Home on the Range

Rusty Seedig, a longtime bison producer who sits on the board of the National Bison Association, says another contribution to the bison boom was the mad cow scare that hit the beef industry a few years ago, causing many consumers to search for a different red meat. And like so many trends sweeping America, the baby boomers are playing a role. “They’re now coming to retirement, they’re concerned about their health, they want to eat better food,” Seedig says. And, he adds, they can afford to try a more expensive meat like bison.

At The Four Seasons restaurant in New York City, bison has been on the menu for about a decade. Purchasing Manager Joel Patraker says the restaurant goes through an average of about 200 pounds of bison per week. “It’s an American restaurant, and it’s certainly the American meat,” he said. It's a popular item, Patraker said, although beef sales are much higher, averaging 1,500 pounds per week.

But don’t expect to see buffalo burgers on the McDonald’s dollar menu just yet. Carter says that while 43,000 animals processed in a year was big news for bison producers, the beef industry processes 125,000 animals a day. “We’re not in line to be the next beef, and we don’t want to be,” he says. Since most bison are raised and even finished on grass instead of in feedlots, and without the use of growth hormones, buffalo are likely to remain something of a specialty market. “Our overall goal is to make sure we retain the integrity of the product and the integrity of the animal,” Carter says.

The bison craze started in the 1990s, says Carter, when the cattle market dropped and bison prices shot up, with some heifer calves going for over $2,000 each as new producers bid against each other for breeding stock. The industry crashed in the late ‘90s, with heifer calves selling for as little as $200. By 2003, the industry began to make a cautious comeback, this time basing industry growth on the demand for meat.

Even with recent growth trends, the relatively young industry faces challenges, including marketing. Seedig says bison meat is something of an unknown to the average person. Yet there is no industrywide advertising strategy. “There’s not enough money to promote the product,” Seedig says.

Even a sudden rise in demand for bison meat would be problematic. If a major supermarket chain suddenly wanted buffalo in all its stores nationwide, it would take about five years to make a significant change in the level of production, according to Carter. “We’re really trying to chart out and make sure we’re growing the herds at the same time as the demand is growing,” he says.