Let’s Talk Turkey about GAP Meat Ratings
Anyone remember taking the SATs?
When I was applying to college, there were a few months at the end of high school where we had our test results, had send off college applications, but hadn’t heard yet from our favorite schools. My SAT scores were good, but let’s just say, my buddies had better. I spent several weeks cowering in the halls, wearing my digits like someone else’s letterman jacket.
Of course, there isn’t another time in life when your value is distilled down to a single number. Unless you’re a turkey…
How do you score a turkey?
There are so many buzzwords when it comes to rating meat. “Pastured,” “free range,” “humane,” “organic.” It can feel overwhelming to the shopper, and more often than not, can be misleading. That’s why Electric City Butcher and our farmers tend to lean on certifying organizations like the Global Animal Partnership–also known as GAP—to help straighten things out.
Not only does GAP have one of the most comprehensive, third party audited approaches to animal welfare, but they also boil everything down to a Sesame Street-easy number system.
Ranked in five levels, or what GAP calls “Steps,” farms and ranches are evaluated in the areas ofHealth & Productivity, Natural Living, and Emotional Well Being (of the animal you guys, although Farmer wellbeing could be a blog post all its own).
Of course, each animal species has different guidelines. For turkeys, the standards are transparently available on the GAP website.
Full disclosure, our turkey source, Diestel Family Farms—family owned for 70 years—is one of the biggest farms we work with at ECB. With the seasonality of turkey sales, the shrinking number of poultry processors in the State, and the challenges with diseases like Newcastle, there just aren’t a lot of choices for us when it comes to turkey ranches that meet our expectations. So, when we visited their operation last fall, I was skeptical that they could raise a bird that met our standards and values.
However, not only was I impressed with their bucolic Sonora ranch, but I was further swayed by their overachieving spirit of being first in turkey certifications, culminating with having the highest ranking bird in the country: the GAP Step 5 Diestel Pasture-Raised Whole Turkey.
So, what is this GAP Step 5 Stuff?
A GAP Step 5 turkey has lived a pretty primal life. For the first six weeks (the brooding period) the poult (or baby turkey for you newbies) lives a bourgeois existence indoors. But once large enough to be kicked out of the nest, Step 5 requires that the animal live full-time outdoors on pasture. And not just any pasture. This stuff can’t be a cracked concrete pad or beaten down dirt lot. It needs a minimum of 75% plant cover (i.e. trees, bushes and grass) year-round. Any additional housing (in case of extreme weather) must be mobile and temporary.
The next requirement sounds a little Island of Dr. Moreau. According to GAP, birds can’t be physically “altered.” Now this may seem an odd choice of words, but in an industry of beak trimming and wing clipping, no alteration is a good thing. Finally, the birds can’t be transported more than four hours away.
This is obviously a summary, but if you’re curious about the exhaustive 45-page details on GAP turkey scoring, have at it.
What all this means in practice is that Diestel birds walk around in fenced, green pastures, while rebuilding the soil with their poop. They eat a soy and corn-based feed in addition to grass and grubs they find in nature. Diestel sources those grains, and mills their own feed on the farm, further ensuring no GMOs, antibiotics, growth stimulants, or pesticides of any kind. The turkeys live for six months—twice as long as the average domestic turkey—and this longer growth cycle is healthier for the animal, and improves flavor profiles, making them more delicious.
When it comes down to it, the Step 5 paradigm is has regenerative agriculture in mind, which basically means keep these birds’ entire lifecycle on the ranch. And it works. On our visit to Diestel, I could stand amongst a flock (or “rafter”) of gobblers, see the barn they were born in, the mill that made their feed, and the facility where they would finally be processed and packaged for sale. This is lower stress on the birds, keeps the soil healthier, requires less carbon-intensive energy to raise and transport, and ensures more rural jobs that people want.
Are these birds special?
Diestel was the first farm to raise organic turkeys back in 1999. They were also the first to go non-GMO with their feed. So it’s not surprising that their Pasture-Raised Turkeys were also the first in the industry to earn the highest GAP rating.
For the ECB guest always looking for the free-range ostrich, wagyu camel, or any other exotic circus animal raised for its meat, Diestel’s birds are rare. According to GAP’s website, there are only three farms in America raising Step 5 turkeys, and that’s out of almost 234,000 poultry farms. But when I went to look up the other farms, none listed Step 5 on their sites anymore. I don’t know if the GAP website was outdated, or if the other farmers stopped raising birds with such stringent requirements, or maybe they were already sold out, but I’m pretty sure that Diestel has the only Step 5 birds for Thanksgiving this year. Happy to be corrected if you learn otherwise.