Pasture-fed in the press

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The team at the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association has been busy alerting journalists and key foodie influencers with what has been happening at the PFLA over the past few months.

Introducing a new food concept is never an instant win.

Our target audience, like most of us, needs to hear about the approach from several angles, and in several different ways before they can believe it. Only then can they talk about it with confidence to their audience to spread the message further.

Sunday Times The Dish

What a lovely article Rachel Walker wrote after attending our very first beef tasting event at London restaurant The Table Café in Southwark.

We invited Rachel to come along to taste different beef from four of our certified members, to see if she could put into words the taste and flavours of each one.

In her article she talks about beef having ‘terroir’, its taste reflecting the fields it has lived in – be it ‘Cornish clover’ or ‘East Anglian ryegrass’.

She reflects on what PFLA member James Swift had to say; he gave a passionate talk on how what cattle eat does come out in their taste and flavour. He believes we shall treat buying beef like we treat buying wine in future.

To sum up her evening, Rachel finishes her article with:

“Perhaps a future where we will be asking for sirloin from a five-year-old, 100% grass-fed longhorn grazed in species-rich flower meadows in Herefordshire isn’t as far away as we imagine.”

BBC Good Food April

Food campaigner and journalist Joanna Blythman looks at the big differences between beef production in America and the UK – the first mostly based on grass-less feedlots – feeding animals grains and fattening them at around one year of age.

Here in the UK, most of the beef herd spends most of its life outdoors on pasture, but the last few months indoors fed on silage and grain – being slaughtered at 23 months.

Joanna mentions the publication of “Pasture for Life, It can be done’ – which shows that feeding solely grass and forage crops can be just as profitable and sustainable on farms across the UK.

Finally Joanna lists the places consumers can buy grass-fed meat, making the point that only meat carrying our certification mark guarantees the animal only ate grass and pasture for its entire life.

Evening Standard Lifestyle

Finally, words of praise for ‘Pasture for Life’ certification in an article on how to make a spring lamb ragu.

Jemima Jones and Lucy Carr-Ellison specify using grass-fed lamb and tell us why this is much healthier for us to eat than lamb fattened on cereals. They also like the fact the lambs will have had a happier life.

We are not sure people looking for Pasture for Life lamb will find it in supermarkets just yet though – but we are working on it!

The Guardian

Recently, environment writer Lucy Siegle also mentioned the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association in a Guardian article, as a body that ‘advocates outdoor animal rearing’.

These, along with many more, small and larger mentions, in many different publications, are sure signs that the 100% grass-fed message is now getting through to consumers, helping to increase demand for this very special meat.

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