Honest Meat

Values-Based Butchery

Author's Note: This was a short blog post I wrote for the nascent organization of craft butchers called The Butcher's Guild. They have an Oath that they ask each of their members to commit to. I used that Oath as a framework for this short article about how they can bring more values and meat ethics into their craft and businesses as butchers and meat purveyors. Thanks for reading!

 

As a Butcher’s Guild member you take an oath to uphold certain values as you practice your craft and run your business. What does it look like to embody these values as it pertains to the sourcing of your meat and how you present it to your customers?

Heart: I maintain integrity in relationships with customers and vendors. Relationship integrity means several things- transparency, fair pricing negotiations, upholding quality, and being truthful about your challenges. In short, it is about honesty. Are you telling your customers the full story of your meat products? Are you using words that obfuscate the truth or ones that explain exactly how the animal was raised, where it was raised, and who the actual farmer is? When you say “local”, what does that mean exactly? When you say “natural”, what are the actual practices behind that word? Being clear about what your definitions are will help educate your customers and will demonstrate your integrity. Commit to that honesty.

Source: I aim to support local, sustainable farms and practice whole animal butchery. It can be challenging to call up several different farmers to order meat, but have you even tried? Are you willing to build and strengthen relationships with farmers who are upholding your values and need time to produce the volume that you need? Or do you flit around buying a little bit here and there but not making that commitment to see a farmer grow to scale? Do you buy meat from a local farmer for special events but then go back to your ‘regular’ meat middleman the rest of the time? What is preventing you from making that commitment to the local farmer? Make sure you define what local and sustainable means to you so you can be transparent, as mentioned above. Go visit the farms in person so you can improve your understanding of animal production practices. Ask questions, dig a little deeper. If an animal is raised in confinement in Canada and fed conventional, GMO feeds and then slaughtered in your state and processed into sausage, don’t call that local, don’t call that sustainable. Be truthful about what it is and work to find more values-based sources closer to home. 

Hand: I strive to improve my knife skills and knowledge of the trade. You know this one better than I do. But consider that being a skilled and knowledgeable butcher starts at the farm. Understand how animals are raised and killed and maybe even participate in that process so you can appreciate all the details, logistics, and energy that goes into meat production. Learn to have reverence for the animal whose life was given for the meat in your walk-in- this will encourage you to work even harder to utilize the whole animal to it’s maximum value and reduce waste wherever possible. These actions will not only make you a more conscientious butcher but also a better ambassador for the meat you are selling.

Voice: I am an active community member and encourage a healthy food system. Being an advocate for a healthy food system must start with how you eat yourself, how you work with your supply chain, how you communicate your values and educate your consumers. Every dollar you spend is a vote for the food system you want to see. If your dollars are going to investor-owned corporations, confinement animal production, farms that feed conventional, GMO grains, or those that exploit their workers or turn their contract farmers into serfs, than that is the farming system that will remain the status quo. If you want to see a more diversified, family-operated, grass and pasture-based, non-GMO and non-chemical food system, than put your time and money into it. If your regular suppliers are not upholding all the values that you strive for, communicate to them what you would like to see. Then commit to work with them through their transition to more sustainable practices. We will all be better off for it.

So You Say You Want a Food Revolution? Part Dos

It is ironic that my last post elicited so many enthusiastic responses from farmers and ranchers around the world but that many consumers/eaters thought my list of suggestions were either: 1) too difficult because they lack money, a car, time for cooking; or 2) they are doing the 'best' they can and that should be good enough for me (i.e. the perfect is the enemy of the good); or 3) we shouldn't be eating meat anyways, so my list of suggestions does not apply to a vegan world.  Farmers on the other hand were giving me virtual high fives, re-posting my article in their CSA newsletters or on their farm blogs.  Since we need farmers and ranchers to stick around to keep feeding people, maybe we should be more accommodating to their needs, perhaps, instead of dismissing them as inconvenient, trivial, or too costly.  Anyways, to address the issue of cost, I have assembled another list of things people can do to make our food system more sustainable and that require no exchange of currency at all, or some that are very budget-friendly.

