Motto Eat them or lose them. Headquarters Brooklyn, NY | Founder Carlo Petrini Website heritagefoodsusa.com | |
 | ||
Heritage Foods USA is an American heritage meat distribution company with offices in Brooklyn, New York. It was formed in 2001 as the sales and marketing arm of Slow Food USA — a non-profit organization founded by Patrick Martins, dedicated to celebrating regional cuisines and ingredients. The Heritage Turkey Project, which helped double the population of heritage turkeys in the United States and upgraded the Bourbon Red turkey from “rare” to “watch” status on conservation lists, was Heritage Foods USA’s first project aimed at heritage breed preservation. In 2004, it became an independent company selling heritage breed meat to top tiered restaurants and consumers.
Contents
Operations
Heritage Foods USA sells pasture raised, antibiotic-free heritage breed meat to restaurants and homes across the country. Heritage Foods USA purchases 200 pigs a week, from a network of more than 25 independent farms. The family farms raise heritage pig breeds that include Berkshire, Red Wattle, Tamworth, Gloucestershire Old Spot, Large Black, and Duroc. These heritage breed pigs are processed at Paradise Locker Meats, a USDA inspected and Certified Humane meat processing plant in Trimble, Missouri. Heritage Foods USA takes weekly wholesale orders from a network of more than 250 restaurants around the country including Babbo, Del Posto, Egg, Fette Sau, Franny’s, Gramercy Tavern, Hominy Grill, Momofuku Noodle Bar, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, Morimoto, Roberta’s, Union Square Café and more. Heritage Foods USA also sells heritage meat directly to consumers via an e-commerce website. Together the wholesale and mail order division of Heritage Foods USA move over 50,000 lbs of Heritage, pasture-raised, antibiotic-free meat a week.
Heritage Turkey Project
In 2002, Heritage Foods USA partnered with Frank Reese of Good Shepard Poultry Ranch in Lindsborg, KS, selling about 800 Heritage turkeys to Slow Food USA members around the country. Starting what would become an annual program, the Heritage Turkey Project aimed to increasing heritage turkey populations by increase market demand for the birds. Since then, Heritage Foods USA has continued their partnership with Frank Reese, the only farmer in America recognized by the USDA as a producer of authentic heritage poultry, Since the inception of the Heritage Turkey Project, many breeds have been removed from the critically endangered species list. A 2003 census by the Livestock Conservancy reported a 200 percent increase in heritage turkey populations. By 2006, the count of heritage turkeys in the U.S. was up to 8,800 breeding birds. Though all but the Bourbon Red and Royal Palm are still considered critically endangered, the birds have rebounded significantly.
Today Frank Reese is able to raises nearly 10,000 turkeys a year.
No Goat Left Behind
No Goat Left Behind is an effort launched in 2011 by Heritage Foods USA with the twin aim of introducing goat meat to American diners and developing a sustainable end market to support dairy farmers in the Northeast. To produce milk required for cheese making, female goats must have babies. This creates many unwanted males as a by-product of the dairy business. "In extreme cases the kids are killed at birth to unburden the farmer from caring for goats with little market value." Heritage Foods USA partners with 15 New York State and Vermont family farms to sell hundreds of goats to restaurants and home consumers throughout the month of October. The project has acquired the name “Goatober", because as a result of naturally mating goat, kids are born in the early spring, graze on pastures all summer, and are then ready for harvest in October.
Heritage Rare Breed Chicken Tour
In 2013, Heritage Foods USA began an effort to revive 24 rare, heritage chicken lines and create an alternative market for non-industrially bred chicken. Heritage Foods USA is partnering with Frank Reese of Good Shepard Poultry Ranch, the country’s preeminent poultry farmer, to raise heritage chicken breeds that are on the brink of extinction.
Advisory Board
Heritage Radio Network
In 2009, Patrick Martins founded HeritageRadioNetwork.org, a web-based food radio station, in honor of Carlo Petrini’s Radio Bra Onde Rosse, the second independent radio station in Italy, which broadcast good, clean and fair content in 1974 and 1975. Heritage Radio Network is an independent 501c3 non-profit that goes beyond the issues covered in culinary magazines and television. Heritage Radio Network features more than 30 weekly shows about such topics as food technology, beer, cheese, food history and politics, and cocktails.