The turkey’s going to prison, but state Sen. Ken Kester wants to know, “Where’s the beef?”
The Republican senator from southeastern Colorado is boiling over the State Department of Corrections’ decision to largely replace beef in inmates’ diets with turkey, including in tacos, sloppy joes and spaghetti sauce.
That amounts to 170,000 pounds of beef each quarter that no longer will be purchased, mostly from Colorado ranchers, he said.
Many of those ranchers are Kester’s constituents.
“I want to know, where’s the beef,” Kester said. “I have a lot of Colorado beef producers who are hot as all get-out in my district. They want answers and so do I.”
Prisons spokeswoman Patti Micciche said the prison removed bulk ground beef from menus because of religious lawsuits and because the turkey is leaner. She said prisoners still get stew beef and even top round.
Kester called the explanations conflicting and confusing.
“That’s just not good for the economy of southern Colorado,” Kester said. “We’ve taken a lot of hits down here. We lost a bus plant, we lost a pickle factory, we’re trying to recover from the drought … and here we hit them with this.”
Kester senses some irony in that he has more cattle in his district than he has people, but he also has more prisons in his district that in any other senate district in the country.
Kester sent a letter, dated Monday, to Joe Ortiz, executive director of the corrections department, asking him to reconsider replacing beef with turkey.
“The Colorado Department of Corrections is a large market for Colorado beef products,” Kester said in the letter. “Within Senate District No. 2 beef production is a large piece of the economic viability, and this district cannot sustain another economic loss.”
He asked Ortiz to discuss alternatives with him.
