Robin's Nest from American Humane - Family Values in Farming: A Conversation with Coleman Natural Foods

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

In this episode of Robin’s Nest, Dr. Robin Ganzert speaks with Mel Coleman Jr., Co-Founder of Coleman Natural Foods and a pioneer of humane animal farming practices. Coleman All Natural Meats is a family company that has been Certified™ for several years and has been dedicated to high standards of animal welfare for generations. In this episode, Mel discusses how animal welfare is a priority for consumers when selecting products at the grocery store.In addition to being an American Humane Certified™ farm, Coleman All Natural Meats is also a generous supporter of our Pups4Patriots™ Program and has helped us provided life-saving service dogs to veterans and retired first responders suffering from Post-traumatic Stress (PTS) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).Tune in for an inspiring discussion on the importance of animal welfare on farms and how generous businesses like Coleman All Natural Meats are giving back.

Welcome to Robin's Nest. Many of us feel a deep bond with animals, from the pets we cherish at home to the endangered species in nature. Join us for lively, informative conversations where together we will build a more humane world. Welcome. I'm excited to introduce a true pioneer in humane animal farming practices, Mel Coleman Jr. As the co-founder of Coleman Natural Foods and vice president of Purdue Premium Meat Company, Mel has continued a family legacy that spans nearly 150 years. Under his leadership, Coleman Natural Foods sets the bar for

responsibly raised, crate-free pork without antibiotics. Join me as we dive into Mel's journey, the family traditions that fuel his passion, and the impactful work he's doing to shape a better future for both animals and consumers. Well, we're so glad to have Mel Coleman here with us. This is Mel Coleman Jr., by the way. Not to be confused with Mel Coleman Sr. and almost 150 years of Coleman's with all natural meats. Am I right Mel?

Yeah that's actually you know we started ranching in 1875 so it was a year before Colorado became a state so a lot of generations. It is a lot of generations. You know, we were founded in 1877. So when I think about, you know, the founding of Coleman, I think the founding also of American Humane, because we're right there at the same time. Yeah, well they always try to connect me with the 1875, and I said I'm not quite that old yet. Well, my kids think I've been with American humane since 1877, so you and I are in the same boat, aren't we? Yeah.

Oh, well Mel, it's always great to visit with you. You're one of the superheroes in animal agriculture, and I absolutely am thrilled to have you and welcome you today in Robin's Nest. Are you in Colorado today, by the way? Yeah I am. Actually I'm working out of my home office. Kathy and I moved from downtown Denver in that area, the Denver Metroplex, and we live up in the mountains now so it's a good it's good to get out of the traffic. Yes, yes I'm sure I'm sure and

Denver has grown for sure. Well Mel there's so much that we could talk about from, you know, Coleman All Natural Meats, the incredible legacy and commitment that you and the company has displayed for generations for animal welfare, stellar animal welfare, some of the incredible welfare practices that you've implemented and you've seen implemented, but also importantly, the communication of those to consumers. And I know you've been at the forefront of communicating your humane values to consumers for a long time, and we know how important that is. But before we dive deep, I would love for you to share with those of us in Robin's Nest, a little bit about Coleman's All Natural Meats journey

and what inspires the commitment for five generations to animal welfare. Well, you know, I was raised on a ranch and so my dad and my grandfather had always talked about the importance of treating animals the right way. And it wasn't until after I got out of, or I was in high school, that I began to see that our cattle were a lot more calm and docile than a lot of our neighboring ranches. So it's something that we kind of learned as kids on how to treat animals and how to try to,

you know, it was interesting. My grandfather said one time, you need to, you need to learn to think like a cow if you're dealing with cows, and you need to learn to think like a cow if you're dealing with cows. And you need to learn to think like a horse. Well, what happened is that the way we got into it, that's just the way we ranched. And then the way that we really got into it is in the late 70s, when the cattle markets were really, really low

and interest rates were really high. It was a conversation at dinner one night, and dad said, You know, what I don't know what we're going to do. And my brother, Greg, and his wife, Nancy, were going to the University of Colorado. And she said, You know, there's a lot of people that are looking for livestock that's been raised with no antibiotics, or in the case of cattle growth hormones. And so he said, Oh, that's something I can do. And so what he did is that he saved back some calves, he was going to fight fatten them up. And rather

than being involved in the commodity markets, would try to would just market it to that group of people. And he said, Well, where do these people shop? And Nancy said, well, most of the shop in a natural food store. So he said, oh, great, I'll call it natural beef. Well, the next thing that happened is that he got in big time trouble with the USDA because he was trying to mark his beef natural. And they said, there's no definition for that.

