NEW ROCKFORD, N.D. – In 1981, Kenneth “Doc” Throlson was a burned-out country veterinarian. His doctor told him he wouldn’t live to see his next birthday if he didn’t start taking life easier.
So Throlson quit the veterinarian business and turned his hobby herd of bison into a full-time job. He expanded his ranch and did his own marketing, from the bones to the prime cuts.
A few years ago, Throlson and other bison ranchers near this central North Dakota town came to the conclusion it was essential to build a processing plant to ensure the market had a consistent, high quality and dependable supply of meat.
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“We were headed for a wreck in the bison industry,” Throlson told reporters on a recent tour of the plant. “As an industry, we were about 180 buffalo herds all running in different directions. There was no uniformity.”
In 1993, the ranchers formed the North American Bison Co-operative, a closed co-op of 177 members from 10 states, including a dozen Canadian producers from Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Members paid $100 U.S. for a membership share, plus $250 U.S. for each equity share and must deliver one bison per equity share per year.
Time to build herd
The co-op sold 5,000 equity shares, although manager Dennis Sexhus explained producers have until 1998 to build herds so they can deliver their full number of bison.
By February 1994, the $1.6 million U.S. plant was up and running. This year, the plant will handle about 3,500 bison.
Members are paid a contract price, which is set yearly. Sexhus said because bison goes to a high-end specialty market, there isn’t much price fluctuation.
“It’s really closer to lobster maybe than it is to beef, even though the cuts are identical,” he said, adding that bison costs between 50 to 100 percent more than beef.
The plant is one of three kill floors in the U.S. Sexhus said between five and 10 percent of production goes into Europe.
Throlson and Sexhus recently went to the ANUGA food trade show in Germany. “We had just a tremendous reception there,” Sexhus said.
“People are discovering how good this product tastes, and then when they get the additional benefit of the lower fat, the lower cholesterol and the general healthfulness of this product, it really has a way of catching on.”
However, Sexhus admitted bison is likely to remain a niche market because of low numbers. He said it would only take eight hours to run all the bison in the world through U.S. beef packing plants.
The co-op is one of the largest processors of bison in the world. Sexhus estimated it is handling about one-third of total U.S. production.
