Good Shepherd Conservancy Launch

Good Shepherd Conservancy Launch

We started Heritage Foods to promote alternatives to industrial agriculture with an emphasis on heritage breeds and traditional farming practices. Since 2004, we've worked with Frank Reese to sell thousands of heritage turkeys every Thanksgiving. "The last remaining breeder of Standardbred poultry," is one of our marketing tag lines, and as great of a blurb as it is, that's not necessarily the fate we want for these birds.

Introducing the Good Shepherd Conservancy, founded by the one and only Frank Reese, Jay Greenberg — an aspiring Standardbred poultry farmer, educator, and a notable humane butchery expert —and Patrick Martins — Heritage Foods founder. The Good Shepherd Conservancy is a non-profit organization dedicated to safeguarding and promoting biodiversity through the use of Standardbred poultry and historical purebred lines of livestock for agricultural use. Their goal is to re-shape the poultry industry, pushing it away from the sad, industrial nature of it as it stands today.

Read on for Executive Director Jay Greenberg's introductory letter: 

My name is Jay Greenberg and on behalf of Frank Reese and the board of The Good Shepherd Conservancy, I want to welcome you to our email newsletter. We're very happy to have you on our team.

Over seven years ago, I was on a quest to find the healthiest and most humane meat in the world. I spent years studying butchery and agriculture, searching for a truly natural product. 

When I discovered Frank and came to understand his mission, I realized that his cause was the most important one that I had ever encountered, and I quickly decided to dedicate my life to providing America's farms with an alternative to factory farm poultry. 

There are over nine billion unhealthy, suffering, Cornish cross broilers and industrial hybrid turkeys being raised in the United States each year. The immunocompromised and near identical genetics of all these birds is controlled by two large multinational corporations.

Boiler Chicken Growth Rates

Remarkably, Frank Reese and the Standardbred birds on his small Kansas farm are providing nothing less than the country's only commercial alternative to the factory farm poultry system. We've created The Good Shepherd Conservancy to ensure that this alternative survives and grows.

I'm humbled to be leading the Conservancy's efforts as its Executive Director and am very excited to share news of our progress. We have a new website and we're breaking ground on The Good Shepherd Conservation Center, with the goal of re-populating American farms with the 10 most important and historic market breeds of poultry in the United States. 

This dynamic and revolutionary educational hub will bring the next generation of farmers to study directly under Frank Reese, the country's last remaining expert in Standardbred breeding and production, in order to bring back his world renowned genetics to their farms in local communities throughout the country. 

The Conservation Center will serve the general public, who will interact with our live animals, learn about the importance of biodiversity, and explore the history of poultry and fast food. The Center will also house agrotourism rooms, a professional kitchen, a working hatchery, a library, and much more.

Your valued support is what enables us to undertake this important work. Please consider donating to support our mission. Stay tuned for more exciting news, and please feel free to reach out. We’d love to hear from you.
Sincerely, 
Jay Greenberg
Executive Director
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