Update: My Meat Meanderings

WELL. Funny how interested everyone is in meat these days. I have to say two years ago I wouldn't have given it a second thought, let alone blog about it, but now my partner and I have had to come up with a whole plan of how to work towards "Happy Meat".

After reading Catherine Friend's book, I expected the process to be long, drawn out and fraught with disappointment. The results we found were almost laughably easy. I drew up a list to put on our fridge of our "Happy Meat Goals". It went like this:

1) Talk to farmer at the ******* Farmer's Market
Questions to ask:
Are they locally raised and "finished" cattle?
Where are they slaughtered?
What percentage of their meals consist of grain, and what grass?
How much access to pasture do they have?

2) Farmer's Market - is there anyone that sells eggs or chickens?
Are the chickens caged?
If they're supposedly "free range", how much time do they actually get to spend outside? If they are kept in a barn, how many chickens are kept in what size of barn?
How are they slaughtered?

3) Research meat sold at the Save Easy.
Who is the source for this meat?
Where are the animals taken for slaughtering?

4) Purchase "Happy Meat"
Must be locally and humanely raised.
Small conventional/organic/pasture farm.

......
After creating this little poster for myself in an excellent move towards organized-goal-setting-behaviour, my partner walked down to the Farmer's Market that week and talked to the local farmer, owner of Star Dust Farm in New Brunswick.

In a matter of minutes goals 1 through 4 were accomplished, as this farmer raises cattle, hogs and lambs in the pasture, raises chickens free range (in the barn for the winter, then outside in the summer) and has his animals slaughtered locally.

All that really needs to be done is to visit his farm at some point in the summer, and maybe enquire further into where his animals are slaughtered.

More ethical, responsible global citizen ..... funny how become a more responsible (and ethical) global citizen almost always means embracing the local businesses. Oxymoronic isn't it? Regardless, I feel better already.

Happy meat, here I come!

Latest and Greatest

Its been almost a year since I half heartedly made my New Year's resolutions to be more green. I'm happy to say I still only very rarely purchase plastic bottles (though I must admit, I buy the large plastic milk jugs in the Maritimes because they're 4L and it seems a waste to buy twice the necessary amount of carton just to avoid plastic), I will eat meat somewhere around 2-3 times a week TOTAL. Chickpeas and kidney beans have greatly supplemented my diet. Hankies have up until this point been largely erroneous after coming back from France (probably because I was no longer practicing outside in the rain in January), and I haven't bought any micro-beaded exfoliants (I even raided my parents' bathroom cabinet and disposed of what sea-creature killers we had).

Speaking of meat though I would like to recommend the latest and greatest on my reading list this year - right up there with The World Without Us in terms of chanigng-my-world-outlook-forever-and-making-me-change-my-lifestyle-and-blogging-about-it-NESS. My latest and greatest this year is: The Compassionate Carnivore by Catherine Friend.

(photo taken from www.elephantjournal.com)

This book was like a wake up call. Its not preachy, it discusses some difficult issues but issues we need to be aware of as consumers (and she doesn't beat your around the head with it either).

The biggest thing for me was what she said about waste. According to her calculations (and she footnotes everything, including these calculations, I like that - you can actually see where she gets her information if you don't like it) at LEAST 7,500 cows, 18,000 hogs and 1 million chickens are slaughtered in the U.S every day and then basically go in the garbage (Friend, 57). The meat expires in the store, or gets wasted at restaurants, or gets scraped out of our old tupperware - but its all just waste. That's not to tell people "don't eat meat" because I like meat, you like meat, our entire human species has been eating meat from day one - what she, and what I'm saying is, we have to realize that this isn't just food.

These animals have their lives taken in order to feed us. It would be massively disrespectful to go and throw that life in the garbage, or scrape it off your plate because you're full. As beings that respect that death and cherish life we should at least have the decency to use every last single bit so that those deaths shouldn't be for nothing!!! I tell you, when I'm cooking meat now, its a precious thing - nothing is to be wasted, or go uneaten or left on my plate. I only cook as much as I know for sure will be eaten, and I'm going to try my best never to let meat go to waste.

We never think of that. We think of the money going to waste, the time going to waste that went into cooking it, but never the animal who died to give it to us. We need to rearrange the way we think and realize that its not just money or corporations or labels but living things that we're dealing with here. And we should treat them with the respect they deserve.