Anyone for Ostrich? : Market for Exotic Poultry May Soar

One African myth holds that the ostrich lost its ability to fly when the gods punished the bird for showing man how to make fire.

Then there’s the American myth that the bird sticks its head in the sand to avoid danger.

But this much is true: The first store in the United States devoted to selling pricey ostrich meat to the public is now open in Torrance.

Banking on the meat’s beefy taste, entrepreneur Howard Freiberg has opened a shrine to the wonders of the flightless bird. Red and black feather boas hang from glass shelves filled with painted and jeweled ostrich eggs, ostrich-feather dusters and plume pens. Ostrich leather boots and sneakers sell for about $900; the walls hold detailed charts of the bird’s 42-day gestation period. A stuffed ostrich stands amid mannequins that sport designer ostrich feather jackets and leather skirts.

And, of course, there is the refrigerator filled with ostrich steaks, roast and hamburger.

“Ostrich meat is the wave of the future,” said Freiberg, owner of Ostrich Farms Ltd. “People have been looking for a healthy alternative to beef and it’s here.”

Ostrich has the taste of beef at half the calories--and quadruple the price. The bird’s meat sells for $19.95 a pound.

The 800-square-foot showroom, on the second floor of an office building on Carson Street, is Freiberg’s brainchild. Unlike most ranchers who are raising breeding pairs, which lay nearly 50 eggs per year and sell for up to $25,000, Freiberg has jumped ahead of the pack by introducing the meat and products to the public. The bird still captures a higher profit when its chicks are sold for breeding purposes, which keeps many farmers from venturing into the commercial end of the business.

But Freiberg has established a client base that includes about 30 walk-ins per week and more than 75 restaurants, including Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and Barnabey’s Hotel in Manhattan Beach. Should ostrich become a key player in the $100-million annual meat industry, Freiberg said he expects to have the inside track.

“We need to start introducing the meat to the public now,” Freiberg said. “We can’t wait until we have enough birds and then assume that everyone’s going to start buying the meat if they’ve never heard of it.”

Before Ostrich Farms, the meat was primarily available through mail-order, at select restaurants or through a slaughterhouse, said Jan Gary, a spokeswoman at the American Ostrich Assn. in Fort Worth.

“In the last year the industry has really kicked off,” said Gary, who is editor of the trade organization’s monthly magazine, American Ostrich. “We’re being very well received in many restaurants, but we’re working on building more supply and demand to develop a lucrative niche market.”

At establishments such as the Beverly Hills Hotel, patrons cannot get enough ostrich, which is served as a special on weekends with a date-nut crust and sun-dried cranberry sauce. The kitchen runs out of the $35 entree every night it is served. The dish is so popular at the Polo Grill and Polo Lounge that Chef Jim Perillo said he is adding an ostrich dish to the fall menu and doubling his meat order from 10 to 20 pounds per week.

“If they’ve never had it, they order it because they’re intrigued,” Perillo said. “But once they’ve tasted it and learned about the health benefits, they continue to reorder it.”

The industry has received the support of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration through a Heart Smart endorsement that labels the food as a healthy choice because it meets low fat, low calorie and low cholesterol guidelines.

UCLA catering manager Raoul Segura sampled the meat at a recent food convention and purchased 10 pounds to see what he could cook up. He is hoping to use the ostrich at functions for his organization, the Associated Students of UCLA.

“Weight-conscious, calorie-conscious people are sick of chicken,” Segura said. “This meat fits in with the health-conscious ‘90s, and I think most people will enjoy it.”

But this health conscious era has seen several alternative meats that were touted as the next beef but never gave cattle much competition. Buffalo and venison had the spotlight in the early 1990s because they too were lower in fat and calories than beef, but neither meat got much further than upscale restaurant menus because they were too costly, said Janet Riley, a spokeswoman at the American Meat Institute in Arlington, Va. Some officials in the meat industry believe that ostrich will never fly, for much the same reason.

“I don’t know if there is any place where people routinely eat ostrich,” said Craig Morris, a spokesman at the meat institute, which represents meat and poultry packers and processors. “It’s popular in Europe, but it’s not a national food like squid is in Japan.”

Americans want low-fat foods, he said, but the high price might restrict the bird’s popularity.

The U.S. industry is less than 10 years old, but the ostrich has been raised commercially for more than 100 years in its native Africa. Originally, the feathers were the main stock in trade because they were widely used in plume pens, dusters, ladies’ hats and costumes.

By 1987, nearly 400 ranches in the United States were raising ostriches; at that point a group of entrepreneurs banded together to form the American Ostrich Assn. to get the industry off the ground. Now there are 7,000 farms in the United States with about 200,000 ostriches. California has nearly 500 ranches.

Each bird yields 75 to 90 pounds of meat, 12 to 14 square feet of leather and almost four pounds of feathers. At the 12-month processing age the full-size fowl weighs nearly 350 pounds, stands eight feet tall and is worth about $1,000. Its cheap alfalfa-pellet diet helps keep the cost of raising the bird at about $460, according to the American Ostrich Assn.

High profitability was one of the things that initially drew Freiberg to the ostrich. He was in the real estate business when he seized an opportunity to enter the industry three years ago.

He set up farms in Modesto, Hemet, Santa Ynez and Louisiana and waited for the chicks to hatch. After nearly 2 1/2 years of raising birds and learning the business, Freiberg sent them to the slaughterhouse, where the aggressive fowl, which is capable of running 45 m.p.h. and killing with a swift kick, is gassed for processing. Freiberg began selling ostrich meat via mail-order in April and opened the retail store in July.

“Ostrich meat is giving the person who loves steak, but can’t eat it because of health reasons, the opportunity to eat red meat again,” Freiberg said.

Freiberg is so convinced that Americans will love his product that he went to the Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona every day to give meat samples. There, he handed out samples of ostrich jerky, Cajun roast and information packets.

When Doug and Nora Sapper sampled the jerky, the Dallas couple gave Freiberg the thumbs-up sign. Doug Sapper said he and his wife lived in South Africa for a few years but never tried the meat while they were there.

“We saw them running around in the wild,” Sapper said, “but never got around to trying it.”