Commentary
California cattle rancher Justin Pettit built a business around something unusual: finishing cattle on carrots. His company, Santa Carota Beef, developed a market for its distinctive beef, supplying restaurants willing to pay a premium for a product raised differently from conventional cattle.
Now, Pettit is involved in litigation alleging that a meat processor supplied more beef under the Santa Carota name than his ranch actually delivered. According to the lawsuit, more than 500,000 pounds of beef that did not originate from Santa Carota were supplied to a restaurant customer expecting Santa Carota beef. Pettit has publicly alleged that foreign beef was involved, although that has not been established in court. The processor disputes the allegations.
What makes this case interesting is that it isn’t simply about missing meat.
As a rancher, I can think of 100 reasons why less meat might come back from a processor than expected. Meat gets trimmed too aggressively. Bones and fat get discarded. Something gets mislabeled, mixed into another customer’s order, or spoiled. Animals vary in yield, and even careful processors make mistakes.
But Santa Carota alleges something different: More beef was sold under its name than the ranch supplied.
You cannot explain additional beef appearing under a ranch’s label through moisture loss, sloppy trimming, or a discarded hindquarter. If the alleged discrepancy is substantiated and cannot be explained by legitimate inventory differences, the question becomes unavoidable: Whose beef was being sold?
I don’t know what happened to Pettit’s beef. That’s for the courts to determine. But I know something about handing over an animal you’ve raised for years and wondering whether what comes back is actually yours.
My friend Lee from South West Farms and I have both spent time inside processors’ freezers searching for missing parts of our cattle. When you’re processing two or three animals, you notice a missing hindquarter. When thousands move through a facility, I imagine it becomes harder.
I’ve received pork I was convinced wasn’t mine. I’ve requested bones, tallow, and suet, only to be told they were “thrown away.” I’ve paid for special processing instructions that weren’t followed.
My husband, Elias, processes animals on our ranch for our family’s consumption. Every time, we seem to end up with substantially more usable meat than when we take comparable animals to a commercial processor.
Is that because he’s more meticulous? Because he saves every bone for broth and every bit of fat for rendering? Because commercial processors trim differently or carcasses lose weight during aging?
All those explanations are possible. But without a complete accounting, how would I know?
Recently, a regular customer told me about an argument she’d had with her husband over an elk he’d harvested. He had always processed his animals in their garage, but she didn’t want him doing that anymore, so they took the elk to a processor.
When they got the meat back, he was furious. He believed a significant amount was missing. She thought he was overreacting.
When she told me, I shrugged and said: “Of course. That happens all the time.”
She was shocked by how unsurprised I was.
I wasn’t suggesting someone had stolen his elk. I was acknowledging something many farmers and hunters experience: You bring in an animal, you get back boxes of meat, and sometimes the amount or contents don’t seem right.
I want to be clear about something. I love my processor.
They work with me on all my quirky hippie-farmer requests, many of which I’m sure seem ridiculous to them. We want ground beef processed one animal at a time. We want certain ingredients excluded. We want bones, organs, and fat returned. They accommodate us, and I appreciate that enormously.
Lee and I have both settled on a small processor that recently obtained U.S. Department of Agriculture certification. They process only a few animals daily, making individual-animal traceability easier. That choice was intentional.
But even at a small facility, mistakes happen.
The question isn’t whether mistakes happen. It’s whether the system is transparent enough to identify and correct them.
Federal meat-processing regulations require extensive recordkeeping, particularly for ground beef. But tracing a production lot back to its suppliers isn’t necessarily the same as proving every package sold under a ranch’s name came exclusively from that ranch’s animals.
We pay extra for single-origin ground beef, one animal ground and packaged at a time. When someone buys beef from Sovereignty Ranch, I want them to receive beef from Sovereignty Ranch. But ultimately, I’m trusting that what I requested is what happened.
When I request bones and suet and am told they were “thrown away,” what does that mean? Were they discarded, rendered, or sent somewhere else? Animal byproducts have economic value, although some processors pay to have them removed.
I don’t know what happened to my particular bones or fat. That’s my point.
The irony is that Elias is perfectly capable of slaughtering and processing our animals himself. But if we want to sell that meat commercially, we generally must use an appropriately inspected processing facility.
We raise an animal for years, feed it, water it, care for it, and then pay thousands of dollars to have someone else process it so we can legally sell it to our community.
I’m not asking for more government regulations to fix this problem.
We already have a heavily regulated meat-processing system. Yet regulation hasn’t eliminated mistakes or guaranteed transparency.
I want less consolidation, more independent processors, and more choices for farmers and consumers.
If my husband harvests a cow on our ranch and someone understands how that animal was raised, slaughtered, and processed, why shouldn’t that person have the right to buy it?
That person can ask questions, visit the ranch, and decide whether he trusts us. If he doesn’t, he can buy elsewhere.
That is informed consent.
Instead, a rancher may be legally prohibited from selling meat processed on the farm, even to a willing, informed buyer, while being required to trust a third-party processor to maintain the product’s identity.
I don’t believe the answer is another government form or compliance officer. I believe it’s decentralization: more processors competing for our business, shorter supply chains, and more freedom to choose how our food is raised and prepared.
My missing hindquarters and Pettit’s alleged excess sales are opposite sides of the same transparency problem. I’m asking where my meat went. Pettit is asking where the additional meat allegedly sold under his name came from.
Both questions deserve answers.
I don’t expect a world without mistakes. But when people have genuine options, businesses must earn their trust rather than rely on customers having nowhere else to go.
I don’t want another regulation promising to tell me where my cow went. I want the freedom to keep track of my own cow.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
