VFLogo  

The

Chop Shop

has MOVED!

Come See Us at Community Market in the Barlow!

10am-7pm

Tuesday-Sunday

CLOSED MONDAY

6762 Sebastopol Ave

 

 

FARMERS MARKETS

 

Thursday

Serramonte Center Farmers Market, 

Daly City

9am-1pm

 

Friday

Sonoma Depot Farmers Market

Not Attending This Week

 

Saturday 

Saratoga FM @

West Valley

College

9am - 1pm

 

Santa Rosa

Vets Memorial

8am - 1pm

 

Sunday

Moraga

Farmers Market

9am-1pm 

 

 
 EZ Pound Of Ground Update

This post is primarily about the beef recall at Rancho Veal Corp. but I wanted to take the opportunity to update and thank you for what has been done so far. In the first four days we have sold 32 EZ Pounds for $20 each. We have also received over $800 in donations, leaving us that many more EZ Pounds to sell! That's over $1400 that will go to Alex and her kids. If you can't afford to donate you can still help. PLEASE SHARE THIS LINK OR THE ONE ON FACEBOOK! It might just reach someone who can help, and every EZ Pound matters. 

Rancho Beef Recall 

As many of you know, Ranch Veal Corp in Petaluma has recalled 8.7 million pounds of beef, basically all the beef it processed in 2013. At some point in the near future, you will receive an official notice from me announcing which "packed on" dates are included in the recall and that if you have any beef from us with those dates you can return it to us for a full refund. The time lapse is because not all our beef is slaughtered at Rancho. So first we have to determine which beef was slaughtered there, match the kill date with the day/s it could have been butchered and then what days it was packed. Good times, right?

I want to start by saying something about Rancho. This is not a government funded, big Ag slaughterhouse. This is a small, family-run, local business just like mine. We CHOOSE to have our animals processed there because we know the owners, the managers and the workers. We can and have gone in and watch our animals being processed in the cleanest, most humane way possible. If they are allowed to open back up, we will continue to trust our animals with them.

Now, what has actually happened??? First, I am 100% confident that every pound of meat we sold you was of the highest quality and in no way was tainted. This recall appears to be the result of missing paperwork. Rancho's primary business is slaughtering old dairy cows. When one of those cows is brought in and appears to be sick or diseased, it is either sent back to the ranch it came from or destroyed. With that process there is paperwork to be done. Because that paperwork was apparently not done or done improperly, the USDA cannot track where those cows went. So they have recalled an entire years worth of beef because they can't prove a negative. Now let's talk about what this means in general and specifically to you. 8.7 MILLION POUNDS OF BEEF RECALLED! Sounds scary, alarming, right? It's silly is what it is. 99% of that beef has been consumed and not one single person complained of so much as a tummy ache. You know why? Because there was no tainted beef! 

If we assume the above actions and reactions by the USDA are true, and we have no way of being sure because they will not respond to inquiry's at all, then the only reason to impose this blanket recall is to scare the crap out of everyone and put Rancho out of business. In doing so, they will also severely damage if not destroy, some really great small, local producers in the process. There are farms that harvest seasonally, meaning that they raise their animals to be harvested at a specific time of year and then freeze and store them to sell over the coming year. Those are the ones that will get crushed by this. Victorian Farmstead would not be able to survive having a years worth of production thrown away. Luckily we don't have to worry about that!

How can I be so confident that the meat I sold you is safe? Here is how it works: First, our animals are never commingled with another ranches, let alone with the commercial dairy cows at Rancho. Rancho actually provides small, local producers a separate day for "custom kills" to avoid any commingling. 
Second, each animal has a unique tag number that stays with the carcass throughout processing. This is how we know that the animal we take in is the carcass that gets delivered to Golden Gate in Santa Rosa to be butchered. Now since we know with 100% certainty that the beef we took to Rancho were as healthy as a cow can be, we would have had no chance to be involved with missing paperwork associated with a sick dairy cow. And since we have only taken in healthy animals that were thoroughly inspected by the on-site vet, the USDA inspectors at the time of slaughter, and the USDA inspectors at Golden Gate at the time of butchering, you and I can be 100% confident that the beef we have in our freezer or ate is the healthiest and best quality you can find anywhere.

I have built this company and our reputation on a simple premise: Once you get to know me and I earn your trust, you will never have to worry about where your meat comes from again. I stand behind that today, and with every pound of meat we have ever sold. If I thought there was the tiny, tiniest chance that there was a possibility that anything we sold you was at risk, I would tell you. It's not. I put my reputation and the future of my company on it.

Something surely stinks here, but it's not bad meat. We will get into that another day, but soon....

Adam 
707-332-4605
adam@vicfarmmeats.com

1220 Gravenstein Hwy North Sebastopol, CA 95472
707-332-4605  www.vicfarmmeats.com