The Real Cost of Meat
Feb. 2nd, 2018 02:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2ntLVNM
The Real Cost of Meat:
This past weekend at the Farmers’ Market, a long-time customer of ours came to tell me a story. This customer’s sibling had recently been out to our farm to buy pork, very excited to get such high-quality meat and see the breeding sows and boar. This new customer’s spouse, a moderately well-educated person in their mid-60s, was disgusted at the thought of eating meat that “came from a farm” and refused to partake.
Wait….
What?
You won’t eat meat that comes from a farm? You’re not a vegetarian … so where is your meat coming from? Isn’t a place that raises animals by *definition* a farm? What else would you call it?
Every time I think about this conversation, I get upset. I get upset that this person is probably not even an outlier in terms of their level of knowledge about our food system, or in terms of their comfort with the processes that turn sunshine and grass into the meat on our dinner tables. I comfort myself that the customer who told me this story was equally as taken aback as I.
I want to delve a little deeper into this ignorance of the food system.
One of the foundation blocks of our farm is transparency, and the treating of our farm as a place for community and education. If you have questions about any aspect of how the food we sell you is produced, we encourage you to ask it, and we will likely take the time to have you out to the farm to see for yourself.
This openness is a double-edged sword.
A deeper understanding of their food frequently brings about a positive change in the lives of those who are open to it, bringing appreciation for the amount of work required on the part of the farmers, and the complexity of the ecological processes on the part of the soil, plants, and animals.
The other side of this is that those who are unprepared for the real costs of their food frequently throw up a wall between themselves and the food system. Their response is not to learn more and to care more deeply about the impacts of their eating, but rather to blind themselves to anything besides the end product, the food on the plate. This means that they do not even want to think about their meat as ever having been a living animal.
[more at the link]
(Your picture was not posted)
The Real Cost of Meat:
This past weekend at the Farmers’ Market, a long-time customer of ours came to tell me a story. This customer’s sibling had recently been out to our farm to buy pork, very excited to get such high-quality meat and see the breeding sows and boar. This new customer’s spouse, a moderately well-educated person in their mid-60s, was disgusted at the thought of eating meat that “came from a farm” and refused to partake.
Wait….
What?
You won’t eat meat that comes from a farm? You’re not a vegetarian … so where is your meat coming from? Isn’t a place that raises animals by *definition* a farm? What else would you call it?
Every time I think about this conversation, I get upset. I get upset that this person is probably not even an outlier in terms of their level of knowledge about our food system, or in terms of their comfort with the processes that turn sunshine and grass into the meat on our dinner tables. I comfort myself that the customer who told me this story was equally as taken aback as I.
I want to delve a little deeper into this ignorance of the food system.
One of the foundation blocks of our farm is transparency, and the treating of our farm as a place for community and education. If you have questions about any aspect of how the food we sell you is produced, we encourage you to ask it, and we will likely take the time to have you out to the farm to see for yourself.
This openness is a double-edged sword.
A deeper understanding of their food frequently brings about a positive change in the lives of those who are open to it, bringing appreciation for the amount of work required on the part of the farmers, and the complexity of the ecological processes on the part of the soil, plants, and animals.
The other side of this is that those who are unprepared for the real costs of their food frequently throw up a wall between themselves and the food system. Their response is not to learn more and to care more deeply about the impacts of their eating, but rather to blind themselves to anything besides the end product, the food on the plate. This means that they do not even want to think about their meat as ever having been a living animal.
[more at the link]
(Your picture was not posted)
no subject
Date: 2018-02-02 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-02 11:56 am (UTC)http://www.laughingearth.farm/blog/2018/2/1/the-real-cost-of-meat
No, the customer in the anecdote was pretty clearly disgusted because to them, meat comes on a styrofoam tray from the grocery store and was never an animal, and to buy something that undeniably used to be an animal is horrifying and disgusting.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-02 05:39 pm (UTC)