I rarely purchase meat, maybe once every two years, but when I do I buy directly from a local farmer whose farm I can visit. I've bought whole beef this way, and the quality to price ratio was amazing. Grass fed, organically raised, humanely treated beef for ~$5.50/lb.
Granted, I had to buy hundreds of pounds of it, but I got all sorts of cuts, bones for broth, organs (tongue, heart, liver, etc.)
The process was surprisingly simple, and I wish more people knew it was an option. I'd be happy to outline what was involved for anyone curious.
I don't object to killing animals, but the way we raise them industrially is truly one of the horrors of our time.
After committing to only eating animals I could trace the provenance of, I rarely eat meat these days, perhaps once or twice a month I'll pull something from the freezer. The variety of vegetarian and vegan options has really exploded.
I don’t know much about “tracing the provenance” of this or that... but, you should know that what you’re describing is pretty common for those of us in flyover country. Every semester or so, my roommates and I would go pick a cow out (we had ranches), have it processed, and fill up a deep freezer we had in our rented house. Pounds and pounds of steaks and more hamburger than you could ever eat. Also had an endless supply of venison.
I now live close to the border and frequently head across for large carneasadas with the in-laws and extended families. We usually buy some goats... the kids play with them for a while, then we butcher them on the spot and eat them up. Sometimes, we’ll have a cow (usually hiring a few locals to butcher it... unlike a goat, a cow is a lot of work without the proper equipment.)
Consequently, I don’t find the whole thing all that exotic or romantic. It’s just meat. Whether it’s butchered by me or in a factory, makes little difference to me.
I’m not criticizing you... just couldn’t help but butting in to remind the urbanites that what you are describing seems sort of amusing... as I type this, there is an annoying chicken in our backyard that — for whatever strange reason — clucks late into the night... she will be in my stomach this Sunday.
The way you procure meat is definitely the best way possible from an ethical point of view, and I wish it would be more widespread. Unfortunately, it is only accessible for the most privileged - for those who can upfront hundreds of dollars for the animal, have ample space for a freezer and can afford the electricity keeping it up.
We need to create a system that keeps up high animal care standards on one side - and has widespread accessibility across all classes of society. The alternative is that either we continue with meat grown in abhorrent conditions with all risks (bacterial contamination of meat, pathogens jumping species) and externalities (manure nitrogen runoffs, methane emissions, smell) associated or that only the elites will be able to have meat - something that far-right populists are already accusing left parties (such as the Greens in Germany) of already doing.
(Yes, lab grown meat is a thing, but it will probably be another two or three decades until I can eat a lab grown steak!)
It always comes down to the "Boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness" in the end. Most of the stuff we are talking about here is nowhere near practically applicable for the majority of the population.
I have plenty of savings, but about $300 in my savings account, the rest spread across checking and other accounts. I'd be counted amongst the "poor" in this poll due to that. Is there more data somewhere? The poll is often touted, but I wonder if it shows what you think, or just shows that savings accounts now days are mostly useless?
These polls are based on net assets, at least the German ones which show similarly disastrous results.
For what it's worth 40 million people i the US are facing eviction because they can't come up with something as essential as rent. This is how deep the social divide has become in the US.
Yeah. I did find that with lots of friends it's possible to split an animal. I generally keep half of the beef and coordinate friends to split the other half. It definitely takes some time, which is a privilege in itself, but it's definitely possible to get a group of families together to group buy.
I’d love to see an outline of this, I don’t know where to find these farmers. I briefly bought eggs from a local farmer but after moving have not been able to find a similar arrangement.
First is finding a local farmer and knowing their timeline for a harvest. In Western Washington, you can use http://www.tilthalliance.org/ to look up farmers by product (meat, veg, fruits, eggs, fish, etc.)
Reach out to farmers and see who actually has something available, ask any questions you have about how they raise the animal. Ask about their process for ordering and whether they'll transport to a butcher. Put a deposit down on an animal.
Once you've put your deposit down, you wait for your harvest date. In my case, they transported the animal to the butcher, where it hung for a couple weeks. During that time, you prepare a 'cut sheet'. This describes how you'd like the animal prepared -- steaks or roasts, ground meat or not, etc. The butcher can walk you through this and tell you what's common.
