form of land seizure.
Thanks for all you are doing. You’re giving people a direction – whether cattlemen or farmers or other kinds of food producers. Coordination sounds like a way to go to stop this.
Great press conference. Will there be a way to get a copy of the broadcast?
Will there be a written summary of the press conference and information on coordination? Appreciate R-Calf all the more that it opposed Agenda 21 long ago. What happened to Mike Callicrate has jogged some necessary awareness in people who had reflexively trusted those federal agencies.
I can’t express how appreciative I am for everything you are doing. The government needs to take a step back and look at everything that the small businesses and farmer ranchers do for there communities and this country. Once again Thank You for fighting back for everyone.
Mike,
Shop at Ranch Foods Direct in Colo Spgs all the time. This is link to website that is always the first to expose Big, bloated govt that is progressively, rapidly taking aim at the small farmer, rancher. I have used this site for years and it has always been trustworthy on a consistant basis. The government has gone beyond the pale in Michigan with this outrage.
http://www.naturalnews.com/z035372_Michigan_pigs_farm_freedom.html