The move comes about six weeks after Earls retreated from a plan to source its beef from Creekstone Farms, choosing the Kansas company from beef suppliers following the U.S.-based Certified Humane animal welfare certification program.

Facing an uproar from consumers and ranchers, the chain said it would instead seek out Canadian suppliers who could provide beef “raised without the use of steroids, antibiotics or added hormones, while adhering to a standardized auditing process for ethical farming practices.”

The company on Wednesday said it will now be able to provide Canadian beef meeting its criteria for its 24 restaurants in Alberta and three in Saskatchewan, and will offer discounts on steaks and burgers at those stores until June 29.

The company announced its “new partnerships” with Vegreville, Alta.-based Spring Creek Ranch — which will supply Aspen Ridge Farms, a brand of meat packer JBS following the Certified Humane program — and Etobicoke, Ont.-based Beretta Family Farms, certified by Texas-based Global Animal Partnership.

Earls, in a release, also named White Moose Ranch, a beef operation at Priddis, Alta., as a “possible future” partner.

“We’ve been raising our cattle to meet the standards that Earls has been seeking because we believe it’s in the best interest of the animal as well as the consumer, so we’re happy that Earls has made this type of farming a priority in how they source their beef,” Kirstin Kotelko of Spring Creek said in Earls’ release.

Spring Creek became known in 2013 as the Canadian face for the suppliers to Canadian burger chain A+W, when that company publicly pledged to serve beef raised without the use of hormones or steroids.

“Earls has confirmed their loyalty to Canadian beef producers and we look forward to a long-term relationship in providing the very best our industry has to offer each and every time,” Canada Beef president Rob Meijer said in Earls’ release Wednesday.

Alberta Beef Producers chairman Bob Lowe of Nanton, Alta., in the same release, said the producer organization has been working with Earls “to identify new partner ranchers that meet Earls’ criteria for their customers and market segment.”

The company credited Meijer and Lowe as being “instrumental in helping us find our way back to Canadian beef that meets our criteria.”

The company didn’t say in its release Wednesday exactly who will now supply steaks and ground beef for its 28 other Canadian restaurants, which include three in Winnipeg, five in southern Ontario and 20 in British Columbia.

However, the company said on its site it is “developing relationships with new ranchers and suppliers all the time. And they want to work with us over the long term as we build our supply for all of our restaurants across Canada.”

In the meantime, however, the company reiterated it will still serve “consciously sourced beef in every one of our restaurants.”

Earls, on its website, noted it has “made a very public commitment” to serve Canadian Beef,” but also to offer its customers beef raised without antibiotics, steroids, or added hormones and “consistently audited by a third party” for animal welfare.

“We know Canadian cattle are raised with care and attention on the ranch,” the company said, but “humane audits look every year at the full cycle from the ranch to feedlots and the slaughtering process. We believe these audits, which are somewhat new to the industry, are good things.” — AGCanada.com Network

CLARIFICATION, June 22, 2016: A previous version of this article put the number of Earls restaurants in Alberta at 25. The Bankers Hall location in Calgary (315 Eighth Ave. SW) was closed effective Jan. 1 for renovations and is expected to reopen later this month as a “brand new Earls concept,” which for now leaves the number of Alberta stores at 24.

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Madisons NY Grill and Bar, a brand of Montreal restaurant and fast-food firm MTY Group, announced Thursday it has signed a deal with Canadian meat supply firm Viandes Intercite to provide its outlets with Certified Humane product starting July 1.

Viandes Intercite, an arm of Gordon Food Service, is the only current Canadian distributor for Kansas beef production and packing firm Creekstone Farms, the best-known Certified Humane supplier.

Madisons, which today has 14 outlets in Quebec and one in Ottawa, said it will get “Premium Black Angus” beef from Creekstone in the U.S., ranging from ground beef to filet mignon, aged at least 35 days.

The product supplied by Viandes Intercite will be cut to Madisons’ own specifications, Gilles Pépin, MTY’s senior vice-president for Madisons, said via email.

Madisons has sought in recent months to distinguish its meat offerings, introducing pork ribs “free of added hormones and steroids” in October 2014, followed by ground beef sourced from cattle raised “without added hormones and antibiotics” starting last July.

Starting July 1 this year, Pepin said in the company’s release, all the chain’s beef cuts will come from beef raised “free of added hormones, steroids and antibiotics.”

Madisons on Thursday further pledged to eliminate antibiotics in “all meat and poultry” in its menu by the end of December 2017.

Specifically, Pepin said via email, that requirement will call for meat sourced from livestock never treated “at all” with antibiotics.

The Certified Humane program is managed by Virginia-based Humane Farm Animal Care, a not-for-profit organization operating in the U.S., Canada, Brazil and Peru, offering certification regimes for beef cattle, broilers, laying hens, dairy cattle, goats, pigs, sheep, turkeys and bison.

Creekstone Farms, owned by Florida investment firm Sun Capital Partners, bills its beef as coming from cattle “handled compassionately and humanely” from birth through processing, through its Kansas plant designed by U.S. livestock handling expert Temple Grandin.

A move in late April by Canadian dining chain Earls Restaurants to source Certified Humane beef from Creekstone ran up against an immediate backlash from consumers and ranchers.

Within days the Vancouver-based firm backed away from its decision and pledged to “work with local ranchers to build our supply of Alberta beef that meets our criteria” for animal care and treatment. — AGCanada.com Network

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Mo Jessa, president of Vancouver-based Earls, said Wednesday the company will instead begin to “work with local ranchers to build our supply of Alberta beef that meets our criteria” for animal care and treatment.