Creating a more sustainable food system for free (or on a budget):

FREE

-Inform yourself about GMOs and fight their release into the environment. Do that by making phone calls to your elected officials, signing on-line  petitions, sending a hand-written letter, etc.

-Join your child's school PTA or Site Council to advocate for better school lunches and food gardens on school campuses.

-Volunteer at your local food bank- often you will get free food out of this in addition to being altruistic. (Note: I don't think emergency food is sustainable, however, we need a food safety net in our country)

-Advocate for a sane, legalized agricultural worker program in our country so we don't continue to perpetuate an illegal, exploited workforce. Also, advocate for a legalized farm apprenticeship program in each state, where often it is illegal to pay apprentices-in-training below minimum wage and deters US citizens from working in agriculture or learning how to run their own farming businesses.

-Help get a farmers market established in your community or volunteer with one that already exists. You can help them with marketing, making a website, physical set-up or take-down, recruiting farmers, board management, bookkeeping, etc. Bonus is you often make friends with the vendors and they give you nice deals on food.

BUDGET-FRIENDLY

-Plant a garden- in a bed, in a box, in a pot, even in a jar (think sprout garden). Got excess? Can it, freeze it, dry it, or give it away to your neighbors, your kids school, or your church/synagogue/mosque/grange/etc.

-Buy jamming or canning flats of produce at the farmers market (they usually appear when farmers have excess or slightly blemished product). They are often half the price, but you have to make some time to process them. Make that your Friday night fun- invite some friends over, turn on some good music, & process some berries!

-Fish or hunt if you are going to enjoy the privilege of eating meat, then dry, cure, freeze, or can the meat to store for the long-term. If you don't hunt or fish but have friends that do, offer to help them process and I bet you will get a little meat in exchange for your time.

-Don't buy chicken or turkey breasts & thighs. Much cheaper to buy the whole birds and make several meals out of it, including a rich stock with all the bones.

-Make your own yogurt. Simply start with a container of yogurt that has just a little left in the bottom (use a plain, whole milk, organic one if possible), add some whole milk to it (raw is best if you can find that) and then set in your oven overnight with simply the warmth of the pilot light on. If you have an electric oven, set is at 85 degrees overnight.

-Make your own queso blanco with simply whole milk and lemon juice- no rennet or starter is required. Good cheese is expensive, so try making some of the quick, soft cheeses on your own!

-If you live near any fishing ports/docks, go down and ask a fisherman/woman for their fresh fish scraps. Then take them home and immediately simmer them in water for your own rich fish stock.

-Eat lots of greens- they are cheap and available longer than most any other vegetable.

-Buy your beans, lentils, dried peas, rice, etc. in bulk. Way cheaper....

-Find a rice cooker at your local thrift store (there are often 5-10 of them lining the shelves). Make at least one pot of rice a week (brown, organic, US grown is preferable in my opinion) for an easy, cheap filler you can put in burritos, tacos, stir frys, or even for breakfast with some milk & honey.

-Join a CSA that has a sliding-scale price based on income level, graduated payment plans, or work options to lower your cost. Offer to be a CSA host site and you normally get a free share altogether, plus all the leftover boxes that shareholders forget to pick up!

-Help a farmer clean up at the end of the farmers market by loading up their boxes or sweeping their space- they will likely give you a free box of produce for this.  Better yet, offer to work a regular market shift and earn a little cash and a bunch of produce too!

-Pack your kids a healthy lunch instead of paying for the school lunch. Save money and save their health too.

-Eat less meat & consume smaller portion sizes, but pay more for the meat you eat (paying for better values, humane animal care, raised in your local vicinity, pasture-based, endangered breeds, etc.)! Or go vegetarian if that suits you.

How about you? Got any budget-friendly or free tips on how to make our food system more sustainable?

So You Say You Want a Food Revolution?