After a few weeks, the butcher will give you a call, your meat is ready! Drive there and load your car with hundreds of pounds of individually wrapped steaks, roasts, ground beef, stew meat, soup bones, etc. Drive home and load up your freezer, distribute to friends who went in on the purchase with you, etc.
Lastly, figure out lots of recipes. Learn to braise, sous vide, grill, make smashburgers, whatever. You are going to be eating a lot of beef, explore world cultures. There are so many different ways to prepare it, French is so different than German, Japanese is different than Korean, American is different than Mexican, etc. You have hundreds of pounds of beef to eat, variety is important.
Go for a drive in the country and look out for farms with "beef/bison for sale" signs up. If you don't see any, go into town and look for a butcher shop (or search for them online) and ask if they have farmers they work with to process steers.
That's as close to a process as I can think of for someone who doesn't "know the right people."
For me, yes. The label pasture raised could still imply corn finished (and a feedlot or CAFO). Knowing the farmer, seeing the fields, and building a relationship with them holds emotional value to me.
It cuts out the middle man too -- my money is going to a local farmer and a local butcher, I can specify exactly which cuts I want, how I want them prepared, etc.
> “If breast meat is worth two dollars a pound and dark meat is worth one dollar, which would I rather have?”
Western countries are weird about this. Chicken breast, particularly the industrially produced Tyson broilers and their ilk, is bland, dry and tasteless. (There's an Anthony Bourdain quote which I can't find right now about chicken being what people who don't like food order in restaurants.)
In Asian countries "dark" meat is preferred and sells at a premium, because it actually has some texture and taste.
Like most other chefs I know, I’m amused when I hear people object to pork on nonreligious grounds. “Swine are filthy animals,” they say. These people have obviously never visited a poultry farm. Chicken—America’s favorite food—goes bad quickly; handled carelessly, it infects other foods with salmonella; and it bores the hell out of chefs. It occupies its ubiquitous place on menus as an option for customers who can’t decide what they want to eat. Most chefs believe that supermarket chickens in this country are slimy and tasteless compared with European varieties.
from "Don't Eat Before Reading This", the essay which put him on the map as a writer.
Everybody that claims swine are filthy animals: that is absolutely not true.
They are filthy because they have to sleep in their own shit, because the farmer presses them together in such a small room that they literally cannot move without hitting each other.
If pigs are raised on an open field, they roll themselves in water to keep them clean multiple times per day. On the other hand cows roll themselves in their shit, even when provided with puddles of water...and are unable to clean themselves afterwards because they ain't gonna take a bath.
Source: me, my grandparents had a rather mid-large farm in Germany and tried to raise their stock as humane as possible.
They also tried to raise chicken in an open manner, but that's close to impossible because you would have to have a lot of bushes, puddles, mixed areas of grass, plants, and a lot of fences in between (so groups don't attack other groups) around the stable. Otherwise chicken won't leave the stable, even not when they get infected.
And the value of chicken stock is so low that it's a financial disaster if you would build up a healthy environment for them, even if you would own the land. They would just destroy the plants so regularly that you would have to replace the plants at least on a monthly basis to provide hideouts and shadow for them.
[1] Or at least the sort of stys which haven't been legal here for a long time. Ferkeln in austrian music videos are even cleaner, but on the other hand the farmer depicted is obviously also not in her daily outfit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw-g6X8qob0&t=128
>I’m amused when I hear people object to pork on nonreligious grounds. “Swine are filthy animals,” they say.
Is this actually a thing? That is, an agnostic/atheist refusing to eat pork because it's dirty? Also AFAIK "swine are filthy animals" is the justification for not eating pork in abrahamic religions.
I personally am somewhat grossed out by pork in general. I don't like the taste of most pork products. I will eat bacon or a slab of good belly at a good restaurant but otherwise I stay away.
Here in France we usually buy whole chickens to roast (yellow chickens are sold at a premium, although I'm not sure there's a big difference in taste).
When served it's a kind of battle because the thigh go first, then the sticks ("pilon"), and the breasts last. Nobody wants them; sometimes they simply get thrown away as they tend to be dry and flavorless.
I know Americans slept on dark meat for a while, and perhaps many still do, but in a certain slice of the foodie subculture (recipe bloggers, YouTube foodies, etc) this idea that dark meat is ALWAYS better than white meat has become this truism that, it seems to me at least, people like to slip in to signal how cultured they are or something.
