WINNIPEG — A middle-aged woman paused for a moment in a downtown Winnipeg health food store as she looked at a sample tray of grass fed beef in the store’s meat department.
She tried the grass fed sausage on the platter and seemed to like it, but her puzzled expression and tilted head suggested that she had no idea what was meant by grass fed beef.
That sort of reaction isn’t surprising, said Mathew Holtmann, owner of Vita Health, a chain of six stores in Winnipeg that sells natural health products and healthful foods. Many of his customers are mystified by the multiple beef options in the marketplace, he added.
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“I’d say there is a lot of confusion about it. People know that they are looking for a more natural alternative,” said Holtmann, standing next to a cooler stocked with meat and cheese.
“But they’re a little bit confused on whether natural is good enough. Or should it be organic? What about grass fed?”
Holtmann made his comments after a product launch in late February for three grass fed beef products.
Producers from the Manitoba Grass Fed Beef Association were at the store to promote saskatoon maple sausage, farmer sausage and paté.
One of those producers, Bragi Simundsson of Arborg, Man., said some Canadian consumers still don’t understand grass fed beef and the related health benefits.
However, consumer knowledge about beef production is on the rise, he added.
“I think (there are) more articles in health magazines, talking about the CLA (conjugated linoleic acids) and talking about the benefits of omega 3 fatty acids,” said Simundsson, who has been marketing grass fed beef in Manitoba for 15 years.
“I think a lot of people, the more they get to know about the industrial ag model, the less they like it and they start looking for alternatives.”
Simundsson, one of eight producers in the Manitoba Grass Fed Beef Association, acknowledged that grass fed isn’t going to dominate the province’s beef marketplace anytime soon. Nevertheless, there is an opportunity for growth, he said.
“We’re trying to grow the demand and supply at the same time. Where it’s going to end, we really have no idea. We’re never going to be the majority of the beef sold in the province, but we don’t have to be.”
With Vita Health on board, products from the Grass Fed Beef Association are now available at six grocery stores in Winnipeg and at the St. Norbert Farmer’s Market south of the city.
Simundsson said several producers might join the association, but it’s hard to know how large the market will grow, considering that presumably well-informed shoppers at a store like Vita Health can’t differentiate grass fed from other beef.
“There’s a lot of competing information out there,” said Holtmann, including proponents of organic, natural and grass fed beef.
“It’s not my job to tell (customers) what the right philosophy is. It’s my job to educate them about the different philosophies so they can make good purchasing decisions…. We’re facilitating the options.”
However, Vita Health customers have moved in a definitive direction over the last few years when it comes to beef, Holtmann said, which may provide a boost for grass fed beef.
“Organic is very important and it has all the certifications, but what’s becoming just as important, if not more important for some people, is the local and the natural,” he said.
His customers don’t want organic food that is grown and processed thousands of kilometres away from Manitoba, he added.
“That’s what is currently changing. How’s it going to shake out, I don’t know, yet. But I can tell you there are people that would rather have local product than an organic product from the other side of the world.”
