What I never thought about was the safety of meat in schools, perhaps because we don't have kids? But when reading the paper a couple weeks ago I learned that in the United States many schools receive meat that doesn't meet fast food standards! Seriously, they serve our kids chicken that not even Hardees will sell for a $1. Fast food chains (while not the vanguards of healthy eating) are far more rigorous in testing for bacteria and pathogens then the national standards. They, in fact, test ground beef 5-10 times more often then the US Department of Agriculture tests beef produced for the nation's school system. If you think that's scary then consider the fact that fast food chains set limits for bacteria in burgers that are ten times more stringent then the national standard for schools. Compound this with the fact that school children are more susceptible to food borne illness and the fact that the meat may not be cooked long enough to kill the pathogens before it is served.
And the silver lining is that as low as these standards are they are stricter then the standards for meat sold in the grocery store. Perhaps it is to time to reevaluate my options...
What about you? Do you eat meat? Where do you get it from? Are you concerned about meat safety?
20 comments:
I've always eaten meat. It took a while to get to the point where I just wasn't willing to eat industrial meat anymore. Fast Food Nation went a long way towards pushing me in that direction. Moving to a place where there are lots of small scale farmers and getting to know a few who follow humane practices and raise their animals on pasture helped a lot too. Suddenly there were lots of fine alternatives to industrial meat.
Yes, it's more expensive, but that means I'm paying the true price of the food I eat, rather than outsourcing the invisible costs of ill health, environmental damage, and animal cruelty. We eat less meat, and eat it more mindfully now.
It's taken my husband a bit longer to follow along, and he's still not quite where I am. But he's on a business trip at the moment and called to tell me his woes when looking for "clean food." The food I pack for him only lasts so long. He sometimes eats vegetarian on the road because he now "gets" what's in the meat in 99.9% of restaurants.
We buy only meat from a local farm, we're lucky that we have a farm 4 miles away that sells, raw organic pasture milk, beef, chickens, turkeys and eggs. Mr Chiots hunts for venison (which ends up costing me about $1.25/lb). We eat a lot of venison instead of beef and a chicken a month from the local farm. We find eggs to be a good cheap source of protein, even with the organic pastured prices. We do love beans & rice though and often enjoy those.
I find that the more I eat good quality meat the more I actually dislike "industrial" meat. It seems to taste "off" to me.
Mr Chiots was a little reluctant at first, but now he's fully onboard. He's even reading Omnivore's Dilemma right now and said to me the other night, "I never want to eat meat from the grocery store again"
I'd love to get chickens so I could have my own fresh eggs, but that will wait.
I didn't eat meat until we started buying from a local farmer. We buy a half or quarter animal once or twice a year. It seems expensive, but the breakdown is less than half what we would pay for at Costco and the quality of the meat shockingly better. Even better than the organic stuff we occasionally got from the co-op. We went local but buy from farmers who are not certified organic. We actually went to the farm to check them out and made some nice new friends too. We sought them out via craigslist and were surprised how many small farmers raise a few extra animals with mob grazing and free range. They are too small to be certified, but I like them even more!
I too wanted to go vegetarian and hubby refused. For awhile I allowed that and then I just point blank told him that I do the shopping and cooking and I won't be buying or cooking meat anymore. He grumped around for a month and then he got over it, even helping me find meatless meal recipes and helping me cook them. Now he only eats meat at work and is okay with that. I have found several recipes that he loves just as much as any meaty dish.
I am spoiled being in a position to raise our own meat. I knew our meat was clean, but had no idea how clean until I purchased some organic pork at the local health food store. It felt and smelled off within a day or so. I cooked the rest and fed it to our barn cats. Sadly it wasn't a case of old meat either, I watched the butcher unpack a case and grind it for me. It was most likely contaminated at the processing plant.
I urge anyone in a position to do so, raise what you can, or if possible purchase from a local farmer. It's much safer, it helps keep $$ in your locality by keeping the farmer in business, and that will in turn save the farmland from further degradation.
We will always be a meat eating family. I was vegetarian once, but am not anymore. We have changed to completely organic meat and buy it from a farm near us.
It's truly scary to think what hormones etc... are put into meat. My friends daughter was born wiht breast due to the eostrogen in the chicken. That truly scared me.
Love your blog btw.
The more I read about meat the worse I feel about it. I live in Las Vegas, there is NO WHERE to go to buy pasture raised meat. The closest farm is 6 hours away. I did find a farm 2 hours away that raises chickens, turkeys, and eggs though.
What can we do to let the USDA know that people want good food that is raised the right way?
We are a meat eating family. Hubby is a big meat eater, and wouldn't dream of giving it up. We have reduced a bit though.
I get my meats from local farmers. A cow from a local man who raised a few cows on his strawberry farm in the back field. A pig from a local guy who runs a small diversified farm and chicken from the same guy. We have chickens in the back yard for eggs as well.
My kids always want to know if the meat we're eating is from the nice farmers, or the mean ones.
"What can we do to let the USDA know that people want good food that is raised the right way?"
Anna, I don't mean this in a sarcastic way at all, but the best way to make that statement is to stop buying bad food that is raised in the wrong way. I hate the phrase "vote with your dollar," but there is a sad truth to this, just as there is to the aphorism that "actions speak louder than words."
We can't tell government to change a system while simultaneously supporting that system just the way it is. Why would they? When we ask government to magically fix a problem without changing our behaviors, they know full well we don't mean it. Witness Copenhagen.
