This post is part of my series, “Kickin’ It Old Skool: Why and How We Are Old-Fashioned” or KIOS for short.  If you’re new to the series, please read my disclaimer before continuing on.  I’m keeping a table of contents to this series here so you can see what I’ve already written about and what more there is to come.

Several years ago, Nik and I started learning about the world of industrial meat.  We learned about concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) – how the vast majority of meat animals in the USA are raised.  We learned about the razor thin edge of profit that pushes commercial animal producers to feed their animals antibiotics they don’t need so that they’ll grow bigger faster.  We learned about the living conditions that the animals were forced to live in, for their entire lives, until they were brutally and inhumanely slaughtered.

We learned about the unnatural food that animals are fed, food that causes them to grow large quickly but that also causes their bodies to putrefy and change from the inside out, creating deadly bacteria strains that can infect humans.

We learned more than enough to know that we wanted to remove ourselves from the cycle of torture, pollution, and egregious waste of resources that industrial and mass-produced meat perpetuates.  We could no longer, in good conscience, spend our money on a product that was so degrading to the animals, the workers, and the environment.

Essentially, this meant that we would only buy meat from farmers (local or otherwise) we trusted to raise their animals humanely, in the way that animals are meant to live.  We didn’t want to rely on labels such as “grass-fed” or “free-range”, because those labels are loosely regulated and in many cases, useless in telling you the truth about how the animals are raised.

It is far more expensive to buy meat this way than from the grocery store (often at least 2-3 times as expensive.)  We decided that we would prefer to not eat meat than buy the industrially-produced stuff that is sold everywhere.  If buying responsible meat meant that we ate half as much meat as we did before, then so be it.

This means that we have changed the way we eat.  We buy much less meat and then stretch that meat as far as we can.  For us, meat is usually more of an accent to our meal than the main idea.  This is the way the vast majority of the world eats meat.

Four years later, I am still learning how to stretch our meat even farther.  Even when we do eat a meat-heavy main dish like hamburgers, we usually make 4-5 hamburgers from a pound of meat, meaning that our hamburgers are much smaller than a typical burger.  We also strive for many meals a week that do not contain any meat at all.  We eat way more beans and lentils than we used to.

We are still not perfect in this regard.  Eating out has been difficult for us.  We have friends who will only eat vegetarian meals (even at restaurants or out with friends) unless they are sure of the source of the meat they are eating.  We’re not there yet (and I’m not sure if we want to get that far).  I still think we eat more meat than we need to.  We don’t eat soy (more on that next week) and, as with eggs, I have struggled to find consistent sources of protein for my pregnant/lactating body that keep me feeling healthy and whole.

We do eat fish and I’ll also write about that next week.

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Where we buy our meat:  We buy most of our meat (beef, pork, chicken) from the same farmer as our milk and eggs.  Additionally, when we splurge on some lamb, we buy that from the farmers’ market.  Finally, we’ve been blessed by friends who give us venison from time to time.

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The topic of industrial meat is vast.  If you’d like to learn more, here are several good places to start:

Food Inc. (a documentary film)

Power Steer (an article by Michael Pollan)

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Understanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Their Impact on Communities (PDF)