After Justin Owens' grandfather, Gary Owens, died in 2021, he took some time to reflect on their shared venture of raising and selling Piedmontese cattle, an Italian breed that is protein-packed and nutrient-dense, yet virtually unknown to most people. 

Ultimately, it was all about the beef and its benefits both to ranchers and the public, says Owens, who raises the cattle at his 200-acre Valleyford property, Owens Farms LLC, at 7205 E. Palouse Highway. 

“When I retire, I want Piedmontese cattle to be readily available across the country,” Owens says. “Because it’s heart healthy. It’s the best option for people to eat. It’s the best option for ranchers to raise. … It’s just the most cost-effective and it’s the highest quality.” 

To that end, in September, Owens and his wife, Lauren, launched Manzo Piedmontese LLC, a private beef label that sells the full-bred Italian beef for $100 a pound and has already garnered interest from celebrities, professional athletes, and their personal chefs. Some of those clients include the Kansas City Chiefs, which prepared the Piedmontese beef for the team's Christmas dinner, the Denver Broncos, and NBA great LeBron James.

By comparison, according to Beef Magazine, the retail price of beef reached a record $7.89 per pound in the first quarter of 2024.

The beef is especially alluring to high-performance athletes, Owens says. It’s more tender than the highest-rated Wagyu products, has naturally elevated levels of omega-3, -6, and -9 fatty acids, has high levels of good cholesterol and low levels of bad cholesterol, and has less fat than regular beef, Owens says. In addition, the cattle require less feed and produce more lean muscle. Moreover, because of its small muscle fibers and low level of collagen and fat, Piedmontese beef cooks 50% faster than regular beef. 

“It’s great for athletes; high-performance fuel,” Owens says. “It’s tender, it’s flavorful. A lot of people have a heavy feeling when they eat beef because it’s fatty and just sits like a weight. With (Piedmontese) you feel light. It burns the cleanest fuel possible.”

The cattle also have an exclusive quality.  Whereas there are about 28.2 million beef cattle in the U.S., most of them Angus, there are only about 6,000 Piedmontese cattle in the U.S. and Canada combined. In Italy, where the cattle are originally from, there are about 300,000 for the whole country. The cattle being raised at Owens Farms and sold through Manzo Piedmontese is the only full-bred Piedmontese herd in North America, Owens contends. 

Manzo Piedmontese is taking reservations for the fall harvest in which new and return clients can purchase a half or whole carcass, with a potential value of $25,000 to $50,000. 

While still within its first year, Owens anticipates Manzo Piedmontese will be profitable by year-end. Revenue is projected to exceed $100,000, depending on orders leading up to harvest in the fall. He says sales of harvestable cattle have the potential to reach $3 million, although he doubts the brand is known well enough to achieve that level of sales this year.

Owens and his wife are Manzo Piedmontese's only employees, yet they also confer with industry consultants including a meat scientist and an animal nutritionist. Owens Farms is operated by Owens and ranch manager Brian Lee. 

Piedmontese cattle is a breed from the Piedmont region of northwest Italy, and its origins trace back 25,000 years to the area that is now Pakistan, Owens says. A herd of white cattle migrated west until they hit the foothills of the Alps mountain range, where they began crossbreeding with the local cattle. It was later discovered that Piedmontese cattle have a genetic trait that causes everything they consume to go toward lean muscle, Owens says. 

One of the main reasons the breed is virtually unknown in the U.S. is because the Italian government had an embargo on the livestock until 1979. Additionally, around that time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture revamped the way it graded beef to focus almost exclusively on the amount of marbling, or fat, in a cut of meat, which would render each cut softer to eat. Piedmontese beef, however, has low connective tissue and fat content, making it faster to cook and tender to eat, yet outside of the benchmark set by the USDA. 

Owens' grandfather, a farmer with a racehorse stud farm and businessman who owned several restaurants in Spokane and the Pacific Northwest, was one of the first ranchers to introduce the breed to North America in the mid-1980s. The bovine’s attributes piqued his interest, so he purchased 200 cattle and Piedmontese embryos–each over $8,000–and began to grow his own herd. 

