Pasture to Plate

Blogger and cattle producer, Kim Brackett likes to share the story of how that delicious steak on your plate gets there.

BRACKETT: A couple of weeks ago I went to a non-industry meeting; one of the other participants found out that I was a cattle producer and she approached me and wanted to know what life was like on my ranch. Come to find out she was a nurse from Boston and she had never been out west, never even had thought about what cattle ranchers did and we had a great conversation.

What Brackett discovered was a great dialog about how the cattle industry worked.

BRACKETT: She asked me questions like if we named all of our cattle and I assured her that would be a little complicated for us to keep track of and we talked about we ear tag them and keep track of them through different identification methods and I just went through the whole cattle industry system for her and explained how it went step-by-step and it was a great

Inevitably the topic of factory farms came up.

BRACKETT: I explained to her about my family. That I have four small kids and that I raise them on the ranch and they’re involved and we’re all out there whatever it might be so that’s not really a factory farm to me, that’s my family ranch right there so it was interesting for them, I think, to get that perspective.