Oh my goodness. So in 79 and 80, yeah, so 79 and 80 worked with the USDA in Washington DC to establish the first definition for natural that had to do with the way that livestock was raised. And that was the original definition. And it only took about... Mel, I didn't know that about your dad,

that he helped to lead that effort to define what's natural with the FD. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. And so what happened was is that it took about a year, a year and a half later and through, I don't know, lobbying efforts with who knows who, but they changed the definition of natural that you could call a product natural if it was minimally processed or contained artificial ingredients. That has nothing to do with the way an animal is raised. So we just, we just had, we then had to just say, you know, this is what we do. This is how we do it. And so, so that in short, it's kind of how it got started.

Amazing, amazing. And you know, I love the fact that you said it's over a dinner table conversation with your family and what are we gonna do next? And a lot of people are today, Americans, consumers are so far removed from the farm that they don't really know what is behind the scenes. And it's a lot of farmers and ranchers

having pivotal conversations, and in this case, driving a whole nother area for consumers to absolutely benefit from a better product. I think it's incredible. Yeah, you know, when I was in school, almost everybody that I met had somebody that was a pretty close relative that was somehow involved in agriculture.

But what you say now is right, because most of our big cities, you know, if you if you look at all the big metropolitan areas, there's a lot of people in those metropolitan areas that really don't have any understanding about where the meats they consume come from.

Or how they're raised or importantly how they're treated. Right. At all. Right. Well, now let's hop a little forward because you touched on some consumer interest and that's antibiotic free and natural farming practices. I know Colman on Natural Meats has maintained a focus on raising animals without antibiotics, without growth

promotants, all of that. Please share with us your family values in creating those incredibly important values in your farming. Well, you know, there was a group of consumers that were concerned about antibiotics that were used, but it was something that we always thought that antibiotics are to treat disease. And we use them in livestock to treat disease, but most people don't know that there's a massive majority of antibiotics that are produced today that go that are mixed into livestock or poultry feeds or water. And what it does is that it's not a growth promotant, but what it does,

it makes the feeding process more efficient. And so we just always believe that that was the wrong use of antibiotics. And so in terms of hormones, hormones are allowed to be used in cattle, but in pork, it's illegal to use growth hormones. So there was growth hormones, both of which what they did is cause the animal

to gain weight, especially at the very end of the feeding process at a greater rate because it's all about dollars and pounds. And we had some, we actually had a, ran over a large acreage. And when I was in high school, maybe it was when I was in college, but what we did is that we had a lot of grass.

And so we had leased out some land and we brought in several thousand head of cattle from a guy that didn't have any feed and he wanted us to run them in the summer. And he had implanted all these cattle with growth hormones and they just didn't have any feed and he wanted us to run them in the summer. And he had implanted all these cattle with growth hormones. And they just didn't act right. They were crazy and hard to deal with. And we thought, man, we never had done that.

But we thought, we're never going to do this. This is just not the right thing to do. Because you saw that impact on those animals. Unbelievable. Yeah. and so from humane animal care sometimes you can mess up the way that animals are really supposed to be raised by what you feed them or in the case of growth hormones or growth hormones what you give to them. And it might make everything more efficient but in the end it's just not the right thing to do.

You bring us right into the next point that I wanted to bring up in our conversation today in Robin's Nest, and that was about welfare practices. What are some examples for our listeners today of unique animal welfare practices that have been implemented for animals that you've raised, and how does American Humane Certification help support those unique practices? Well, what happened is that the commodity markets

on the pork side ended up to where they were using crates. And a crate is about the size, and I've been criticized in the past for this, but I'm gonna go ahead and say it, it's about the size of a coffin. And the animal can't even turn around in there. But but it made it more efficient for the production of needs. And one of the things that Coleman did is we were one of the first ones to

use a crate free program. In other words, give give hogs more space so that they can move around more naturally, they can nurse the piglets, and that kind of thing. And so those standards, it's interesting, Robin, because you were talking about antibiotics and growth hormones. In the 80s, hormones were really a concern, then antibodies became more of a concern. But in some of the research we did within the last year, animal welfare has kind of

