The meat of the issue

This blog post has taken me ages to write. I've found the subject of eating meat a really difficult one to talk about without sounding judgemental over other people, which isn't my intention at all. The last couple of weeks especially have been a real learning experience for me regarding meat production, and it's shaped my thoughts on the matter. But it's shaped my thoughts on where I BUY meat from, not where I EAT meat from - if someone else has cooked dinner with meat that I didn't buy, I value the social importance of eating together above needing to know where the meat has come from.

Now in explanation, I've just finished reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, most of which I read whilst staying with my friend Alexa who recently raised her own pigs (which she's now eating). I would say it was one of the most important/difficult/interesting/horrifying/thought provoking books I've ever read, and I would encourage others to read it too. It's not easy reading, but it is important reading. As he says in the book "...it is an argument for vegetarianism, but it's also an argument for another wiser animal agriculture and more honourable omnivory."

This means I've been thinking a lot about meat, and whether it's ok to eat it. I'm a meat eater and always have been. I was raised in a family where my dad doesn't think it's a meal if there isn't a chunk of meat on the plate somewhere. As a result, it was normal for me to eat meat once, maybe twice a day.

Over the last year, I've been making a concious effort to eat less meat, but I still eat more than I think I do. If you asked me, I'd say I eat meat 3 times a week, but I'd say by the time you count an occasional lunchtime sandwich, or bacon buttie at the weekend, it's probably closer to 7. And that's definitely too much in my opinion.

Since starting the project, I've made an effort to switch to only eating free range chicken and pork. I was feeling pretty good about things - there was a mental "tick" in the box for the area of meat eating. But right at the start of Eating Animals, he talks a lot about what the terms Free Range and Organic mean. Or don't mean.   Turns out, that free range don't necessarily roam around outdoors, and neither do organic chickens. "Access to the outdoors" can mean a window, or a door at one end of a very large shed.

At this point in reading the book, my heart sunk. Everything I thought I knew went out of the window.

The rest of the book re-iterated things that I already kind of knew, added in a lot more information, and put it all in the cold light of day. I'm not the most well off person in the road, but it's within my budget to buy better sourced meat. So while I could previously have claimed to be ignorant about the issue or too poor to make changes, I now felt that if I didn't change my purchasing habits, it could only come down to indifference on my part.

And indifferent I am not.

Before this year, I don't think I'd ever used the word provenance. But now it's one that frequently leaves my lips, especially when talking about food. It refers to the place or source of origin of something (in this case, the food item in question). And that I've realised is the most important thing. If you buy an organic chicken from the supermarket, you have no real idea where the chicken comes from. But if you buy it from a butcher, they should be able to tell you where the chicken comes from and what the welfare standards it was raised under were (well, if they're a decent butcher they should)...

So what does this mean?

Well, supermarkets were already out, so that's not a problem. But it means I now want to go above and beyond just buying free range or organic meat, and actually bother to check whether it has access to the outdoors as well. I suffer from what I call "polite British syndrome", so I'm going to have to get over that sharpish if I'm going to start doing it.

Two places recently have impressed me though with their provenance information.

The first is Sheepdrove Organic Farm, who have a shop up in Redland. The information on their website is incredibly detailed, and their commitment to animal welfare should be applauded. I'm hoping to get up to the shop to chat to them more in the next few weeks.

The second is Better Food Company, an organic food shop in St Werburghs. Now, I do complain about BFC from time to time, due to a lot of the produce being pretty darn pricey. But their dedication to detailing their suppliers and the provenance of their produce is amazing for a shop of their size. So while I would prefer to go to the butchers for my meat, it's useful to know I can buy from BFC knowing that the meat there meets my standards.

This goes alongside my other commitments to eating less meat, and trying to eat the less desirable cuts (the pate making in Lincolnshire was a success, so I'm hoping to replicate it here soon), hopefully leading me to "more honourable omnivory"!