The company faced widespread criticism after announcing April 26 it would switch the beef supplier for all its 59 Canadian and seven U.S. restaurants to Kansas-based Creekstone Farms, a standard-bearer for the U.S.-based Certified Humane Beef certification program.

“We moved to a U.S. supplier as we thought they could supply all of our needs,” Jessa said in a release Wednesday. “It was a mistake not to include Canadian beef.”

Jessa noted the company has “deep roots” in the province with “many operations and employees here. Alberta has supported us. We need to support Alberta, especially in tough times.”

The company opened its first Earls restaurant in Edmonton in 1982 and now has over two dozen locations across the province.

Earls said Wednesday it is now “committed to sourcing as much beef as we can from Alberta and will work with cattle ranchers to build supply.”

In a notice to customers on its website, Earls emphasized it “stands by” its decision to offer its customers beef that has “never been treated with antibiotics or growth hormones and that meets specific, audited standards for animal care.”

The company said that when it set out to find a beef source with the quantity of cattle it needed, it had found one in Alberta, “but the supply was limited, so we found a supplier in the U.S. who could supply what we needed.”

Since then, Earls said Wednesday, customers have “told us that sourcing locally is very important” and the company has had ranchers “reach out to us to help supply us with product from Alberta.”

On its website, the company said it’s “had a lot of dialogue” with consumers and stakeholders over the past week and now wants to “make things right.”

The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association on Wednesday said it “will watch with interest as Earls reintroduces Canadian beef to its supply chain.”

The association said it “supports market differentiation for beef, provided marketing claims follow Canadian food labelling guidelines. These guidelines require that claims do not mislead or create an erroneous impression, including about the quality, healthfulness or safety of a product.”

Earls’ original decision last week had quickly come under fire across social media, where the #BoycottEarls hashtag circulated widely among farmers and others on Twitter.

Without naming the restaurant, the CCA on Sunday had issued a statement that Canadian animal care regulations and standards, including the national Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Beef Cattle, “can stand up to, and perhaps even exceed, any worldwide certifications or standards.”

Regulations and standards, the association said, “differ from certifications, which are simply a record of the production practices the majority of Canadian cattle producers are already doing.”

The national Code of Practice “covers everything from proper nutrition (and) treatments when cattle are sick, to proper handling and transport. It encourages the use of low-stress handling techniques, as well as pain mitigation and medication for stressful procedures.”

Methods developed by low-stress cattle handling experts “are used extensively in Canada,” the association said, citing experts such as Bud Williams and Dylan Biggs — as well as Temple Grandin, the famed U.S. expert with whom Earls’ management met ahead of its decision last week.

Also without naming the restaurant, the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef on Friday issued a statement that its stakeholder members are “working hard to set the framework for sustainable beef in Canada and welcome others to join us.”

The organization, set up in 2014 with the aim of defining and advancing sustainability in Canadian beef, said Friday it “encourages all retail and food service companies, supply chain stakeholders and other interested individuals and organizations to join this effort and support the production of homegrown Canadian beef that is continuously improving for the planet, people, animals and progress.”

Toronto-based group Animal Justice on Wednesday said the chain’s decision and subsequent retreat serves to highlight what the group alleged to be a lack of government oversight, standards and enforcement on animal welfare in the livestock sector.

“Earls’ public relations disaster makes it clear that consumers want standards, transparency and accountability right here in Canada,” lawyer Anna Pippus, the group’s director for farmed animal advocacy, said in a release. –– AGCanada.com Network

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The company, which operates 59 Earls restaurants in Canada and seven in the U.S., on Tuesday billed itself as the first North American chain to commit to 100 per cent sourcing from operations following the Certified Humane Beef program in both the U.S. and Canada, starting Wednesday.

The beef comes from cattle raised from birth without the use of antibiotics or steroids and with no added hormones, the company said.

However, the company said on its website, while it has always previously used Canadian beef for its steaks and burgers in Canada, its move to “Conscious Sourcing” dictated that in the case of beef, “Certified Humane was more important to us than origin, so we chose a U.S. supplier for our beef.”

The Certified Humane program is managed by Virginia-based Humane Farm Animal Care, a not-for-profit organization operating in the U.S., Canada, Brazil and Peru, offering certification regimes for beef cattle, broilers, laying hens, dairy cattle, goats, pigs, sheep, turkeys and bison.

The company’s chosen Certified Humane supplier for beef is Kansas-based processor Creekstone Farms. Earls’ protein buyer, Dave Bursey, said in a video on the chain’s website that it tested product from 16 different companies throughout North America and in “steak cutting after steak cutting, the Creekstone product has won out.”

Earls said its decision stems from its recent development of a new restaurant concept for Calgary, which company president Mo Jessa said was designed as a “single, unique location, not part of the chain.”

Management, he said in a release, asked themselves if the new concept could be “100 per cent consciously sourced; Certified Humane; antibiotic-free, steroid-free, local, even organic.”

Then, however, they “fully realized the positive impact we could make within our industry by not only having one restaurant follow these principles, but by having our entire company follow these principles.”

The company began sourcing the certified beef for its Earls Test Kitchen in Vancouver and sent its chefs to visit ranches following the program and meet with U.S. animal handling expert Dr. Temple Grandin, who designed the Creekstone plant’s handling facilities.

Earls then began sourcing the beef last year for its nine “flagship” sites, followed by all its U.S. sites.

The company noted it has also committed to “free-run” and humanely raised chicken; cage-free eggs; and seafood sources approved by Oceanwise and the Marine Stewardship Association.

Earls said it has also committed to its Quebec organic maple syrup supplier and its organic vegetable suppliers in Ontario and British Columbia “to grow the way they want, from a single farm, knowing Earls would take 100 per cent of their crop.” — AGCanada.com Network

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