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3/18/2010 9:02:42 AM
Email Hen House Market - Butcher block
Do you remember the days of tender succulent beef? The hunger-provoking aroma of mom’s slow cooked pot roast? Or the fork tender steaks dad used to make on the grill? At Certified Hereford Beef, we never forgot the secret to great taste.
Cattle ranchers around the world have long known that great tasting beef doesn’t come from great cooks, it comes from great cattle. They reckoned you had to start out with good stock to get good steak. And it turns out they were right.
In the 1700’s, folks around Herefordshire, England were figuring out that the red bodied, white faced cattle native to the area produced some pretty spectacular beef. And that was a pretty good thing for these "Hereford" cattle because, unlike the rest of the world, cows in Herefordshire didn’t produce much milk and they didn’t pull plows all that particularly well. So they raised ‘em for beef; breeding Herefords to Herefords until they had, perhaps unknowingly, created the famous Hereford breed.
In the 1820’s, some industrious American farmers began importing the majestic red-bodied, white-faced Herefords to grow beef in the wilderness of frontier America. Not surprisingly, the pioneers fell in love with the hardy and adaptable cattle and used Hereford bulls to add beef to their rangy Texas Longhorns. Herefords quickly won the west and dominated the range from Montana to Mexico. In the end, trailblazers became cattle barons thanks to barbed wire, railroads and some great tasting beef.
In the early 20th century, American’s moved from farms to factories and in the process grew a voracious appetite for quality beef in the big city. Steak and eggs was the breakfast of the everyman and pot roast was a satisfying end to a hard day’s work. Stockyards and railcars from Chicago to Fort Worth filled with "feather-necked" Hereford cattle as Eastern butchers came to recognize the secret ingredient to great taste.
By the 1950’s and 1960’s Hereford beef was the steak du jour on every suburban grill from Hackensack to Hermosa Beach. Midwest farmers would lovingly feed Hereford steers a rich diet of home-grown corn and "fatten" them for the Omaha market. These were the days we still remember, when beef was king and so were Herefords.
Then a funny thing happened to great tasting beef. In the 1970’s and 1980’s productivity shortcomings made the smaller Herefords less fashionable among cattle feeders in the great plains. They wanted cattle bigger and brawnier to fill orders for more and more beef. The beef industry expanded south and west and became less discerning about quality beef.
The story ends happily in 1995. That year, the American Hereford Association, guardian of the Hereford breed since 1881, established the Certified Hereford Beef program to usher in a new era of great taste.
Today, Certified Hereford Beef comes from the same corn-fed Hereford and Hereford crossbred cattle that in the 1950’s brought forth the golden age of great tasting beef. It is the result of centuries breeding, the beef of western legend and childhood memory.
All Certified Hereford Beef is Inspected and Certified by the United States Department of Agriculture and is harvested at Greater Omaha Packing Company’s state of the art facility in Omaha, Nebraska. Greater Omaha Packing does not accept cattle that have been fed ruminant by-products.