mailboxfarmer🧑‍🌾🚜📬

In March 2015, Colorado Springs School District 11 stopped buying its beef from Ranch Foods Direct. The switch saved $50,000 a year. It spent $220,000 a school year to put that beef in front of nearly 28,400 students, under the Good Food Project, the local food program its nutrition director Rick Hughes started in 2009. The replacement came through U.S. Foodservice, from National Beef, one of four companies that slaughter 82 percent of US steers and heifers. Hughes told The Gazette quality was similar, but the new beef came with no guarantee against antibiotics or hormones and no grass-finished claim. Hughes said it came down to dollars and cents. "We want to provide healthy, fresh meals," he said. "We're just not able to support our local community." Lunch brought in $3 and breakfast $2.67, and Colorado's Breakfast After the Bell law, HB 13-1006, was in its first year of free breakfast at low income schools. Hughes named that law and the beef price together when the budget ran short. Mary Talbott, a retired public health worker, started a fundraiser to bring the beef back. It raised about $500 against a $220,000 annual bill. Eleven years on, the local beef has not come back.