“Once he saw the calves and tried the meat, he fell in love with it,” Owens says. “He started going up to Canada and buying cows and embryos, and the rest is history.” 

A longtime racehorse breeder, Owen’s grandfather understood and valued pedigree and genetics, and refined his Piedmontese herd through the 1990s. In 2000, he founded the North American Piedmontese Association for cattle breeders in Canada and the U.S., a registry of DNA and parentage, Owens says. 

                                                                                                                                                                                 - Karina Elias
Justin Owens inherited Owens Farms and his passion for breeding cattle from his grandfather, Gary Owens. 
 

Although Owens grew up on the farm with his grandfather, an alfalfa allergy and penchant for business deterred him from wanting to get involved in cattle farming. He attended Eastern Washington University where he studied business management and economics.

Then, while going to school and helping out on the farm, Owens began to enjoy working with the herd. When his grandfather sold a Piedmontese bull for $10,000, he was further intrigued by the breed. In comparison, according to Ranchr, a cattle records management application, beef cows bred for meat production cost between $2,500 and $3,000. 

According to the United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, cattle production is expected to represent 17% of the $520 billion cash receipts for agricultural commodities in 2023. In 2022, the United States was ranked as the second largest beef exporter behind Brazil. In Washington state, cattle and calves represent the fifth-most valuable agricultural commodity and contribute over $2.17 billion to the state's economy each year, the USDA states. According to the Washington state Beef Commission, there are over 9,000 cattle farms and ranches in the Evergreen State, with an average herd size of 40 cattle. 

Realizing the potential value of raising a full-bred Piedmontese herd, in 2013 Owens began to build a herd from the frozen embryos his grandfather had tucked away. 

“We built the herd up. We were selling bulls and cows and getting other people started,” Owens says. “But he passed away in 2021, and it was a lot of reflection, do I want to keep doing this without you?” 

Owens says he noticed there was no movement in creating a full-bred Piedmontese beef product. Before launching his own label, he approached a large agricultural company to create one. Although the company was impressed, it required a minimum of 10,000 cattle to start a new beef label, Owens says. He and the other ranchers he’s helped over the years could only muster about 2,500. 

Owens also had a lot of requests from people who wanted to purchase a steer or heifer from him so they could feed it and grow it at home themselves, customizing the feed. Owens realized there was an entire demographic of people who would pay for a customized beef product, and Manzo Piedmontese was born. His goal is to have years of reservations for cattle and work closely with individuals to customize their eventual harvest. 

Owens feeds his cattle a mixture of locally sourced peas, garbanzo beans, lentils, wheat, barley, and pressed wine grapes. He’s also thinking about further customizing the beef through the feed he gives them so that clients can choose from a potential menu. Some other feed he wants to source better to add to the herd’s diet includes apples, carrots, hazelnuts, and walnuts. 

“That was my rubric for making the best possible meat,” Owens says. “We want the best eating experience.” 

Owens will cap production at 100 cattle per year so that he can focus on the health of the animals and the quality of the feed and compete with other exports. Currently, he has 65 cattle and recently had 60 of them artificially inseminated. A cow's gestation period is about nine months. 

He also will continue helping others set up their own farms. While he wants the whole country to make the switch to Piedmontese beef, he doesn’t want to be the sole producer and doesn’t see it as competition. A herd he helped start in Hawaii, for example, will be raised on local feed such as macadamia nuts, cocoa, papaya, avocado, and other staples specific to the island and its culture. The Hawaiian farmer only wants to sell the beef on the island, meaning if you want to taste it, you’d have to fly there, he says. 

“I want to be that flagship product; I want it to get people excited,” Owens says. “I don’t look at it like I need to have this monopoly. There is so much room for growth and supporting each other. I’m transparent to all the breeders that call up because so much is specific to us.”  

During his grandfather’s lifetime, Owens didn’t think it would be possible to create a full-bred Piedmontese private beef label. Owens says his grandfather would be amused to learn about the people he has worked with and sold beef to. 

“I think he would be really tickled,” Owens says. “He bred horses for politicians and movie stars. … It wouldn’t be outside the realm of what he could conceive. I think he’d get a kick out of the teams we’ve sold to and people we’ve talked to.”