You go out to that hot, new restaurant with the tattooed chef that is putting on a whole animal, nose to tail special dinner. You bliss out on highfalutin pork rinds, braised pigs feet, rustic pate, and porchetta. A few months later you nibble on small bites as you stroll down the city street, blocked off for some weekend 'foodie' festival. You go back to your Monday-Friday workaday routine ordering pizza, buying some frozen chicken breasts at Costco ("hey, at least they are 'organic'"), subsisting through your hectic week (although you still have time for at least 2 hours a day of TV).  You manage to get to a farmers market about once a month, but the rest of the time your eggs and meat come from a blend of Costco, Trader Joe's, and maybe Whole Paycheck now and again. You like to think of yourself as a 'foodie', you watched Food Inc. with your mouth aghast, you own a few cookbooks.  Guess what? You are NOT changing the food system, not even close. You are no better or different than the average American. Your bananas and coffee may be Fair Trade but everything else is Far From It. The dozen eggs you splurge on one time a month may be from local, outdoor-roaming birds, but all the other eggs you eat come from one giant egg conglomerate in either Petaluma, CA or Pennsylvania. Guess what, even that pig in the first dinner came from a poor farmer in Kansas because the restaurant is too cheap or lazy to find local, pastured pork. The ingredients for that foodie festival touting itself as local and sustainable mostly come from other states except a few ingredients they highlight as being "local". But those restaurants, caterers, and food trucks just go back to using the low-cost distributor once the event is over. You pat yourself on the back, you brag while Tweeting, you pity your Midwestern relatives eating their chicken fried steak and ambrosia salad, but you secretly loathe your grocery store bill that consumes only 8% of your income while your car carves out 30% and you roll no eyes.

What does a sustainable food system need? Not you, but they do need YOU:

Getting to Win-Win-Win

What happens when over 98% of the population does not farm or do farm labor but yet are completely dependent for their survival on the less than 2% of the population that does?  The first words that pop into my head are riskiness and dependency (& ignorance).  When a global economic system is shaken to the core, I wonder what the reverberations will be.  I hear about and see more and more people, at least in my little corner of the world, trying to plant and grow more of their own food.  That seems to be an excellent strategy to minimize risk and dependency, while increasing the pleasures of the palate with fresh-off-the-plant produce.  Other strategies people are using are supporting their locals farmers through a purchase of their seasonal bounty, usually in the form of a CSA.  While the harvest is never guaranteed, few farms will short their customers produce even when they do have crop losses.  So, shy of the farmer going out of business mid-season or a severe natural catastrophe, CSA customers will receive their share of the bounty.  The shareholders reduce their risk of not having access to good food and the farmer reduced her risk of not having a place to sell that food.  Other folks use barter, trade, and work-exchange to secure their food.  But what about folks that don't live near farmers, don't have time to trade, or enough money to exchange.  How do they ensure a steady supply of fresh, pure, healthy foods?

The Meat We Eat: Part Three

My partner and I used to be vegetarians, coincidentally for the same exact amount of time- 12 years.  I began my vegetarianism as a college freshman working in the dining hall of my dormitory, horrified by the ingredients in the chicken nuggets and other 'meat-like' processed foods they offered there.  It didn't help that I was putting on the dreaded 'freshman 15' so I thought cutting meat out of my diet would help for weight control (little did I know that my fake meat and carb-loading ways would actually fatten my up quicker!).  I was getting into the whole hysteria over the destruction of the Amazon, which was being fueled by expanding cattle and soybean production around Brazil.  At the time, I did not even enter my mind that there might be grassfed cattle operations within the same county as my university that were struggling to find buyers of their meat.  I thought, meat was meat was meat and there were no choices, at least at the grocery stores I knew of.

I don't know what drew my partner to vegetarianism in the first place, but he too thought he would avoid meat to improve his health.  However, with his limited cooking skills, he didn't exactly fill the meat void with steamed kale and lentil stew.  He ate more starches, empty carbs, and found his energy lagging throughout the day.  At the time he was even an ultramarathoner, fueling his body with weird energy elixers and gels to keep his body moving.  He now thinks he would have performed even better and won more races had he been gnoshing ham and cheese sandwiches or beef jerky for his 6-8 hour runs.

When we started raising our own animals and killing our own animals, we felt like we could participate in eating them again.  We have a reverence for our animals that people who pick up their identity-less 'meat' products at the grocery store or fast food restaurant will never know.  So what about the morality of killing animals?  Again, I turn to the next installment of The River Cottage Meat Book and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's thoughtful words: