Page 18 - MENU Magazine - Nov/Dec 2017

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who will hopefully double in number in the spring when they have their own calves.
With almost two per cent of the world’s cat- tle, Canada is the eleventh-largest producer of beef, but the sixth-largest exporter. NuHaven helps bolster those numbers with high-quality purebred cattle for breeding.
“We’re trying to produce the seed stock ge- netics for the industry,” says Fraser. “We want the very best animals to be retained within our herd. We want correct legs, big bones, nice big-bodied cows. When we go out there to look
wat them, we need to like what we see.”
ith Canadians eating more poultry
and less beef—consumption has decreased by almost 25 per cent since 2000
to approximately 41 pounds of beef per capita per year—exports are more important than ever. Canada sends nearly three-quarters of its exported beef to the United States, with about 10 per cent going to China and six per cent to Mexico. The shrinking domestic demand has the industry talking. This past summer, Fraser took part in an East Meets West event orga- nized by Canada Beef and the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto.
“It was really neat because I got to meet di erent media people, organizations, chefs and food bloggers,” says Fraser. “We toured a feedlot and had an amazing lunch. Chef Robert Mills from the Royal York prepared a brisket and Clinton Zhu from Shanghai prepared a short rib.”
Attendees including Fraser were brought to a working cattle farm—Sunnymead Farms in Caledon, Ontario. There they toured the facili- ties, learned about feed production and animal nutrition, the cattle industry, and they were able to see the animals and the operations
in person. The hands-on frame of reference coupled with experts o ering an intrinsic un- derstanding of the industry, farming/ranching techniques and beef preparation techniques allowed attendees to engage with the process and the producers of a vital Canadian ingredi- ent—Canadian beef.
For Fraser, the event also gave her context for her work.
“It was a rst for me,” she says. “I’m the producer providing the calf. To meet the chefs that use the nal product was an awesome experience because I think both industries need to come together like that as often as we possibly can.”
NuHaven certainly doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The company has weathered ups and downs
Canada is the
eleventh-largest
producer of beef,
but the sixth-
largest exporter.
before, but few as devastating as the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease) crisis of 2003, when a BSE-infect- ed animal was con rmed in Canada.
Fraser recalls: “At the time, we also had an export company where we exported livestock genetics throughout the world. The day it was announced, we had a plane-load of cattle ready to go and we had cattle en route to an- other plane heading to Colombia. We also had animals in quarantine getting ready for ship- ping. That day we had $12 million in contracts and sales. By that night, we had nothing. Those contracts were absolutely un- llable.”
18 MENU NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2017