HAMILTON, Ohio – Skyp and Jana Harmon, of Caraway Farm, have raised grass-fed American Galloway cattle since 2015. However, with a little help from Schaffer Label Consulting, they received USDA certification last year so they can print grass-fed on their labels. The Harmons believe grass-fed is better for the cattle, the soil, and consumers.

“I don’t like genetically modified grains, I don’t like anything that has Glyphosate in it, and that has been a problem lately with feeding grain,” Jana said. “Also, it’s healthier; there are a lot of positives to eating more natural-fed animals that have a chance to graze and pick what they want.”

Cattle are range animals, Harmon said. They use rotational grazing and that is better for the ground because it spreads the manure across the farm. It is absorbed instead of having a direct fertilizer effect, and it is more gradual and natural so the soil produces better grass. While the cattle are off a field the manure has had a chance to feed the soil and the worms, and everything does better.

“Our pastures were depleted from taking hay off of them year after year,” Harmon said. “We did all hay from 2007 until 2015. We did some fertilizing but not a lot. In the areas where the cows are pastured the most, the soil has recovered dramatically.

“Our soil is not the best, it is marginal in a lot of areas,” she said. “We do not have to buy fertilizer. We have bought some seed to try to rejuvenate areas where there is no clover because it doesn’t last that long. The cool part about it is, when the cows ingest the clover, if there is seed in it, then they are spreading the seed.”

In 2019, Harmon wanted their labels to include “grass-fed.” She downloaded an application and filled it out. And waited.

“Nothing happened,” she said. “I never heard anything from them. So, I talked to my processor, the Butcher Block in Versailles, and asked how I could get my labeling done. I found out that sometimes you need a little help because the process is much more intense than I thought.”

Harmon reached out to Rodney Schaffer, of Schaffer Label Consulting, LLC. His service is to get a USDA-approved label for diet claims, grain claims, and special claims of any kind.

“She wanted to have her cattle certified as grassfed,” Schaffer said. “I have other clients who have grass-fed or Angus, I have clients who have hogs. It just depends on what the client is looking to do. USDA requires several pieces of documentation, depending on what it is. They will review that product and that product label based on their regulations prior to the product entering commerce.”

Schaffer launched his business in 2020 to support very small- to mid-sized meat processors to navigate the USDA label approval process, he said.

Making sure that a label meets all the USDA requirements is a technical task that many people are just not savvy about, Schaffer said. It is no wonder because it is difficult to follow the logic and nomenclature of the regulations. Having a well-versed consultant is important.

“Small processors and people like Caraway Farm don’t have any idea what the regulations are,” Schaffer said. “It is very unique to the meat industry and it is very difficult. They are not experts at labels. They are experts at doing meat. So, they use a service like mine.”

The labeling is important because it has to have so much information on it, Harmon said. It has the safe handling instructions, it has to have the processor’s numbers for the USDA inspectors. A producer can’t move from one processor to another without changing the label.

“I had the certification within a month,” Harmon said. “Everything was done. This company (Schaffer) worked with Butcher Block. They got the labels to them and then we were ready to process.”

To be certified as grass-fed, the cattle must go straight from their mother’s milk to pasture, Harmon said. They can’t pasture on anything with a seed head. The Harmons had to have their supplementation approved. Their cattle don’t get any antibiotics or hormones.

“There are all kinds of little things that he taught me,” Harmon explained. “Because we produce our cows at the farm and we don’t bring in any cows from anywhere else, we know exactly what they eat. They eat hay mostly from our farm, but we are buying hay, too. We get a pasture mix grass-hay, basically clover and grass.”