Bison disappearing, this time thanks to demand from the U.S.

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Back in 1860, bison vanished from what's now Manitoba after years of indiscriminate slaughter south of the U.S. border.

Today, American demand for bison is again making it disappear -- not from our land this time, but from our restaurant menus and grocery shelves.

The meat of Manitoba's provincial symbol has become a scarce and expensive commodity in Winnipeg, where some butchers now sell ground bison for as much as $10 a pound (about $22 a kilogram).

The combination of a relatively low supply of Manitoba bison and an insatiable and growing demand has led ranchers in this province to ship more of their carcasses out of the province, where larger markets exist for what's suddenly become a luxury product.

"The U.S. is paying such a high dollar right now that most guys are shipping there. In the U.S., there's a huge shortage," said Len Epp, a rancher and president of the Manitoba Bison Association.

"In New York City, they're selling ground bison for $14 a pound. Nobody in Canada will buy it at that price. I think we're at our maximum with $10," said Epp, who raises 450 head outside of Stonewall.

The high U.S. demand seems to be driven by the perception of bison as a healthier alternative to fattier beef and, perhaps more subjectively, as a more humanely treated species of cattle.

But the low supply in Manitoba is the unlikely consequence of the BSE crisis of the last decade, when the United States closed its border to all Canadian cattle, including bison.

When bovine spongiform encephalopathy was first confirmed in Canadian cattle in 2003, Manitoba had approximately 130 bison ranchers, including several who had just invested large sums of money in their operations, said Walter Dyck, a rancher who raises 35 head of bison near Anola.

When the U.S. closed its border, Manitoba ranchers were stuck with a huge supply of animals. Many sold their stock at a loss and the local market was flooded with an overabundance of a suddenly cheap commodity: bison meat that bottomed out as low as $1.50 a pound.

While the border was closed, Manitoba consumers got used to inexpensive bison and the large supply enabled more Manitoba restaurants and supermarket grocery chains to begin selling the product.

"When the prices dropped so much, people got a taste for it," Epp said.

But when the U.S. border reopened, Manitoba was left with only 70 bison ranchers to help feed a pent-up international demand. The price of bison skyrocketed to the point where the cost of a whole, uncut bison rose to a near-record $4.20 a pound in the fall of 2011.

The whole-animal price has since settled down to $3.90 a pound, but retailers and restaurants are still wary of purchasing the product.

"I don't use a lot of it because it's often ridiculously expensive," said Alex Svenne, the chef and co-owner of Fort Rouge's Bistro 71/4, which has dropped bison from its regular menu and only offers it as an occasional special.

"There's also a lack of reliable supply. You don't know what you're going to get, so it's kind of a crapshoot. And when you're spending high-end dollars, you don't want a crapshoot."

Consumers will only pay so much for a product that does not taste substantially different from much cheaper beef, said Marcel Joanisse, co-owner of Dutch Meat Market in St. Boniface.

His shop still manages to sell ground bison at a locally astounding $5 a pound because it purchases whole animals and cuts them up on site. But he said he only gets access to animals due to close relationships forged with producers during the BSE crisis.

Some other butchers are not bothering to purchase bison because they don't believe their customers will pay the going rate, Joanisse said.

But many Winnipeggers don't seem to mind shelling out more money for bison. At Casa Bella, a butcher shop at The Forks, ground bison moves at $10 a pound. "The customers who want it will pay for it," said co-owner Tony Costa.

Epp believes consumers are reconsidering bison as a luxury product and desiring it even more, partly because of the higher price -- and partly because of the healthy, environmentally friendly image of the animal.

"What we're seeing as producers is consumers want to know where their animal came from and what conditions the animals live in. That really helps out our industry, because there's no force-feeding and no farms," Epp said.

But increasingly, those consumers live outside of Manitoba, which no longer has a federally inspected cattle-processing plant. Since animals slaughtered at provincially inspected plants may not be shipped elsewhere, ranchers are sending their animals into Alberta, Saskatchewan or the U.S., where the markets are larger, said Dyck and Epp.

While those shipments are not tracked, agriculture officials have evidence of the trend: The number of bison slaughtered in this province dropped to 415 in 2011 from 1,389 in 2010, mainly because a federally inspected processing plant in Winkler stopped killing bison early last year, said Joe Czech, a spokesman for Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives.

Provincial officials and bison ranchers believe the local supply of bison will improve over the next five years, as producers get back into the business and prices dip as a result.

"The mentality of Manitoba is that it's too expensive and it needs to be cheaper," Dyck said. "That's likely to happen while the price of beef is going up."

In the U.S., meanwhile, the demand for bison has never been higher. Bison is the main attraction at Ted's Montana Grill, a 46-restaurant chain owned by media mogul Ted Turner, which serves bison nachos, chile, burgers, meatloaf, pot roast and steaks.

Turner may also be North America's biggest bison rancher, with a reported herd of approximately 50,000 head.

That's roughly 50,000 more bison than Manitoba could count on 150 years ago, before the founding of this province by Louis Riel.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 18, 2012 A13