floated to the top like cream in a bucket to being important to consumers. So one of the things that we wanted to do is that we felt that third-party certifications, someone that can come in, audit our standards, audit our farms that's a third party, can come in so that what we can do is that we can gain the trust and loyalty of consumers by saying, hey, there's a third party that verifies that what we say we actually do. And that's exactly the point of the American Humane Certification effort is to give consumers those assurances. And you know what I love too is that all of the standards that we talk about today, and

they are technical standards for those folks who aren't familiar with farms and ranches to be able to go on our website and see the standards. They're technical, they're sophisticated, they're related to farms, but they're all transparent. So every standard that we hold, the American Humane Certified Farms and Ranches II, are all available online at our AmericanHumane.org website, which I think is important because that goes a long way in assuring consumers have that trust that those animals are well taken care of. You mentioned that you had done some studies recently

that show that antibiotics, natural, certainly growth promotants, that all used to be the concerns of consumers. And now you say animal welfare is. That's wonderful. Finally. It's, yeah, animal welfare is finally floating to the top. But if you look at when we first started,

I'll use antibiotics as the example. Well, even before that, I'll go to animal welfare. We started working with Temple Grandin, Dr. Temple Grandin, who is probably the most famous person almost worldwide now in terms of animal welfare practices. And before she was even well known in the mid 80s, dad said, I'm going to work with this lady because she knows what to do. We knew what to do on the ranch, but we wanted to make sure that what we were doing when we got into the meat business, that what we were doing at processing plants and also at feedlots where animals are fed,

that we were, and trucked and handled, that we were doing things in the right way. But back to your question about the research, what's happened is that antibiotics, when people started becoming aware about the amount of antibiotics that were used in livestock production, what we started seeing is that we started seeing more and more companies get away from the use of antibiotics. And quite frankly, those companies that have now adopted standards similar to ours in terms of animal welfare practices, we see

even some of the commodity meat companies that are now starting to adopt the kind of practices that actually have animals in their forefront and in their concern. That's incredible. I'm so happy that you've, number one, you've done that research as well, so that you're following the consumer trends and interests. One other thing we wanted to go into, because you touched upon this particularly in your outreach, is consumers are interested, but I know what Coleman All Natural Meats has done extremely well is the whole point of communicating the importance of humane certification to consumers.

What impact have you seen from this commitment from consumers? Well, you know, I think that if you're building a brand, one of the things that you want to do is you want to build a brand, but you also want to earn consumer loyalty. So one of the things that we've done is that we've put a small American humane logo on all of our packaged items so that there's a two thing. One is that here's what we say we're doing, but this is the group that audits and certifies that. And so the combination of those things builds customer loyalty and, in the long run, brand identity.

Very important. And that transparency and education that you're providing, especially by putting the logo on the package, is incredible because you go right from that logo to the website, to the standards. And for those consumers who seek that education, it's all there on the package, which is a great kudos

to the consumers. You know, I think as a side note, if they Google American Humane, or they go onto your website, what they'll also recognize that you're not only involved with livestock on ranches, but everywhere, any animal, whether it's zoos in Hollywood, and all those different things. And I think that part of the reason that we're with American Humane is that it's recognized with a large group of consumers

around the world. Absolutely. It sure is. In fact, I want to share with you too our gratitude for Colbin for your all-natural meats. What you've done for our Pups for Patriots Service Dog Program is a great, a great tribute to paying it forward. I know many of our listeners in Robin's Nest have heard our Service Dog Program, our Pups for Patriots, they've seen some of our veterans and met some of those dogs through these episodes and it's hard

not to fall in love with those families with the veteran and then of course those incredible dogs that provide such great care. But we've really appreciated the partnership that Coleman has brought to us for supporting veterans and that's been terrific to us for supporting veterans. And that's been terrific to see your support of our veteran and service dog program. Well, thank you. You know, one of the things on the ranch, we were always taught to do the right thing. And that kind of parlayed into later on when we got into the business and we started doing

it and sometimes just need to do the right thing, whether people recognize it or not. But Puffs for Patriots program was something that really resonated with me. My uncle was in Iwo Jima. My dad was in the Pacific, my uncle served in Europe. And, and, and to some degree, I was involved, but I didn't end up having to go overseas. But the Puffs for Patriots program really helps a lot of these vets that come back that have really dramatically been affected by some of the things that they experienced. And so, you know, we're a small company, but what we've done is that we're in hopes that this year what we'll do is that we'll reach the million dollar mark.

