Happy livestock equals happy customers

Date: 08/05/03

Karen Carstens talks to Jack O'Shea - a Brussels butcher who provides high-quality meat from animals reared in fields, not factories GOOD meat comes from good animals - happy cows, chickens and pigs that spend their lives not in cramped cages on factory farms, but roaming in lush fields or spacious enclosures.

This is a familiar refrain from Europe's top chefs; it is also the mantra of Irishman Cathal (Jack) O'Shea, butcher for Brussels' EU quarter.

"I would never touch animals that have been fed in pens indoors, that have been pumped full of products," says O'Shea, who opened his Rue Franklin shop in 1998.

"Some [factory-farmed] chickens are even fed anti-depressants."

O'Shea launched his business in Brussels because he "wanted to be in a market where people appreciate good food".

Among his customers are two well-known compatriots, Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne and Commission Secretary-General David O'Sullivan. Commission Vice-President Neil Kinnock is another high-profile client.

Hundreds of other staff from the European Commission, Parliament and Council of Ministers, all within easy walking distance of his store, also queue up for his prime cuts. The ebullient and affable O'Shea could list many more familiar names among the Brussels bigwigs who buy beef, sausages or lamb chops at his cosy corner shop, but is loathe to do so "out of respect for their privacy".

He is, however, willing to comment on their preferences based on nationality. "We get a beautiful mix of people in here," he beams.

The Germans and Danes, for example, are pleased as punch to find traditionally cut "pork with the rind on" just like they would get back home.

Popular with the British and Irish are lamb and sausages, the latter made fresh daily on the premises.

The Italians and the Spaniards like their beef thinly sliced, so they can prepare their steaks à la minute. The Americans, by contrast, want "doorstep steaks" - O'Shea recently supplied a group of US Marines with an order of such huge slabs for a barbecue.

And the French, well, they just want the best of everything. "It's wonderful how food is a celebration in France!" O'Shea exclaims.

But nationality, rank or tastes aside "we treat everyone the same", he says, adding that he can see some of the EU's top dogs visibly relax as soon as they step through his door, not to mention have a little fun while selecting their meats.

"Being a politician is a stressful job, and they must have people doing things for them all the time," he muses.

"So it's nice that they're doing something on their own; it's nice for them when they come into the shop and make their purchase."

But the boyishly blond O'Shea is less enthusiastic about "bad" meat: "There's an awful lot of meat circulating in Europe, and people have a right to know where it's from."

All of O'Shea's beef is exclusively grass-fed and comes from a cooperative of some 70 farmers based in his native Tipperary, Ireland's largest inland county.

"Our beef is a deep, ruby-red," he says, explaining that the meat of animals which do not roam in the fields is a much lighter colour.

While his lamb and pork is also primarily from Ireland, his chicken comes from France. Like French wine, all his "Bresse" poultry bears the government's famous appellation controllée seal of approval. He stopped importing chicken from Ireland when it came to light that poultry produced in Thailand, "pumped full of pork protein" to yield plumper breast meat, was discovered to have been relabelled as Irish chicken and placed on Dublin supermarket shelves.

"After I heard that story, I stuck to the Bresse chicken," says O'Shea, adding that "there's a lot of that chicken here on the market in Brussels, most of it supplied to restaurants - it's despicable.

"It costs a lot of money to produce food properly," he explains. "It takes many more months to bring an animal to fruition.

"Our chicken breasts are not as fat, but they have a totally different flavour because they're properly fed and happy animals."

As for the bird flu epidemic that has swept the Netherlands and Belgium, O'Shea says it is no surprise given the cramped conditions that the caged animals are kept in.

"If they're cooped up like that and one of them gets sick, it's only natural that the flu will spread like wildfire.

"I think that the whole poultry industry has to be shaken up because chicken doesn't taste like chicken anymore.

"If you tasted one of our chickens, you'd never go back to that stuff," he adds.

While we are talking, an Irish Commission staffer drops in for some fresh cuts of meat for her family ahead of the Labour Day holiday.

She says she has shopped at O'Shea's since it opened. "Belgian beef is disgusting," she sniffed. "I wouldn't buy my beef anywhere else."

At the same time, O'Shea sawed away at a carcass that suddenly appeared from a back room.

"There are very few shops left these days you go to where meat is actually cut in front of you," he says with visible pride.

O'Shea is celebrating his shop's fifth anniversary later this month with a big outdoor barbecue for his customers "to say thank you".

Interview with Jack O'Shea, a Brussels butcher who provides high-quality meat from animals reared in fields, not factories.