Just before I got married it occurred to me that we should stop buying the cheap stuff and only eat organic meats. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but it seemed to be a good choice. For a few months I primarily bought organic, but I never fully made the commitment. Honestly, it seemed cost prohibitive, especially after we became a one income household. After a year or so of buying meat and feeling weird about it I stopped cooking meat at home this past February. I continued to eat meat at restaurants and at other people’s houses and I continued to read about why supermarket meat made me uncomfortable. Last week, after finishing Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I made the decision that I’m officially done eating meat if I don’t know where it came from. Specifically, I’m done eating meat that came from a CAFO, a concentrated animal feeding operation also called a factory farm.
I won’t go into detail about what factory farming is, or why it’s horrific. If you’re interested you should click the link for the brief wikipedia article then follow up with The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; they’re good reads and they’re informative without being preachy. I will say that the conditions in factory farms are inhumane, unhealthy for the animals and for the people who eat them, and bad for the environment.
Grass fed, or pastured animals, are an alternative, a safer, more trustworthy alternative to supermarket meat, even the meats with organic labels. The health benefits of eating pastured animals are many. Grass fed animals are eating a natural diet so they don’t need the hormones and antibiotics automatically administered to factory farmed animals. They’re also lower in fat and calories than grain fed animals and contain more Omega 3s than their factory counterparts. The farmers who raise grass fed animals are environmentally friendly by necessity- their animals need to eat healthy grass so they in turn have to make sure the soil and pasture is healthy for them.
Through my CSA I became a member of a buying club that lets me purchase eggs, beef, chicken, pork and lamb through a local farm. The prices per pound are no more expensive than the organic cuts of meat at the supermarket and in some cases are less expensive. Even if some cuts are more expensive, I don’t mind spending the few extra dollars to support local farms that raise animals I feel comfortable cooking for my family.
Though many supermarkets have organic and free-range alternatives available, it’s hard to tell what those labels actually mean. I’d like to know that the meat my family eats lived its life eating the things it should, not eating feed laced with hormones and antibiotics. I want to support local farmers who raise healthy animals in an environmentally conscious manner. It wasn’t an easy or a quick decision for me. But it’s a decision I plan to stick with. I really believe that the eat local movement can change the way Americans look at food and the more we demand fresh, local produce and humanely raised meats the more they’ll be available.
If you’re interested in purchasing meat that comes from animals who spent their lives pastured, not confined, or reading more about the farms near you that pasture their animals, Eat Wild has a state by state pastured product directory and a multi-state listing if you’d like to have products shipped directly to you.
You can also seek out restaurants that buy from local farms. Local Harvest lets you search for restaurants that prepare locally grown foods in addition to CSAs, farm markets and co-ops.
CAFOs, factory farming, eat local, organic meat, grassfed meat, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
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