Is the West Running Out of Bison … Again?

According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the American beef industry slaughters about 91,000 head of cattle every day, just a fraction of the nearly 27 billion pounds of beef that we as a country consume annually. By comparison, only about 70,000 bison will be slaughtered in the U.S. this year, out of a herd that’s estimated at just over 202,000 head. The good news for buffalo ranchers is that figure has more than doubled since 2002. The bad news? As bison products have become more and more popular with U.S. shoppers and diners (thanks to those ever-present buffalo burgers) demand for the meat has started to outstrip supply. “Right now, we figure that we’re undersupplying the market by about 20 percent,” says Dave Carter, executive director of the National Bison Association based in Westminster, Colorado, “and that gap is widening.” The problem, he says, can be boiled down to three converging forces: a renewed interest in healthy meats, a new consumer focus on sustainable foods, and the simple fact that bison tastes better than a lot of meat eaters ever really expected it to. The growing industry just wasn’t prepared to meet the recent explosion in the demand and has been stuck playing catch-up...more