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GOURMET NEWS www.gourmetnews.com n JUNE 2017 n GOURMET NEWS 8 4 Award-Winning Salumist Curing America's Food System By Lorrie Baumann With the January 20 announcement of a Good Food Award for its Landrauch- schinkin, a Swiss-style country smoked ham, Olympia Provisions, a Portland, Oregon-based salumeria, achieved a record for Good Food Awards in the charcuterie category, and salumist Elias Cairo so- lidified his position as one of the top Good Food Award winners across all cate- gories. His total now comes in at 11 Good Food Awards since his Loukanika, Saucisson d'Arles and Pork Liver Mousse were named winners in the in- augural competition for both the Good Food Awards and himself. Olympia Provisions was one of 2,059 companies entering the 2017 Good Food Awards with entries in 14 categories ranging from craft beers to spirits. Of those, 193 companies were named winners in the com- petition that honors the makers of food that's both delicious and produced with concern for environmental sustainability, social jus- tice and humane treatment of animals. Just to enter his charcuterie in the competition, Cairo was required to pledge, among other criteria, that his product was free of artificial additives, that the meat came from animals raised according to the standards of the An- imal Welfare Approved organization and that the people who raised and harvested the animals and who made the product in his plant were all paid fair compensation for their work. All of that's a fit for how he's al- ways run his business, he says. Cairo is the son of a first-generation im- migrant from Greece, born in Salt Lake City, Utah, into a family that valued hard work and good food raised on a small farm where they preserved their fruit, made a little alco- hol and cured meat for the winter. "My fa- ther was the typical Greek man," Cairo says. The family also owned two Greek-Amer- ican restaurants, and by the time he was 17 years old, Cairo figured he'd learned all they had to teach him, and he needed to light out for formal culinary school. "I wanted to be a fancy-pants chef," he says with a laugh. "I was reading a lot about the Culinary Insti- tute of America." His fa- ther argued that what he really n e e d e d was a taste of hard work and more prac- tical expe- rience in a restaurant kitchen, and he offered to send him back to Greece where he could really learn how to cook. "I sort of figured that I already knew all that," Cairo says. His father reached out to friends in Greece who might have a place in their kitchens for an apprentice cook who needed a good les- son or two and was referred to a Swiss friend who had a six-month opening for an apprentice. "This area is called the Alpstein, and it's very famous for mountain restau- rants," Cairo says. Cairo took the apprenticeship and found himself working for the village jagermeister, the meat cutter to whom the local hunters brought their game for processing. "I really fell in love with hanging out in the restau- rant and butchering meat and curing it," Cairo says. "All of these producers were the most amazing people. I fell in love." The six-month apprenticeship ended, but Cairo's stay in Switzerland didn't. He ended up staying there for five years. Meanwhile, his sister had moved from Salt Lake City to Portland, Oregon, and she started telling him that he should think about going back to the U.S. His family needed him, she argued, and Portland wasn't Salt Lake City. Finally, she argued him into com- ing, at least for a visit. "I was kind of skep- tical," he says. "I landed, and she took me right to the Portland farmers market." That visit was the start of a love affair between Cairo and Portland's food culture. Cairo decided quickly that he wanted to be part of America's growing interest in quality foods, and the food movement's ea- gerness to support producers who were making food that aligned with their own ethics. "Within a week, I knew that Amer- ica's so fresh on the food movement," he said. "I was really excited to see all the mi- crobrews and the wine and the cheese.... I just think it's so important that people care about more than just delicious." Michelle was looking at the farmers mar- ket for a stick of high-quality salami, she told him, but she'd been unable to find any- one in the Portland area who was making the sausage she was seeking. "I said, 'Michelle, I make a ton of salami. I can make salami. Let's do this.'" She pointed out that, in the United States, making and selling salami isn't as simple as that – there are regulations that have to be fol- lowed, and they're complicated. So Cairo got a job in one of Portland's fancy restau- rants, and in his free time, he started study- ing the U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations and learning about HACCP re- quirements that governed the processing and sale of meat. By 2009, he'd learned enough to persuade his sister that he could succeed in the busi- ness, and she provided him with enough money to open Portland's first USDA-certi- fied meat-processing facility. "I opened up my first USDA facility next to my first restaurant," he says. He entered those first products into the very first Good Food Awards, and when he was named as a multiple winner, he started getting phone calls. Two years later, he