Diggin' Stew Leonard's

Stew Leonard's has been in the dairy biz since 1921 and praised by the press for decades now, yet somehow JustSaying only learned of the Connecticut-based, family-owned, fresh food grocer because it was featured on the History Channel's Modern Marvels episode "The Supermarket."

In 1960, brothers Jim and Stew Leonard inherited Clover Farms milk delivery business and nine short years later they opened their first store in Norfolk with two registers and seven items. In the following decades a little advertising (and some trademark cow trucks equipped with "moo" horns) went a long way. Their product line expanded to include meat direct from Colorado, an in-store bakery and our fave: Newman's Own Salad Dressing.

Now they've got a store in New York, a wine shop, and a steady position on FORTUNE magazine's "Top 100 Companies to Work For."

And as far as food safety goes, Stew Leonard's mottos is: "If you wouldn't take it home to your mother, don't put it out for our customers."

While I obviously admire their practices and natural/organic product line, truth be told, it was the happy cow costumes and giggling children that really sold me. As pointed out in the Modern Marvels episode, so many supermarkets use calming music and dim lighting to create a certain type of desired shopping experience but Stew Leonard's is rather the opposite. They're the Southwest of supermarkets - fun, lively, and uber-customer-focused.

There are only a handful of Stew Leonard's stores so far (three in CT and one in NY), but with revenues hitting $300 million a year expansion is in the works.

Check out their website for more information (and the awesometastical live Cow-Cam!) and join me in suggesting they expand right on down the East Coast!!

State of the Mooooooooonion

So apparently the Great Recession has shrunk the U.S. cattle herd to its smallest size since 1958 but fear not, meatatarians. According to Jim Robb, the director of the Denver-based Livestock Marketing Information Center, an industry and government-funded researcher (hmmmm...), there will still be plenty of beef to go around. "We're forecasting that beef production in 2010 won’t be the smallest since 1958, because the average animal processed now weighs twice as much,” he told Business Week. That's right, folks. The weight of an average catle for slaughter has doubled in the last fifty years.

Read all about the state of the meat and dairy industries - and the corn industry that they rely on - here.

(What you see in the photograph accompanyng this post is a revolving platform at a dairy "farm." It was this image or one of a slaughter house so enjoy the lesser of two evils.)

Can you blame 'em?

An interesting albeit disturbing report in MMWR about cattle-caused deaths was published yesterday. It turns out that 21 people, aged eight to 86 and most commonly male, were killed by cattle aggression from 2003-2007. From the report:

Circumstances associated with these deaths included working with cattle in enclosed areas (33%), moving or herding cattle (24%), loading (14%), and feeding (14%)... A total of 21 deaths met the case definition for 2003--2008. Four fatalities occurred in 2003, two in 2004, six in 2005, and three each year during 2006--2008. During these years, eight of the fatalities occurred in Iowa, two in Kansas, seven in Missouri, and four in Nebraska... Only one of the victims was female. One of the victims was a boy aged 8 years who was helping castrate cattle when he was crushed against a squeeze chute... To reduce the risk for death from cattle-caused injuries, farmers and ranchers should be aware of and follow recommended practices for safe livestock-handling facilities and proper precautions for working with cattle, especially cattle that have exhibited aggressiveness.

Many of the details reported in individual cases are too sad to post but further proof (in my opinion) that these animals do not belong in confined feeding spaces and are still very much animals - not merely inventory. Don't get me wrong, no one deserves the fate these farmers met. I'm just saying, maybe the cows don't deserve the conditions and fate they encounter either. I mean, as one Tierney Lab reader put it, isn't it sort of poetic justice that one of the deaths was by way of the antibiotic intended for the cow? And can we really blame a cow for the fact that it's maternal, animal instinct led her to charge a farmer removing her deceased newborn calf?

Save Molly!!!

Wednesday afternoon, a courageous cow defied all odds. She escaped a terrible fate at New York City slaughterhouse Musa Hala Inc, wandered around Queens for an hour, and eventually ended up in an Animal Care and Control center awaiting claim by, gulp, that wretched meatpacking plant or (fingers crossed) a farm sanctuary.

According to this MSNBC survey, nine out of ten agree that Molly's "bid for freedom should be rewarded."

Happy cows

The California Milk Advisory Board has been running their Happy Cow ad campaign for a while and I have to admit, the latest installment has captivated me. The Happy Cow Auditions are, well, in a word: awesome. The more auditions I see, the more difficult it is to decide who to vote for.



View other auditions, including my absolute favorite that I can't seem to embed properly, and learn all about the happy cows on the Real California Milk website. The bloopers are great too.