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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
Category Archives: General Advocacy
They Really Are Gangsters, Thugs, and Thieves
Ranchers struggling to survive deserve to know what happened to their markets, and who is complicit in the destruction of agriculture’s largest industry. We all have a stake in this. Use arrows at the top of slide to advance through … Continue reading
Life in the West – China Doesn’t Own This Yet
Global corporations have now taken control of many industries. Companies like Walmart and the Dollar Stores are gutting the last of the money from our communities in America. At the same time, companies like Cargill and JBS take every advantage … Continue reading
Big Beef – $1.28 Billion Rigged Game
Go inside the rigged game of Big Beef and discover many differences between the giant Beef Industry and the local community-based storefront. This video is about Mike Callicrate’s story of deception and bribery as well as his will to build … Continue reading
Maker-Owned Marketplaces
The essential next step in building healthy, resilient, community-scaled food systems Growers, craftsmen, skilled workers, and food makers deserve a fair share of the consumer food dollar. The people who do the real work of growing and making good food … Continue reading
What’s Wrong with the Beef you Buy?
Trinity Vandenacre met Mike at the Rendezvous City Beef Roundup last summer where Trinity was one of the beef competition judges. Mike presented, “Cows Can Save the World” for the first time. The updated version, most recently presented to the … Continue reading