Stay Informed!
Subscribe to information and news updates related to farming, food and health issues, click here!-
“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
-
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
Author Archives: Mike Callicrate
Dear Secretary Vilsack – We must fix the broken cattle and beef supply chain
May 11, 2021 The Honorable Tom Vilsack Secretary of Agriculture United States Department of Agriculture Washington, DC Ref: AMS-Tm-21-0034: Comment on Executive Order 14017, Supply Chains for the Production of Agricultural Commodities. Dear Secretary Vilsack: The Montana Cattlemen’s Association (MCA) … Continue reading
Let’s Meat – Challenges & opportunities in small and mid-scale meat and poultry processing
“How in the world can that kind of theft go unchecked? “How is it that our Congress, that the USDA can’t see there’s a problem with the Tyson fire and the COVID disaster when the packers take that much advantage … Continue reading
A fence can tell you a lot about an outfit.
April 1, 2010 Thirty-five years ago I learned that fences didn’t have to be new to be tight and straight, keeping our cattle in the pasture and our neighbors happy. In 2004, a jury in Montgomery, Alabama, was presented with … Continue reading
Montana Farmer’s Union Producer Annual Conference (2021) – Building a profitable and rewarding pathway to the consumer
View the slideshow directly here: Links from slideshow listed below: Slide 7: Link 1: https://farmactionalliance.org/cargillfoodfraud/?emci=989ff322-6d2e-eb11-9fb4-00155d43b2cd&emdi=4869c4b9-6f2e-eb11-9fb4-00155d43b2cd&ceid=13997041 Link 2: https://nobull.mikecallicrate.com/2016/04/09/real-world-ranch-restoration/ Link 3: https://www.cargill.com/story/cargill-aims-to-beefup-sustainability Slide 8: https://nobull.mikecallicrate.com/2009/06/04/how-mavericks-became-zombies/ Slide 12: https://nobull.mikecallicrate.com/2020/10/15/the-four-recommendations-of-the-federal-trade-commission-regarding-the-meat-packing-industry/ Slide 13: https://nobull.mikecallicrate.com/2018/02/08/the-husbandman-that-laboreth-must-be-the-first-partaker-of-the-fruits/ See John Ikerd’s Community Food Utilities
Which Shall Rule — Wealth or Man?
1873 was a decade after President Lincoln’s warning about concentrated power.