DAVID SWANN / DSWANN@STARBULLETIN.COM

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By Betty Shimabukuro
betty@starbulletin.com

Ah, the smell of raw meat in the morning.

For some people -- off-putting. But for others, it's the scent of promise. The promise of grilled steaks and pastrami sandwiches, of warm bowls of oxtail soup.

Are you a master of beef stew? Entries are being sought for the Paniolo Beef Stew Cook-Off, to be held at 10:30 a.m. March 22 at the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center. Recipes must be submitted by 5 p.m. Friday. Ten finalists will be chosen to make their pots of stew in competition. Top three winners will each receive 50 pounds of island beef, plus gift certificates to the shopping center. Entry forms are available at the center's management office and visitor's center and or online at www.krater96.com. From Steer to Steak A demonstration of how beef is processed into retail cuts. Class time: 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Tuesday Place: H&W Foods (Palama Meat Co.), Kapolei Cost: $44 Call: 734-9211 Paniolo Days Featuring livestock displays, saddle exhibit, Paniolo General Store, Paniolo Hall of Fame Exhibit When: Saturday through March 22 Place: Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center Showcase event: Daylong festival March 22 with cooking demonstrations, beef-stew cook-off, entertainment Call: 922-0588

At Palama Meat Co. in Kapolei, that fragrance of fresh-cut beef is simply the smell of the job at hand.

White-clad workers wielding knives and saws are scattered through a cavernous, well-chilled, very shiny processing plant, turning huge chunks of meat au naturel into the familiar stuff of deli counters and grocery shrink-packs.

Oxtails, looking like 2-foot, fleshy commas, tips curved slightly away from their stiff stalks, are nestled together in frozen rectangular blocks, which workers are dismembering. They hammer the blocks to separate the tails and use the slim blades of a table saw to trim the fat. Then the long tails are cut into familiar-looking chunks for packing.

Not many people have cause to see their meals at this stage of the process, but if you're going to be a carnivore, it's useful understanding what you're eating and from whence it came.

To that end, March is a month of educational opportunities.

First, on Tuesday, Kapiolani Community College is offering a class at Palama Meat called "From Steer to Steak," to teach how a side of beef is divided into various cuts. A meatcutter will serve as "a tour guide through the carcass," as Palama President Joseph Azzaro puts it.

Second, from Saturday through March 22, the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center hosts Paniolo Days, a showcase for Hawaii's growing beef industry. The final day will be a festival of cooking demonstrations and entertainment.

Ranches on all the islands will play a major part in the celebration.

Perhaps we should start at that front end of the process and come back to the meat-packing plant later.

First, some numbers: 90 percent of the beef consumed in Hawaii is imported from the mainland. At the same time, 40,000 to 60,000 head of locally grown cattle are being shipping to the mainland for slaughter and sale.

Doesn't sound too efficient and it's a balance that the Hawaii Cattlemen's Association is trying to shift.

Cal "Doc" Lum -- owner of North Shore Cattle Co. and chairman of the Paniolo Days event for the Hawaii Cattlemen's Association -- says the local beef industry changed in the 1980s when the price of grain skyrocketed and a major Oahu feedlot shut down.

"The cost of producing beef in Hawaii got prohibitive, primarily because of importing feed," Lum says.

Local ranchers continued to raise cattle, but sent their animals at 7 to 10 months of age to mainland feedlots.

The answer, Lum says, is living without grain. That way cattle can be raised to market weight in the islands and the meat sold locally.

The market is certainly here. Americans on average consume 65 to 70 pounds of beef per person each year. In Hawaii that average is 100 pounds, he says. "We're a meat-eating state."

The chance to grab back that market share developed when former sugar lands became available at lower cost, Lum says. "That kind of opened the door. Right now there's groups on Kauai, Maui, here and the Big Island that are into pasture-raised or grass-fed beef."

The beef is considered healthier, raised without hormones and antibiotics, in many cases with the animals allowed to roam instead of being fattened up in pens.

It takes longer to raise cattle this way, and costs more, but for many local ranchers, it's pretty much the only way.

"Everybody's jumping in the water, trying to stay afloat right now," Lum says. "If we all did it together, we can do more than each of us by ourselves."

On Maui, five ranches have joined forces to develop ways of raising and marketing their beef without dependence on ships, either to bring them grain or take away their cattle.

"The cost of shipping constantly goes up, never goes down," says Greg Friel of Haleakala Ranch. "We figured at that rate, if we keep doing what we're doing, it's a matter of time before we can't do what we're doing."

The group raises its cattle in feedlots, using byproducts of the local sugar and pineapple industries -- pine tops and sugar cane roughage, supplemented with some grain.

The result, Friel says, is consistent growth even in times of drought. "These animals have to be gaining weight every day of their life."

The Maui ranchers are still shipping most of their cattle out, but Friel says they hope to change that as they find more local outlets for their meat. Now they're in such eclectic markets as Longs Drug Stores and Kula True Value Hardware. They're also selling to a few schools and are hoping to get into the public schools soon.

The key is finding markets for the lesser cuts, the stew and burger meat, he says. "You can sell steaks with your eyes closed. It's a case of moving the chuck and the rounds."

Lum sells his North Shore Cattle Co. beef mostly to restaurants, although some is available at the North Shore Farmer's Market, and online at www.beefhawaii.com. Big Island beef is more widely available and showing up in supermarkets under such labels as Kamuela Pride.

The aim, Friel says, is to keep all locally grown beef in the state. "That's the optimum five-year goal."

IF YOU THINK of the local ranch industry as a microcosm of the human food chain, the big picture is represented in Palama Meat Co. and its partner operation, the distribution company H&W Foods. They supply hamburger to Wendy's fast-food outlets, deli meats to Subway sandwich shops, and ground meat to Safeway and Foodland supermarkets. They also service the lion's share of local restaurants and hotels.

H&W president Rosalie Azzaro sees the value in allowing people in to take a closer look, so they see meat as more than a pristine cut that arrives in a plastic-wrapped package.

Bringing culinary students and chefs, especially, into the processing plant for a meat-cutting lesson, gives them insight they can't otherwise get. "It's not like in the classroom where you see one instructor and one piece of meat," she says.

"I think if you're a chef it's good for you to see where the meat comes from on the animal, and how it gets from that primal cut to your pot."

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