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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
Author Archives: Mike Callicrate
Why would the San Bernardino County Employees Retirement Association trust their life savings with these crooks?
Farm and Food File: Fifth Avenue cowboys by Alan Guebert Maybe it’s a sign of our fast-changing times, but paradox and irony seem as common today as lunch and supper. For example, the world’s largest taxi company, Uber, owns no … Continue reading
ROTTEN exposes a deeply corrupt and broken food system
Just finished the last episode of ROTTEN. This is the best documentary on food yet. ROTTEN exposes a deeply broken and corrupt food system serving only the powerful global food companies. Unlike most food documentaries, it brings out the dark … Continue reading
The Price of Being a Radical, 1930
Courtesy of Tom Giessel From the January, 1930 edition of The Farmers Union Herald Often we hear expressions of fear concerning the work of someone whom the world deems a radical. Very little use to worry. The greater percent of … Continue reading
119 years later, and still hasn’t happened
-courtesy of Tom Giessel Mr. Reed on Corporations. The Greenwood club met last night for the first time this season at the public library to listen to an address on “Corporations” by James A. Reed, public prosecutor. The attendance was … Continue reading
Bait and Switch
From the Organization for Competitive Markets newsletter by Mike Callicrate | January 4, 2018 What can we as eaters do to encourage a better food system? In today’s broken corporate-controlled food system, more and more people want to know where … Continue reading