But for this to be more than a boutique experiment, Barber said a market needs to be created for it. Small dairy farmers have to be persuaded to graze cattle for about six more months before selling, he said, an additional expense but worth it for the higher yield. Most importantly, he added, the beef should carry a name that builds prestige like Black Angus, Niman Ranch or Snake River Farms.
Tim Joseph, who in 2009 founded Maple Hill Organic, a consortium of more than 100 grass-fed dairy farms in New York, said some farmers have been selling their slaughtered animals to premium beef companies, but most do not. .
Jill Gould, who owns Har-Go Farms with her husband, Stephen Gould, a fourth-generation farmer, sells her Butter Meat beef online and in a store near the farm. At Gage & Tollner, a restaurant in Brooklyn, New York, executive chef Sydne Gooden has been buying as much Butter Meat as she can for about a year and using the offcuts to make burgers at lunchtime.
“The flavor, with aged fat, is very good,” he said. Occasionally, he offers rib-eye as a dinner special.
Last month at Blue Hill, in a blind tasting of four select cuts of steaks from grain- and grass-fed and dairy cows, the clear winner in terms of flavor, richness, complexity and tenderness was beef from “the ladies,” as Mr. Barber calls the dairy cows.