Cows, naturally: Meyer Company Ranch major player in alternative beef market

Four trumpeter swans rose from a pond at the Meyer Company Ranch and flew past the red grain elevator one morning last week.

Gangly sandhill cranes lounged across the fence from Red Angus bulls as Jim Phillips drove his pickup past. The bulls in turn loafed in a Blackfoot Valley backdrop breathtaking even on a still-frozen and brown April day.

In a land with ranching roots that date back to the 1860s, Phillips is manager of an operation that rides the wave, indeed plows the furrows, of America’s infatuation with “natural beef” – a somewhat slippery term that has come to signify a niche haven in the whirl of mad cow and E. coli that bedevil the beef industry.

The 23,000-acre ranch Phillips runs is among the largest of 200 to 250 suppliers to Meyer Natural Angus http://www.meyernaturalangus.com/ of Loveland, Colo., a company that will command well over half the natural beef market in the United States this year.

By KIM BRIGGEMAN of the Missoulian

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/articles/2008/04/13/news/top/news01.txt