Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Doug Willhite <drwillhite@earthlink.net>]

Is Goat the New Cow?
Why American Foodies and Environmentalists Are Reviving the Old-World  
Staple

Goat is a great way for people to eat locally grown, humanely raised,  
tasty foods. And unlike the cattle industries, there aren't any  
massive, industrialized goat farms.
March 16, 2010
It's a Thursday evening and I am just leaving my little farmers'  
market, which occupies a dog-leg corner of a typical Southern  
California strip mall. It is bounded by a wide boulevard filled with  
thousands of commuters whose red brake lights and white headlights  
transform the street into a candy-cane ribbon inching along at rush  
hour toward the nearby freeway. A man selling gourmet cheese from the  
side of his refrigerated truck has plenty of goat cheese, some herbed  
and others plain. All look freshly made and delicious. I'm preparing  
a meal for Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath. The meal will follow Jewish  
dietary guidelines, known as kashrut.

The foundation of Jewish dietary laws is written in the Torah. It  
starts with goats, as it is written that one should not boil a baby  
goat (a kid) in its mother's milk. From this statement, a complex and  
extensive food system evolved that prescribes how observant Jews eat.  
Although I continue to follow these dietary laws, I didn't think  
about goats much until recently. A couple of thousand years after my  
ancestors initiated a goat-inspired religious food diet, I have  
joined with millions of other people worldwide, to prepare a meal  
with a goat product.

Goat dishes didn't go out of style among a few billion people  
currently inhabiting or with roots in Africa, the Middle East and  
South America. Goats were the first animals raised for food that were  
domesticated by humans 9,000 years ago. Currently, two-thirds of all  
red meat eaten worldwide is goat meat.

But I am different. I'm a white, middle-class Angeleno and for me,  
the idea of eating anything goat is generally a recent phenomenon of  
the past decade. The first time I took an interest in goats, I was  
sitting in a courtyard at a small guesthouse in Ethiopia. A young man  
from the kitchen grabbed a black, white and brown streaked goat and  
slit its throat right in front of me. A restaurant customer had  
ordered fresh goat.

The American culinary landscape includes traditional goat dishes such  
as stews found at ethnic restaurants but is common on the menu at  
high-end restaurants. The meal might start with goat meat, goat milk,  
goat cheese, goat yogurt and finish with goat ice cream or goat  
caramels, and you might find goat milk soap in the restroom. San  
Francisco restaurateur Yaron Milgrom, who left a PhD program in  
Jewish mysticism to open Local Mission Eatery, spoke with me about  
the philosophy behind his menu. It includes a goat meat sandwich and  
goat butter on the side. He believes the menu will attract Latino  
customers familiar with goat and diners unfamiliar but interested in  
exploring the culinary landscape, claiming that "goat is poised to be  
the next pork because it is delicious." And, it's not just  
restaurants offering goat but major supermarkets, boutique food shops  
and farmers' markets.

The variety of goat products now available is overwhelming but is  
united by the common theme that goat products have leaped forward a  
few thousand years. The sustainable food movement in the U.S. has  
been pioneered by people like chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and  
author and activist Michael Pollan, who have encouraged people to  
explore culinary options and to be more discerning about their  
relationship with food.

Goat, actually, is a great way for people to eat locally grown and  
made, humanely raised, healthy, tasty foods. Jennifer Bice of Redwood  
Hill Farm and Creamery, which has been churning out goat dairy  
products since 1968, attributes the increasing popularity of goat  
products to the advent of California cuisine that has helped to fuel  
the interest and growth in artisanal foods. Top chefs have propelled  
these culinary choices into the mainstream. The fact that people like  
the taste of all things goat has been the most significant factor for  
the growth of this industry.

There are over 200 types of goats. Though they are nimble climbers  
who are able to reach hillsides and extreme landscapes that other  
animals can't, they tread fairly lightly on the land. Their culinary  
preferences include includes munching on brush and different plants  
from their grazing counterparts like cows and sheep. This helps to  
balance out a mixed-animal grazing area. Since they're water-phobic,  
they avoid streams and other water areas that are sensitive to  
trampling.

Unlike the dairy cow or beef industries, there aren't any massive,  
industrialized goat farms. Jim Pacheco was a third-generation dairy  
cow farmer who switched to dairy goats a dozen years ago after he was  
unable to compete with industrial cow dairies. Goats raised on small  
farms like Pacheco's aren't treated with hormones or overloaded with  
pharmaceuticals and enjoy grazing on pasture. They produce less  
manure and therefore less methane, a greenhouse gas, than cows. As a  
result, the lives of goats are much more idyllic than other  
livestock. I'm not sure if it's genetics or a result of being raised  
under favorable conditions, but several people have mentioned that  
goats are smarter than cows. It's exceptional when a food product's  
package is actually accurate: if you see a picture of a happy goat on  
a family farm, it's probably true.

