spotlight || epicurean
Meat that Matters Bill Niman and the food animals in his care lead the good life. | by David Mahoney
D
riving his truck through a pasture perched above the gleaming Pacific, with the hills of San Francisco visible to the south and Point Reyes jutting into the ocean to the north, Bill Niman pulls up next to a hulking black steer. “Dogie!” he shouts, hopping out to pat the animal on its flank. Returning to the truck, Niman explains that the steer was orphaned several years ago when he was just a few months old but refused to take a bottle, determined to tough it out on his own. “Now he weighs 2,000 pounds, maybe more,” Niman says, pride evident in his voice. It’s easy to see why he would respect his old steer’s resilience and determination. At an age when most people are thinking seriously about retirement, Niman (who looks considerably younger than his 67 years) is setting out to build a second brand in the natural-meat business, having At an age when most people parted ways a few years ago with are thinking seriously about Niman Ranch, the legendary company that still bears his name. retirement, Niman is setting out He recently added turkeys to his to build a second brand in the livestock lineup. And when he and his wife, Nicolette (an environmental natural-meat business. lawyer and animal-welfare activist who is, in fact, considerably younger), aren’t tending to their grass-fed cattle and heritage turkeys, they’re busy raising Miles, their 3-year-old son. While working to build awareness of his new brand, BN Ranch, Niman is also intent on providing a template for sustainable agriculture. “When I left Niman Ranch, one of the things I was passionate about was creating a model farm that other people could copy,” he says. Having served on the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, he had become even more aware of the glaring flaws in our food-production systems that Nicolette had been addressing in her work as an attorney for Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Waterkeeper Alliance. Together, he says, they decided they could promote positive change by becoming “missionaries for sensible food production.” If Niman’s past influence on how food animals in this country are raised is any indication, he’s likely to create a lot of converts.
184 Artful Living
| Spring 2012
Artful-LivingMag.com