Press

Alex McCoy needed a cheat day, writes Idaho Press reporter Erin Banks Rusby. During his training for the Ironman Triathlon, McCoy had avoided red meat and alcohol. But when cheat day cravings rolled in, he found himself with the opportunity to eat ostrich meat, a red meat with consistency similar to grass-fed beef.

"Ostriches represent a red meat that is far superior to anything you can buy," says owner of American Ostrich Farms Alexander McCoy.

"In a few years time, 2 years to 15 years, you're going to see ostrich everywhere, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when."

I spoke with the owner of American Ostrich Farms Alexander McCoy, who says he discovered ostrich meat while living in South Africa, training for Ironman.

"I got sick of eating chicken, chicken eggs, chicken breast. and i found ostrich, its 97 percent fat free, lower in cholesterol, higher in iron, extremely healthy for you but it tastes just like beef," says McCoy.

...at least that’s what Alexander McCoy has dedicated his life to making happen!  McCoy is a former finance guy who turned ostrich farmer after training for an Ironman competition.

McCoy: “I was in South Africa, and I found this 97 percent fat-free red meat, and I pretty much just started eating it daily.”

Ostriches are the world’s largest birds. But their meat does not taste like chicken. Instead, it resembles beef in taste, color and texture. So it could be a way for Americans to eat burgers and steaks without doing as much harm to their own health or the environment.

Strutting around the arid farmland of rural Kuna, the McCoys’ ostrich flock moves with prehistoric swagger, bobbing their heads and shaking their feathers as they size up visitors approaching their enclosure.

“A lot of people liken them to dinosaurs. In a way, they are kind of a relic,” said Boyd Clark, vice president of the board of directors for the American Ostrich Association, a national trade organization for the US ostrich industry. Ostriches’ lineage can be traced back 20 million years to the Miocene period, an age when many modern animal families began to appear.