How Buffalo Ted Hunts Bison Bucks

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 28, 1999 | by Lisa Anderson

Media mogul Ted Turner seems to qualify for Agriculture Department purchases of bison meat, but American Indians and other critics say he is domesticating a animal.

Even if media mogul Ted Turner is the marketing guru his friends purport him to be, critics say he'll have to make a move of Nobel-laureate proportions to avoid being a laughingstock as a result of his latest venture.

Turner, apparently not content with building news, entertainment and sports empires, has become a bison rancher -- and North America's largest and most successful at that. With more than 17,000 head of American buffalo on ranches in Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico, Turner is turning his hobby into a substantial piece of yet another profit-generating industry.

Certainly the Clinton administration has taken notice. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, recently purchased $6 million worth of bison meat, following a smaller USDA purchase made last year. The meat will be funneled to the Native American Feeding Program, a commodities provider for the poorest of American Indian families.

This presents some potential problems for the North American Bison Cooperative, or NABC, the organization that made the sale and of which Turner is both a member and the leading supplier. Some American Indians, already at odds with Turner because of his refusal to change the name of his professional baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, are outraged by what they believe is favoritism being shown Turner by the Clinton administration and U.S. Senate Democrats.

The InterTribal Bison Cooperative, or ITBC, is not happy about any of this. Based in Rapid City, S.D., ITBC is a competitor, albeit a small one, of the North Dakota-based NABC. According to ITBC founder Fred DuBray, the way in which the government is handling the purchase and distribution of bison meat is a disgrace and presents problems that will not go away easily.

American Indians, DuBray claims, long have regarded the bison as sacred, and while this does not preclude use of the animal as a food source (bison for centuries has been an integral part of the American Indian diet), according to tribal custom it does dictate certain standards in the raising and slaughter of herds that as late as the 1930s had been reduced to only a few hundred.

DuBray takes issue with the fact that Turner and the NABC feed their animals on grain rather than letting them roam free to graze exclusively on grass as the Great Spirit clearly intended. "We [American Indians] want to restore bison as a wild animal," says DuBray, "so they can maintain the integrity of who they are. Feeding them for the purpose of `fattening them up,' then administering shots of worming medicine and such, kills the spiritual relationship with the animal, and you can't separate the spiritual aspect from the economic."

DuBray has raised this point with both the USDA and Democratic Sens. Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson of South Dakota. In pointed letters, he criticizes the USDA for trying to classify bison as domestic livestock and especially is angry that they are subsidizing the purchase of excess trim (the fattiest portion) to feed it back to his people who, he claims, "already have health problems associated with high-fat, high-cholesterol diets."

Will McFarlane, owner of the Denver Buffalo Co., sees it another way. His company markets the NABC's meat, and he likens trim to ground beef with an especially high protein content. "We haven't heard anyone complain" he contends, "least of all the Native Americans who are receiving the meat." Incredibly poor, they tend to be grateful for whatever they get.

Bob Dineen of Rocky Mountain Natural Meats swears to the healthful leanness of the bison trim that is being pushed off on the Indians. He tells Insight, "Eighty percent of the trimmings are over 90 percent lean. As for grass feeding, it's great, but there has to be consistency -- through the winter, for example, and feed-grain provides that."

This seems to conflict with Tamer's commitment to let his bison roam free. In fact, the NABC requires its bison to be grain-finished for a minimum of 100 days, and that includes Turner's. At the same time, American Indian cooperatives and bison "purists" are more than a little bit puzzled about why the billionaire is getting a subsidy to dump fatty trim on poor Indians while they themselves are being left out of the government loop. Though the ITBC admits it is not a big-enough producer to supply the government on a regular basis, it claims to see evidence of neglect and possible foul play.

The USDA, for example, only will purchase bison meat in 40,000-pound lots or greater. "This," says DuBray, "leaves out every competitor but the USDA's target vendor, namely the NABC," in which Turner is the grand panjandrum. Why the NABC? According to Chris Bullinger, NABC spokesman, his co-op has the only slaughterhouse that is both USDA- and European Union-approved. Sounds like Ted, say critics. Not only that, but they aggressively marketed their product to the USDA, sending a delegation to Washington complete with videos, brochures and bison-product samples.