Algoma-raised beef tantalizing southern tastebuds: Penokean Hills Farms finding market in Toronto restaurants.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: NEWS

A Northern Ontario beef cattle collective is gaining a reputation amongst discerning restaurateurs and butcher shops for its tasty, high-quality beef, which is spurring growth into the southern Ontario market.

Penokean Hills Farms is a group of 14 farmers scattered throughout the Algoma District producing grass-fed, Angus beef products. Over the last two years, the group has focused on the wholesale market, attracting high-end, Toronto-based clients who are enticed by the tender, earthy-flavoured meat and its Northern Ontario provenance.

"The chefs really like that kind of unique-tasting product, and being able to supply really high-quality meat every week really helps us break into that market," said Nick Gordon, Penokean Hills' director of sales and marketing.

More than 90 per cent of the beef is sold in the GTA, but there are also strong markets in Thunder Bay, North Bay, Timmins and Sudbury, Gordon said.

Great-tasting meat starts with stringent genetic selection of the cattle, Gordon noted. Producers are required to use Penokean Hills' bulls, which are highly rated for lots of marbling in the meat, making it more tender and flavourful.

For the last three to four months of their lives, the cattle are moved to a finishing farm, built last year on former airport land in the Town of Thessalon, where they're fed a pea-and-barley mixture, which helps give the meat its signature flavour.

The diet is so well regarded the provincial government recognized Penokean Hills Farms with a Premier's Award for Agri-food Innovation Excellence in 2008.

Every Monday, wholesale clients put in their orders for any combination of 50 cuts of meat the producers can provide, and the product is shipped directly from a Bruce Mines-based abattoir. Any leftover organs and offal are used in secondary industries, such as dog food manufacturing--Max's Pet Food Deli in Sudbury is one client.

"We're selling bones and offal, and selling hides, and making use of pretty much everything," Gordon said. "So there's very, very little waste."

Formed in 2005 by five area farmers, the group was originally envisioned as a way to supply beef to local customers while getting a more profitable return on investment, Gordon noted.

"In the past, we were always shipping cattle down south, and you don't get a great price down in southern Ontario for the product," he said. "So keeping it local helps with the local economy, farmers get paid a little extra out of it, and it's just less carbon...