We only eat meat we have killed ourselves, usually deer or moose. We do eat organic chicken but stay away from any pork at all--too hard to digest. Most of our diet consists of fish we catch--salmon, halibut and occasionally crab and prawns when the boats are selling it fresh at the harbors.
The stuff in the stores is something I consider to be toxic because I have no way of knowing anything about it and I absolutely do not trust labeling at all these days. I do not trust the FDA and I do not believe they follow the people's best interests with what they do, only big corporate interests and profits.
We have been self-sufficient for our meat for 3 years now, by raising our own livestock and hunting. Each year I have added to our farm and this past year had pastured hens and broiler chickens, turkeys, hogs, and rabbits. Next year we plan to fence about 6 acres of field and graze meat goats and a couple of cows. All of our animals are pastured and supplemented with feed from a local mill. There are no animal by-products, hormones, or antibiotics added to the feed. To become more self-sufficient, I've learned how to slaughter and butcher everything we raise.
We were started on this path 3 years ago. Since then, I was introduced to Polyface Farms, and have gotten a lot of good help from them. I have been modeling our pasturing of livestock after their efforts and even bought our breeding rabbits from them.
We hope to be as self-sufficient with our vegetable garden next year. One of the reasons we got the animals was for the manure benefits to improve our soil. Hard clay, mountaintop soil is not the best soil for growing a garden.
For anybody concerned about food safety, I recommend watching Food Inc. It will change your view of factory farming and the meat it produces.
What's been bothering me about grocery store meat is the unrecyclable styrofoam and plastic wrap - I'd started ignoring the other concerns, grateful only that all the meat I buy comes from our province. Your post inspired me to look for local producers. Chicken is just too expensive for me this way, but there are local producers who have beef and bison by the side, as well as pork and lamb.
We don't have a deep freeze, which poses a problem for buying in bulk. Nor can we afford the big purchase. I may try to convince a parent or two to go in with us.
For our family - we rent in an urban area and have no hope of buying our own place for years - watching "The River Cottage Treatment" was the final nail in the coffin for intensively farmed and non-local meat.
I've managed to source biodynamic/organic beef and lamb that is just outside our 160km (100 mile) diet. They have a stall once a month at a farmer's market in our city. I order in bulk - thankfully we've a deep freeze - and will only need to pick up once every 6 months. My only concern is if we lose power!
It costs way more than supermarket meat, but is only a little more expensive than buying from the butcher. I'm very happy to pay more and eat less.
Still trying to find free-range organic local chicken but no luck yet...
Cath in Sydney
It's funny how this subject keeps coming up for me. This week I decided to start buying local if I could. Can't find it right now, but I at least took one step yesterday in buying meat that my grocer ground themselves...so at least it's not the pink ammonia slime that you get in the packages. My goal is to buy totally local eventually.
This is related to what you brought up ... another reason to really think about where your food comes from and what is done to it.
http://www.NaturalNews.com/027872_ammonia_beef_products.html
I think you better look at the recent NY Times article on the injection of ammonia into beef waste, which is then sold to FF chains, schools, etc. You are completely wrong about the quality of the industrial waste that is sold as meat in FF chains.
Learn to use meat as flavoring, rather than eating great huge chunks of the stuff. Then the expense of decent meat isn't such a big deal.
Cath in Sydney, some home and contents insurance will cover loss of food - I keep the receipt when I do my bulk meat orders and would claim if something went wrong. I'm with Westpac & have their premium cover. Also your power company may compensate you if there is an extended outage.
Thanks very much, Georgie; I'll check that out!
Cath
Check out localharvest.org We live near Amish country and even there you have to be careful. We pay twice as much for our raw milk as people do in the store, and the hubby and I drink 4 gallons or more a week. We pay 12.00 a pound for cheddar and eat 2 pounds a week. And we pay 2.00 for a dozen eggs and eat two doz a week. We often trade rides to our organic meat supplier for meat--I don't mind eating just ground pastured pork (I make yummy sausage)ground beef, meaty soup bones for excellent bone broth with which to make soups, stews, and gravy. Chickens not fed soy are harder to come by so I buy mine sparingly from those who at least have them out on pasture as well. My husband used to work in a pork processing plant that did 10,000 pigs a day. I refuse to eat anything but pastured pork because I can taste urine in factory farm raised pork. My husband has been doing only handyman work for over a year after losing 2 jobs in a matter of months. You can and must make connections. Grow in pots on the balcony or rooftop if you have to. Go to farmers markets, (and make friends with the farmers) and don't be afraid to travel to get good food. It is more satisfying, so you eat less. I drive 45 miles for the above. Whole Foods is 125 miles, but once every 3-4 months I go. Also, join a Co-op. Ask for help-someone you know grows organic!
We've cut back a bit on meat consumption these days, as well as learned (and are STILL learning how to stretch what we have) so I can get better quality of meat. I'm very lucky these days though - about a year ago I stumbled onto a local farmer/butcher that sells his families animals - raised 90% of the year outside wandering, eating grass and what they find. In the winter he keeps the barn doors open to let them pick where they go and adds a molasses and corn mash to help make up for the negative degree temps. To my shock - his high quality meat is often CHEAPER than the local grocery store... you just have to plan ahead and buy a large enough amount and be ready to swing with what it on sale that day. Thank heavens for the gift of a freezer for my wedding!
We've managed to get our meat purchases down to about only 25% grocery, the rest humane and local. Our goal for the new year is to stop buying the factory raised stuff entirely.
The taste is staggeringly different, the quality amazing, and the practices something I can feel good about. There is a reason why they sell a t-shirt I'm considering buying the next time I go in "Friends don't let friends eat grocery store meat".
Post a Comment