Personally, it just depends on the dish and what kind of mood I’m in.
For example, if I’m wanting to make a pan sauce I’ll almost always go with white meat (usually bone-in split breast).
Chicken parm? White meat, please
For me, because dark meat itself is fattier and more flavorful by default, I find it can take over in many dishes where the meat is more of a vehicle for something else.
Stir frys, however - I almost always opt for dark meat.
Didn't realise I was playing into a meme - I've basically replaced most of my white meat use with off the bone thigh meat.
You get a stronger taste for sure, but I've not yet found it actually jars with a recipe (and to be clear, complete anecdata based on dishes I prepare) to the extent the cons outweigh the pros.
Pretty sure it's a recent effect, a result of the lipid hypothesis. Basically, saturated fat was demonized, so Western countries looked for the leanest meats.
Maybe if you're comparing flats (most expensive wing) with bone-in skinned chicken breasts (cheapest breast). At least where I live, whole wings (or drumettes) are always cheaper than skinless/boneless chicken breasts.
1. Factory farming breeds viruses -- one of the main reasons people have been saying "when, not if" about pandemics for decades. We happened to get a coronavirus this time, but factory farms will produce a flu pandemic soon enough if we don't stop them, which we can. Here are two videos by Dr. Michael Greger for background:
2. We keep making markets more and more efficient and then lament when there's no resilience and small problems affect everyone everywhere. Redundancies and other inefficiencies aren't bad.
We live in farm country, so we talk and hypothesize about the future of food frequently. I'm inclined to think that we're going to see a lot more vegetarians in the US middle / upper middle class. I also have to wonder if we'll see a time where it is only the poor and the very rich who eat meat - the poor eating factory "meat" and the very rich eating traditionally raised / heritage / "organic" meat. We've cut way back on our meat consumption, because we wanted to actually know the origin of our food. At least in our circle of connections, it feels very much like there are a whole lot of vegetarians / infrequent meat eaters.
Meat substitutes have already become fashionable. They are already in fast food, which makes me doubt that cheap meat will even be food for poor people when emulating the educated middle class is less expensive than eating meat.
Vat-grown meat will have to do better than emulating cheap chicken. Endangered exotic species and ethical cannibalism will be tried. The Kardashians will license their DNA and everyman, for a reasonable price, can eat the rich.
This is something I don't understand. I remember several outcries over substitutes/analogues in the last decades.
One was about analog cheese, f.i. on pizza.
Another "meat glue" used to form shreds into a big block of ham. Not to forget surimi instead of real shrimps.
Then the vegetarian/vegan craze really took off, and nobody cared about "Eingriffstiefe"/depth of engagement of technically processed food anymore, just had to have some veggie-label on it and all was good.
Just by applying the reasoning that raising animals in mostly harm-free and organic ways is good for the quality of the meat, by giving it better texture and taste, one could come to the conclusion that this Pappfraß does the same to humans which eat it in the same ways as all that other industrial junk.
But I mostly don't see it mentioned, with the exception of Paleo. It's all about virtue signalling and bizniz.
( Sometimes I think for myself that I'd really like to signal them MY virtues, letting them feel my golden shower power... by pissing in their faces... )
Meat substitutes are becoming fashionable, but they are still expensive relative to factory meat, and while some are very good, many taste awful and are not a good substitute nutritionally.
I couldn't even finish the Impossible Whopper when I tried it - taste and consistent of rubber. We tried some substitute chicken recently - taste was good, consistency was good, but then we looked at the ingredients - was basically a ball of flour with some flavoring; not really what I want to serve my kids regularly.
Something I've noticed about the meat substitutes: My family likes them better when they don't try to be meat. As in - when they are flavorful and nutritious on their own rather than attempting to simulate meat, they tend to be better than the options that are trying too hard to pretend to be meat.
I'm newly vegetarian since it's the cheapest way to eat (source- Efficiency Is Everything)
Egg + milk vegetarian is quite easy and satisfied any meat cravings, where when I try to eat vegan I feel lacking.
I know there's the whole morality behind chicken eggs and milk, so I don't see vegetarian as the end destination for anyone who cares about ethics/morals.
I'm curious to hear other points of view regarding eggs. We had long wanted chickens of our own, and this spring finally built a coop and got some birds. They should start laying later this year, with our intent being they will eventually supply all our family egg needs (which are considerable - on the order of 3+ dozen a week). These birds are seriously pampered and will presumably live long, natural lives beyond their "productive" years.
