Balancing tradition and change is nothing new for McKenzie Natural Artisan Deli, Vermont’s 110-year-old meat-and-cheese biz. Still headquartered in Burlington, it has been owned by Massachusetts-based Kayem Foods Incorporated since 1999. While McKenzie’s conventional Country Classics products remain part of its bread and butter, the company is now putting its bucks into building a line of non-GMO, antibiotic-free meats.
Staying true to its roots, McKenzie has been releasing those new products in the Green Mountain State before they become available elsewhere. The first, a non-GMO Angus roast beef, is currently available in Vermont and “select stores around New England and New York,” said spokesperson Megan Mulcahy. A trio of hams will soon follow: one uncured, one spiral-sliced and one smoked.
Want cheese on that sandwich? McKenzie sells raw-milk cheddar and maple-smoked cheddar, both made in Vermont by Grafton Village Cheese from milk free of rBST.
Mulcahy said the new line is an acknowledgment that consumers are increasingly conscious of where their meat comes from. “Knowing that people’s demands are changing and that people are paying more attention to what they’re eating,” she said, “we’re looking at everything [the company does] and asking if we’re making the best choices every step of the way.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Meating Demand”
This article appears in Apr 26 – May 2, 2017.
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I hate to burst your bubble, but the pictured sandwich is every bit as much a health disaster as a tub of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
Please, rather than printing a press release, dig into this a bit deeper. What GMO ingredients are there in the regular, non-non-GMO beef? Roast beef, salt, and pepper. None of those are even available as GMO products. There is no reference on their website to their not allowing cows to be fed GM crops, because it’s not true (and with the markedly higher cost involved, they would advertise that). So you have a greenwashed product with the Non GMO Project stamp that is no different than the product was before the stamp. By McKenzie supporting this labeling, and by Seven Days publicizing it, you are perpetuating the myth of the dangerous GMO, and further dumbing down the discussion of how we are going to feed ourselves sustainable, fairly, and economically.
Oh and that raw milk cheese? I can all but guarantee that contains GMO rennet, which has been exempted from the GMO=evil meme because of the near total reliance of it for one of our most iconic industries.
I expect better. Please report, don’t repeat.