Well, that's incredible because all of those dollars that you've been so generous in giving to our Pups are Patriots Service Dog Program has actually saved heroes on both ends of the leash. And what I love about U-Mill, about your family's legacy, five generations of an incredible American success story in farming and ranching. And you've demonstrated commitment to animal welfare by inviting us in to be your partner for certification and really proud of that. And then your family and your company took it one step further to support our pups for Patriots and as you said you did it because it was the right thing to do and certainly Coleman All Natural Meats has always stepped up to do the right thing and so I'm grateful you've really helped so many

veterans in need and you've saved lives as a result so thank you very much. You're welcome, you're welcome. I mean it's our veterans gave and all we can do is give back to them. Absolutely. You know there was one pair that you met and I know I received a letter from the daughter of that service member, that veteran, and she writes you know dear Dr Robin, thank you for giving me my daddy back. Then she writes how much she loves the dog, but she really wanted me to know that we, Mel, we gave her her daddy back by sponsoring that service dog for that wounded warrior. So that's pretty powerful.

You know, when we were together, and I don't know if it was last time we were together, Robin, but there were vets that found when they had a dog companion that they could do things that they could never do before. And the one story that really resonated with me is the vet that could not get a driver's license, but when he had a dog with him and that dog was with him he got his license his driver's license. And think about think about his independence now his freedom his ability to be integrated into society it's immeasurable. Yeah exactly. That's incredible. Well I want to our conversations always go a lot of different directions male as they have for all

these years, which is wonderful, but I want to pivot back and I want to ask you, what are you excited about in the future? Excited about for animal welfare, excited about for America's farmers and ranchers, what are you excited about for Coleman all-natural meats? Well, I think one of the things that's exciting to me on the farmer and rancher side is that there's a whole lot of farmers and ranchers that are out there that are basically tied to the commodity markets. And so when farmers and ranchers farmers get involved in our program, what we'll do is that we'll pay them additionally to raise animals to our standards and practices. That allows them to raise animals the way that they believe is the right way to raise

them, and we pay them to do that. And so the second part that really excites me is that when you really look at it, and it doesn't matter whether you're talking about animal antibiotics, growth, promotes or growth hormones or animal welfare, some of the more and more, actually, their competitors are coming into the market. That's a good thing. On one hand, I wish there weren't any competitors, but on the other. But when we now see some of the big commodity companies that are starting to adopt sounder and better animal welfare practices, that that's what's important.

It's, it's not about who are we and what can we do, but it's about how can we impact the change? Even if it's just small, but how can we impact the change in the way animals are treated and raised? That's beautiful. You know, we always talk about having a safe, affordable, and ethical food supply. And of course, America does that best because of our farmers and ranchers. And I certainly love the way that Coleman All Natural Beets has really led the way with

innovation and a commitment to animal welfare, a commitment to the humane treatment and a commitment to doing the right thing. So thank you for what you do. Well, you're welcome. And one of the things Robin that I'd like to include in what you just said, is you talk about meats. I like to talk about value

because what happens is sometimes products, they may be cheap at the market, but by the time you solve all the problems, whether they're environmental problems or the way that animals are treated or the overuse of antibiotics, for example, and some of the problems that that's caused. Our products cost more, but I've even had consumers tell me, but it's a better value. And so we think that we offer one of the best value products that people can get in the supermarket,

and they're supporting doing the right thing. It's beautiful value. So I will add safe, affordable, ethical, and value in my conversations about our food supply. I love that. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Mel, any final thoughts as we close out our session today in Robbins Nest? No, I mean, you know, we're excited to continue being involved in the program. And I know that what our original commitment was, but you know, we're going to make that seven figure number.

We're going to make that million dollar mark. And for us, we're not a big company. So it's something that I'm excited about. And I think that maybe it would be an example for other large companies to get involved with programs that Puffs for Patriots is the one that resonates with me, but other programs that American Humane has that help people and help animals.

That's wonderful. Well, thank you so much. You've been such a great supporter for animals. You've been a great voice for animals and I know that those dinner table conversations you're still having this very day has such an incredible and far wide and reaching impact. So thank you for what you do mail and thanks for joining us in Robins Nest. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Robins Nest. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation and learned more about the work we're doing to protect animals everywhere. Don't forget to stay connected with us

at American Humane. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn at American Humane. And if you're not already subscribed, make sure to follow Robin's Nest so you never miss an episode. Thanks again, and remember, every act of kindness makes a difference. you