While I can understand concerns about factory conditions for egg layers, is there anyone who believes there are ethical issues around eggs produced in the decidedly non-factory conditions of my backyard? I've been somewhat amazed by just how easy it has been to raise them so far and would advocate anyone who wants to enjoy eggs should give it a go.
Regarding milk: Yes, I'm in agreement, for most adult humans the soy / almond / oat / etc options are perfectly good, apart perhaps from baking.
Fish is the one area I don't personally see a good substitute, until the market tells me it is too expensive to continue eating.
> is there anyone who believes there are ethical issues around eggs produced in the decidedly non-factory conditions of my backyard?
Yes. Hens in a natural setting (a backyard human controlled setting is not natural) would lay about 25 eggs in a whole year. If you do not collect the eggs from your birds, this should be what you observe, unless these are selectively bred birds who may lay more eggs. If you calculate your three dozens a week as a per-bird number (which you haven’t mentioned), it would likely be many multiples larger.
Egg laying is a physically taxing activity for the birds. Not being able to brood over the laid eggs is another issue if you agree that these birds are also capable of feeling emotionally (even if not directly comparable to humans).
I wonder if we could be at the beginning of a sea-change where widespread access to very fresh produce, continued messaging about the health benefits of plants, and the best recipes the world has to offer, lead to a "rediscovery" of produce.
For context, the UK and US are currently negotiating a trade agreement which should cover, among other things, whether post-Brexit UK food safety laws will be relaxed in general, and specifically for chicken. The negotiations are currently on hold until after the elections in the latter jurisdiction, but once it's all completed and the terms made public, I'll get a chance to reevaluate my decision to call the UK "Airstrip One" due to its role within Oceania.
I don't forsee it having a major impact in the purchasing of raw meat (I think most supermarkets are on board with not selling it as most consumers don't want it). What'll be interesting/disturbing is how it's integrated into pre-prepared meals. That's where we'll feel it I suspect.
Non organic chicken is one of the few foods I find to be really disturbingly cheap. .99 to $2/lb range for a living organism to have been fed, slaughtered, transported and marked up at retail is a little off putting.
It is designed to allow poor people to have meat. A modern miracle really.
I don’t purchase it because I have enough money to buy chickens that been humanely raised. I believe this is a moral obligation if you can afford it. But I won’t judge people who can’t afford it to buy chickens raised this way. If my fortunes change I will be grateful I can still buy a chicken. While I’m not in that situation I will continue to consume free range, organic, “happy chickens” that only had 1 bad day.
I wonder about this too.it feels like the availability of cheap meat has a significant social.impact that I don't see discussed anywhere. If factory farmed meat was unavailable a significant section of society would only rarely be able to afford meat. Put another way, the availability of cheap meat disguises the true extent of poverty in this country
Chicken is cheap because the feed conversion ratio is very good: apx 1.6 kg of feed (corn) in yields you 1kg of chicken out. Only some varieties of fish does better. In comparison, beef has a ratio of around 5 to 7 (10 if you just count the meat).
It's also cheap because there are very few protections and regulations for the animals and the fact that selective breeding has gotten their farmed lifespan down to just 6 weeks.
This sort of extreme cruel exploitation of living beings with brains & feelings will be thought of in the future similarly to how we think about chattel slavery.. At least the next step in the industrialisation of meat should be a huge improvement - just growing brain-less muscles..
It is well within bounds to imagine future generations being absolutely incensed that schools are named after meat-eaters consuming the end product of industrialized slaughter.
It is easy to imagine future generations seeing us as monsters.
Not as individual meat consumers, no. In the same way we don't see Yanks who bought cotton clothes as evil. It's all we have the choice to buy, really. As a society that breeds living things that are disfigured, can't walk, live in hell, and die... sure, we are evil.
I won't give up meat. I will however do everything in my personal power to vote to end such practices and buy local, even if it means paying more. I think we just need to show more people. The meat industries have done a great job of hiding their awful secrets, often at the legislative level.
I won't deny that this is a systemic issue and we shouldn't place all the blame on individuals. But it's an absolutely ridiculous claim that it's our only choice.
Don't waste you're money buying local because it really means nothing with respect to welfare of the animal. Instead try to reduce your consumption.
