Jan. 14, 2003 - Bob and Susan Woodall would like to sell a cow to an Atlanta restaurant. Not even a whole cow, just half a cow --- a side of the best grass-fed Georgia beef money can buy. 

The Woodalls raise their cattle naturally at Fort Creek Farm in Sparta, about two hours east of downtown Atlanta. The animals graze on fresh pasture --- as their brethren do in most of the world outside the United States --- rather than fatten up on corn and soybeans in feedlots. When their time comes, they are slaughtered under USDA inspection at the University of Georgia Meat Science and Technology Center in Athens. Their meat is aged for at least two weeks to enhance its flavor and tenderness, cut to the buyer's specs and then blast-frozen. 

The Woodalls can list the reasons Atlanta's chefs should jump at the opportunity to serve their beef. Here are a few: 

It's cheap: Only $3.15 per pound. 

It's healthy --- very healthy: Grass-fed beef is as low in saturated fat and cholesterol as white-meat chicken. It's high in cancer-fighting omega-3 fatty acids. The cattle receive no growth hormones and few antibiotics. And new studies are showing that grain-fed beef is much more likely to harbor the E. coli bacteria than grass-fed. 

It's environmentally responsible: The Woodalls manage their pastures to enhance the local wildlife habitat and improve the quality of stream water. 

And it's supposedly the next big thing: Grass-fed beef has shown up on the menus of many forward-thinking menus in San Francisco, New York and elsewhere. At Craftsteak in Las Vegas, star chef Tom Colicchio serves grass-fed beef from small family farms throughout the country, Hawaii included. In fact, "grass-fed" is shaping up to be the new hyphenated buzzword --- like yesteryear's "free-range." 

But the Woodalls have had no luck breaking into the restaurant scene. One problem is that few restaurants are willing to commit to buying 200 pounds of frozen meat. Yet another, deeper problem is that American chefs don't seem to like it as well. 

"It has very little fat, so it's not as tender and juicy," says Guenter Seeger of Seeger's. "A beef without fat doesn't give you the same quality. The fat is really what gives you the flavor." 

Gerry Klaskala of Aria agrees. He conducted a blind taste test of two pan-roasted steaks --- one from a cow raised on pasture in the South American Pampas, the other on corn in a Midwestern feedlot. "The grass-fed was tasty, but it really didn't match up to the flavor of the corn-fed," says Klaskala. 

The hype around grass-fed beef began in the late 1990s when Argentina, one of the world's top beef producers, began to make a play for the American market. Argentine beef was banned following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in mid-2001, but other grass-fed-beef-producing countries picked up the slack --- notably Australia and New Zealand. 

Bill Demmond of Inland Seafood --- the city's main supplier of both Australian and New Zealand beef --- estimates that he sells 3,000 combined pounds in Atlanta per week. That sounds like a lot of meat, but figure that one Burger King branch probably Whoppers its way through that much in a week without any problem. 

And even if chefs --- such as New Zealander Nik Mavromatis of Meritage restaurant --- prefer the flavor of grass-fed beef, they can have a hard time convincing their customers. "I like the flavor better," says Mavromatis, "because it's what I grew up with. But I was having problems with customers wanting it well done. It doesn't seem to hold up as well without the hormone treatment and the extra fat content of the American beef." 

Dan Krinsky of Tierra continues to use grass-fed beef for his South American specialties. "I think it has a cleaner taste," says Krinsky. "I don't get an aftertaste of fat. It's more crisp --- not as buttery, but it tastes more the way beef should." (Of course, it's worth noting that the current preparation involves a jalapeno-onion cream sauce that handily makes up for the fat deficit.) 

On the other hand, Jorge Ongaratto of Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian steakhouse, has become a convert to grain-fed. Ongaratto serves grain-fed Certified Angus Beef at his four stateside restaurants and grass-fed beef from the Pampas at his three restaurants in Brazil. But if the cost weren't prohibitive, he'd sell American beef in Brazil. 

"I think the taste of the beef in Brazil is too strong. It's more wild," says Ongaratto. "And I think that 90 percent of the Brazilians who visit my restaurants in the United States say the quality here is better." 

Meanwhile, Klaskala of Aria has been experimenting with grain-fed Kobe beef --- a product so marbled with fat that the meat appears to be embedded with white pellets. "When you run your hands over the meat," enthuses Klaskala, "it feels silky, more like butter than beef fat. And when you cook it --- aah --- it has this incredible melting quality!" 

Proponents of grass-fed beef are putting up a good fight, but it looks like they're up against a sumo wrestler. 

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(c) 2003, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.