Goats are such efficient grazers that some companies now offer low- 
impact, goat-powered grazing to trim lawns and brush, especially in  
fire-prone areas. Charlotte Lewis, with her son, owns Living Systems  
Land Management, a grazing company in the Bay Area. The company is  
more than just about bringing the animals in to trim the grass and  
reduce the potential for fires. She explains they are "trying to  
educate people about the interconnection of holistic land management.  
The people, economy, animals and land connect with each other."  
Advocates like Lewis are helping people establish a deeper connection  
with their local ecology and to recognize that animals are more adept  
than technology at bringing our environment back into balance.

The positive impacts of goats extend well beyond being ecological  
lawn mowers. Their land usage enables humans to have a greater  
connection with the food they're consuming and to have comfort in the  
environmental sustainability of it.

Nicolette Hahn Niman, author of Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life  
and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms, is raising goats, along with her  
husband Bill Niman. While already operating an environmentally  
sensitive ranch without dependence on fossil fuels, chemicals or  
pesticides, she and her husband understood the benefit of  
diversifying the animals on their ranch. As Hahn Niman says, "The  
best farming mimics nature."

In an attempt to achieve this, they've introduced goats to their  
farm. However, just raising the goats isn't enough. They have to sell  
them too. They introduce goat meat to friends and potential  
customers. Most people who previously consumed goat meat had eaten  
meat from older goats that had been chopped into a stew; it wasn't a  
good epicurean introduction. Hahn Niman's meat is from young animals  
with a "very sweet, mild and non-greasy flavor" to which people are  
responding well, she says.

Most new goat consumers are still exploring. As a vegetarian, I  
cannot speak to the qualities of goat meat but I do know that the  
goat cheese I've had is delicate and light but simultaneously  
luscious and intense in flavor. Those in the goat dairy sector speak  
of their product highly in comparison to cow dairy. According to  
Super Goat, founded by a few women in the dairy goat industry,  
including Bice of Redwood Hill Farm, Mary Keehn of Cypress Grove  
Chevre and Laura Howard of Laloo's Goat Milk Ice Cream, goat's milk  
has more calcium and vitamin B6 and vitamin A than cow's milk. It's  
also lower in calories and more digestible for those who usually have  
trouble with cow dairy products. The higher fat content is an asset  
to cheese makers and confectioners.

Bice has been in the goat dairy business since her parents purchased  
Redwood Hill Farm over 40 years ago. Located in Sonoma County, just  
north of San Francisco and a hub of the artisanal and sustainable  
food movement, Bice has helped to grow the goat dairy industry with  
award-winning cheeses that have a strong fan base among consumers and  
are now found nationwide at major markets like Whole Foods. She also  
mentored her neighbors, Jim Pacheco and his wife Donna, after they  
shifted from cow to goat dairy. Their now-famous Achadinha handmade  
goat cheese won best in show at the American Cheese Society in 2002.

Given the success of people like Bice, Keehn and Howard in shipping  
their artisanal goat products to chain stores across the country, is  
the U.S. goat industry poised to become like the cow, chicken and pig  
industries? Those animals have suffered the consequences of  
industrialization, including the use of hormones and other  
pharmaceuticals, inhumane conditions, and extreme environmental  
degradation from run-off and waste. Bice and Hahn Niman argue that  
the goat sector does not have the economic incentives or  
infrastructure yet to drive it to change in such a dramatic way. Bice  
noted that to set up a large-scale industrial goat farm would be  
extremely expensive and difficult to finance. She received her first  
bank loan after 26 years. The industry lacks the subsidies and price  
supports that the major agricultural sectors receive from the federal  
government. Unless the federal government intervenes, says Bice,  
"goat dairying will remain a family farm enterprise and goat dairy  
products an alternative in the U.S."

Says Hahn Niman, "Pfizer hasn't put billions into developing goat  
vaccines. Unfortunately some vaccines might be beneficial for goats  
but on the plus side, it hasn't gotten as messed up as the dairy and  
beef industry." There aren't enough goats in the entire country right  
now to meet the demands that would be required of a vast industry  
like the other livestock sectors. And, says rancher Hahn Niman, the  
land is a major economic factor because the animals are grazers.  
While there is "the possibility of goat feedlots...the economics  
aren't there. Goats work because they can be in poor-soiled areas  
where cattle can't be raised."

The challenge to farmers like Hahn Niman and Bice is to keep up the  
demand. As more chefs incorporate luscious goat dairy on their menu  
and others add goat meats to dishes and sandwiches, demand for these  
products will increase. While some might be wondering what the fuss  
is all about, this is not the latest nouveau cuisine: goat is here to  
stay. And I'm eating my way back to my roots.



Sarah Newman is a researcher at Participant Media in Los Angeles. You  
can follow her on Twitter @SarahNow.


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