Sure it does. If factory farms failed to exist, we'd all have to buy local. And costs are going to skyrocket, and consumption is going to go down.
If everyone reduced consumption just to reduce it, factory farms would still exist, just less of them. You didn't solve the issue, you just made it slightly smaller.
If the issue you're referring to are the ethical problems of farming, they are in no way limited to CAFOs. Some of the worst practices I've personally witnessed have been at small farms. Size is no guarantee of treatment and locality has absolutely no bearing on ethics.
You're also underestimating the impact of modern animal breeds on the price of animal products. Broiler chickens are slaughtered at about a third of the age as chickens a century ago. All farms benefit from that kind of decrease and it's one of the things that turned chicken into a daily food. Without CAFOs, prices would certainly go up, but less dramatically than you thibk.
Yes, but it’s not going to be the reason why anyone here uses your particular rhetoric of “living beings.”
If Silicon Valley Buddhism (SVB, where this rhetoric comes from) was so effective it would have broader appeal. It’s useful to dissect why it works for HN people though.
SVB works because (1) Steve Jobs - it’s compatible with rich people crazy for whom limousine liberal is an insufficiently contrarian moral framework, and (2) it is a lot less partisan than all the other good reasons to not eat meat products, like your health and the environment.
Indeed the bigger story here is that anti-intellectualism has made it hard to be a vegan for health or environmental reasons around your Republican venture capitalists. However “minimizing harm to as many beings as possible” (as one Silicon Valley billionaire supervillain once put it to me) doesn’t sound like something couched in science. It sounds almost like pseudoscience, much like the bulletproof coffee or blue light avoidance crazes, something which specifically appeals to Republican finance types and therefore is an acceptable moral framework for SV’s only real god, the almighty dollar.
Fortunately the chickens could give less of a fuck why you stop eating them. So go “Buddhism.”
The reality is that most people don't care, or don't know enough to care, or don't care enough to know. Switching to a meatless diet isn't an insurmountable hurdle, it's just inconvenient. And even that small inconvenience isn't something most people want to bother with.
Similarly, on the human front, a Westerner deploying even a little cash in the poorest parts of the world can save hundreds of lives. But most people don't care. They have their lives to live, mouths to feed, their local homes and neighborhoods to take care of. Caring about the suffering of millions of strangers thousands of miles away, regardless of species, isn't something we're good at, or care much for.
While this is a fairly accurate explanation of why things are the way they are, it doesn't mean it can't ever change. We don't care in general sure, but the only hope we can have is that we care slightly more today than we did yesterday. Everyone in the spectrum of poverty hopefully has taken a positive step in this direction in the past few decades, and hopefully we continue and accelerate.
I hate use of hyperbole like this. It conveys no more information than "tastes better, trust me ;)", but is dressed up like it's some sort of objective rigorous measurement.
It’s entirely possible that I just missed something, but in the few years I spent living in Europe, I saw about the same spectrum of chicken quality as in the United States. Low quality frozen chicken, then average quality fresh chicken, then high-quality and recently killed chicken.
Ahh European exceptionslism. I don't really buy into marketing and was extremely disappointed by the taste and quantity of food in the European countries I visited.
There were exceptions, but the food is generally bland, and one of these countries was Italy.
They really advertise the authenticity of ingredients, when they need to learn "salt, acid, sugar, msg, fat"
Similar experience in the other direction. Food in LA was incredibly overseasoned and in particular drinks like lemonade were extremely sweet. After a while I got used to it/had dulled my sense of taste so that this tasted "normal" and European food "bland". Luckily after some time without American food my sense of taste returned to normal.
I can definitely tell that typical restaurant food is significantly higher quality than typical US restaurant food when I visited Spain and Italy. Doesn't really say much if someone can't because they might not have the tastebuds for it.
Granted, I had to buy hundreds of pounds of it, but I got all sorts of cuts, bones for broth, organs (tongue, heart, liver, etc.)
The process was surprisingly simple, and I wish more people knew it was an option. I'd be happy to outline what was involved for anyone curious.
I don't object to killing animals, but the way we raise them industrially is truly one of the horrors of our time.
After committing to only eating animals I could trace the provenance of, I rarely eat meat these days, perhaps once or twice a month I'll pull something from the freezer. The variety of vegetarian and vegan options has really exploded.