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A Brooklyn gourmet grocer is serving up a line of bull to its customers — claiming its meat is “all natural” and “antibiotic free” when it isn’t always, a New York beef supplier told The Post.
Butchers at meat mecca Union Market — which has two stores in Park Slope, one in Cobble Hill and another slated to open this fall in Manhattan — supplement their high-end inventory with run-of-the-mill “commodity meat,” according to the source, who is a supplier to the chain.
“Nearly every week, the store butchers call to order beef or pork, and it’s not natural, or antibiotic- or hormone-free. I would bet they are not telling the customers that,” said the butcher, who asked that his name be withheld.
Invoices obtained by The Post show that, in recent weeks, Union Market bought flank steak, skirt steak, top butt, knuckles, top round, pork butt, pork breakfast sausage and pork casings for making sausage from the supplier. None of it meets the chain’s all-natural, hormone-free claims, the source said.
Union Market co-owner Marko Lalic disputed the allegations, calling them “absolutely outrageous.”
He said he has started an internal investigation into the source’s claims.
“It’s very alarming. This is of grave concern to us. There is no truth to it whatsoever,” said Lalic, whose store Web site claims that “all our fresh meat and poultry are humanely raised, antibiotic and growth-hormone free.”
“This is contrary to everything we stand for. We know what’s right and what’s wrong,” he said.
Lilac said all Union Market orders are placed through a central purchasing department — and not through individual store butchers.
The fresh meat and pork is all-natural, and its steaks are USDA prime.
“Everything we buy is carefully and thoroughly checked before we bring the meat into our stores,” Lilac said. On rare occasions when suppliers don’t have a particular product in stock, he said, the stores might make a substitution with another product that meets its standards.
“Our policy is to inform the customer through signage on a day-to-day basis if that is the case,” he noted.
But the source insisted that Union Market butchers routinely place individual orders with him when their primary supply runs low.
“They’ll order peeled knuckle or top butt, which can be used in ground beef. It’s a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It’s filler.”
“Some of the stuff they order is the cheapest of the cheap — what a diner would serve,” he said.
“It’s not as if they order one thing and are sent another. They know exactly what they’re ordering and buying, and it’s there on the invoice,” said the source, who does not carry the meat and pork brands Union Market touts.
On recent visits to Union Market’s three stores — which coincided with meat shipments from the source — store butchers reiterated the “all natural” mantra.
“Everything we have is all-natural, NatureSource [brand],” noted a butcher at the Park Slope Seventh Avenue store.
“It’s real quality meat.”
Union Market’s Lalic said the store makes its own pork sausage and Italian sausage in house from all-natural products.
NatureSource is a source-verified brand that can provide documentation of the origin and age of its beef and how it was raised.
“What’s disturbing is that their customers are people who are very, very serious about eating natural,” said the source.
“It’s like a religion to them.”