opened his second meat processing facility. "We grew out of that place two years ago and opened up our current meat plant with 40,000 square feet," he says. Today, his Olympia Provisions operation employs 180 and includes five restaurants – three fast casual and two full service – and sells at 17 farmers markets a week. "It just becomes a snowball, I suppose," he says. "I think it's a pretty exciting time to be produc- ing." His products are winning praise from con- sumers who care about products that deliver on more than just good taste in a cute pack- age. "They want to support the companies that have the same ideas about the environ- ment that they do," Cairo says, adding that he supports the Good Food Awards require- ments for environmental sustainability and animal welfare. "It's forcing people's hands to do what they say," he says. To that end, he's embarked on a quest to improve the supply chain for quality meat products, so that he can find the humanely raised animals he needs to make his charcu- terie close to home – a project that's more difficult in the western U.S., where the carry- ing capacity of the land is less than it is in the better-watered parts of the country, and there- fore, there's less infra- structure for raising and processing meat. That's driven Cairo to spend time trying to persuade cattle ranchers that their operations will benefit if they try something other than the traditional single-species cow-calf oper- ation funneling into a massive feedlot by in- troducing pigs into some of their pastures. The pigs would clean out invasive weeds to improve their pastures. Then, they wouldn't have to worry about selling that pork at farmers markets, he tells them. "Once you can show them a financial plan, pencil in that there is a market – it is moving in this direction, then they get interested," he says. Making that work requires scale – a scale that provides a dependable market for those pasture-raised pigs. Cairo sees Olympia Pro- visions as a key to making it work, first for Oregon and then for America. "I'm still a ways away from having it completely fixed in Oregon," he says. "There are great slaughterhouses and producers – I just think it can still be improved.... Hopefully, in my model, the ranchers should be focusing on ranching and putting back into the land and then allowing people like myself to move their product.... We created this amazing company that's good for America." Clover Sonoma Transitions Fluid Milk Products to Non-GMO Project Verified by 2019 Clover Sonoma, a third-generation family owned and operated leader at the forefront of the dairy industry, has pledged its com- mitment to convert its conventional fluid milk products to be Non-GMO Project Ver- ified over the next two years. Clover Sonoma is also one of the first Non-GMO Project Verified conventional milk products produced in California on a large scale. The first Non-GMO conventional half gallon milk products will be on shelf soon. "We've always taken an innovative ap- proach to elevating dairy through driving in- dustry progress, building trust with consumers and setting our own high stan- dards," said Clover Sonoma President and Chief Executive Officer Marcus Benedetti. "Our focus on non-GMO reaffirms our com- mitment to invest in the future of our dairy cows, family farms and communities. Our hope is to lead the way by creating an indus- try-wide movement towards more non- GMO feed options for our dairy cows. We look forward to working closely with our dairy partners to make this goal a reality.v Clover Sonoma has been a long-standing leader in the industry, and is driven to pio- neer and elevate dairy. Clover Sonoma was one of the first dairies to support organics with its Clover Organic Farms brand of products and was one of the first dairies in the U.S. to say no to Monsanto and the use of the rBST hormone. Clover continuously puts the health and wellness of its consumers as a top priority. The Non-GMO Proj- ect Verified seal provides clear and trusted third- party testing and the highest standard in the world for non-GMO avoidance. Over the next two years, Clover Sonoma will work with its conventional dairy farmers to con- vert their dairy cow feed to non-GMO and align with the Non-GMO Project Verified requirements. The number of dairy farms in California's North Bay has declined from 135 in 1996 to 83 in 2016. Clover Sonoma's dairy farms have survived because they are forward thinking and quick adaptors (i.e. rBST-free, Clover Promise of Excellence quality, American Humane Association certified). Clover Sonoma has worked with its family farms for years to give them a competitive ad- vantage and to help them build success- ful businesses, that in most cases, sus- tain multiple gener- ations. As Clover Sonoma has grown, the company has been able to attract new dairies in the North Bay and beyond. Clover has demonstrated the ability to build sustainable business models around added-value dairy: premium conventional, organic and now Non-GMO Project Verified conventional. Clover's commitment to non-GMO feed will continue to ensure a competitive advan- tage for the family dairy farms that supply Clover Sonoma milk, and help meet con- sumer demand for transparency and third- party verified non-GMO avoidance.

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