7 ms·

Locally sourced meat tends to be grass-fed or at least grass finished. It also tends to have WAY better living conditions than any commercial plant. A happy ani

by dzlobin 17y ago

Locally sourced meat tends to be grass-fed or at least grass finished. It also tends to have WAY better living conditions than any commercial plant. A happy animal is a tasty animal. I highly suggest you watch Food inc. :-)

ars 17y ago
What if I live near a "commercial" plant, so it's local to me? Local is nonsense. If you want grass finished say so. Don't say local. And calling it commercial is misleading too, since grass finished is also commercial.
- ecuzzillo 17y ago
  Empirically, Giant Eagle (the crap chain supermarket in PA) beef tastes like crap, and local butcher beef tastes really good. Locality is a good proxy for people caring about food tasting good, and for not going through enormous horrible disease-ridden meat-packing plants. The latter tends to produce meat that tastes bad and periodically makes you sick.
  - wooster 17y ago
    AFAIK, there are only 4 cattle slaughterhouses in PA: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/downloads/slaughter_list.pdf http://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/downloads/slaughter_... Only one of the 4 is not owned by Cargill or JBS. Unless your beef vendor is taking delivery on whole carcasses and then packing it themselves, the beef is probably packed at the slaughterhouse, as well.
    - ecuzzillo 17y ago
      Heh. The local butcher whose very happy meat I ate actually was in the Ferry Plaza in SF. But really, I don't know if the goodness in non-Giant-Eagle meat has anything to do with the meat packing industry. I just was trying to convince ars that food people aren't being totally dumb when they say that local is often better than GEagle equivalents.
    - bmj 17y ago
      The beef we purchased directly from a farmer (all cows are 100% pastured and grass-fed) are processed and packed by Cheplic in Finleyville, PA. Of course, the farmer isn't processing an obscene amount of cattle each year, either, and he only sells directly to consumers, face-to-face, so a small butcher can actually handle that sort of volume.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      I haven't looked into buying local beef (I'm in Chicago and have good sources for high-quality beef), but I have done the legwork on pork, and all of the farms I can order from outsource "processing" and add a couple bucks per pound to the cost of the meat to cover it. I don't think slaughterhouse ownership is any kind of smoking gun.
      - cynicalkane 17y ago
        I live in Chicago. What are your sources of high-quality beef?
        tptacek 17y ago
        Fox & Obel, Paulina - first two that come to mind.
    - wooster 17y ago
      Since I can't actually respond to any of you directly (thanks HN commenting code!)... [ugh. now the reply links are there, my bad?] It's illegal to resell beef to consumers which wasn't slaughtered at a facility with a USDA inspector. If you buy the whole animal, like bmj does, then it can be slaughtered by anyone who knows what they're doing and packed (cut and wrapped) by any competent butcher. You then cannot resell that meat (and, in fact, all of the packaging should have not for retail stamps on it). Now, personally, having actually toured a slaughterhouse (the one in Fresno, CA), I've got no problem with them. I definitely take issue with the "enormous horrible disease-ridden" characterization. Most of the food safety problems have been artifacts of the high volume hamburger production process. If you buy steaks, or even hamburgers made by butchers from whole cuts of meat, you should be in the clear. I was merely trying to point out, somewhat obliquely, that unless you're slaughtering an animal you own and then buying all of the cut and wrapped meat, any beef you buy in the US was slaughtered at a huge slaughterhouse. That's just the reality of the situation, and it's a combination of regulations intended to keep you safe (having a USDA inspector on site is really, really expensive) and the continued consolidation of the packing industry (enabled by the government, NIMBY organizations, environmental groups, etc). At the same time, as an Nth generation cattle rancher (where N > 4), I don't want to discourage anyone from buying locally raised beef. ;-)
  - jsolson 17y ago
    Hah. If you think Giant Eagle is crap, you should step into a Kroger sometime. I grew up around Pittsburgh, then moved to Atlanta for school ~9 years ago. Talk about a substantial drop in supermarket quality...
- ErrantX 17y ago
  you wont find the "commercial plant" selling locally. You could go further afield for your meat (I do myself actually) but a "local producer" is certainly the style your after.
- blasdel 17y ago
  Until the whole "USDA Organic" program came along, 'organic' was a reasonable (if inane) proxy for decent-tasting produce. The lack of pesticides never had much to do with the quality, except that it attracted people with graduate degrees to farmwork. The 'local' thing has been a reasonably successful attempt at taking the place of 'organic' as a proxy marker for non-crap. It has the nice property of still mostly working after being coopted by the big supermarket chains. It's just as bullshit, if not moreso, but it's useful bullshit.
  - peterb 17y ago
    I like to buy local simply because I like Dwight (my Angus beef farmer), Steve (my lamb guy) and the chicken lady down the street (I forget her name). Seriously, these are interesting people who work hard at their craft and have to perform some serious "hacks" to get their work done (how do you keep coyotes out of the hen house?). I like them, I like them in the neighborhood, and they inspire me for my own work. I'm willing to pay more for that ... but in reality only the chickens are more expensive. Everything else is cheaper ... but you can't just go to Dwight at 6:30pm nad pick up a steak for dinner. You have to plan around the slaughter and freeze stuff.
- bmj 17y ago
  But what if I am buying locally raised and processed grass-fed beef? Local is hardly nonsense. Every two weeks I meet the guy actually raising the animals to buy our food (beef, chicken, milk, cheese, eggs). I can't think of a more appropriate way to do business with something as important as what I put in my body.
jff 17y ago
I grew up on a cattle farm. Is 3,000 head a "plant"? Was it evil because there was an "Inc" on the end of the name? A happy animal is indeed a tasty animal. That's why we raise cattle in dry pens (away from predators) with abundant fresh water and feed them carefully formulated food twice a day. Our cattle get better dietary planning than I do; they don't eat pure corn (as the term "corn-fed" might lead you to believe), they eat a mix including alfalfa, grass hay, corn, barley, silage, cannery surplus apples, oats, molasses, and other ingredients. The fact is, big or small, any cattleman is going to try and keep the conditions as good as possible. If your animals are standing in 2 feet of mud and eating moldy hay, they're not going to produce and you're not going to make money. Also, nobody goes into the livestock business hating the animals--we who grew up on farms probably have a better understanding and empathy for livestock than your average city-dweller, and we want to act kindly toward them. As for grass feeding, you want to know something? One of the biggest grass-fed beef producers back home only eats corn-fed beef. Corn-fed beef is more extensively marbled and more tender. Like organic produce, grass-fed beef is a niche market for people who think something tastes better because it has a crunchy image and damn the price/scalability/sustainability.
- illumin8 17y ago
  Call it what you want, but it's still a factory farm. Cattle are fattened on a corn-based diet to a point where they have extreme problems like heart disease and obesity that would normally kill an animal if it wasn't destined for the slaughterhouse already. Your beef still has to be treated and bathed in an ammonia solution to kill the E. Cohli that is everywhere due to the cattle living in their own excrement. Or how do you deal with the problem of manure in the pens? Surely you can't keep an animal confined in a cage it's whole life and expect it to shit somewhere else? Watch Food Inc. You will never want to eat "corn-fed" beef again.
  - jff 17y ago
    You deal with the problem of manure in the pens by clearing them out regularly. The pens are large; just bring in a tractor and scrape the pen, then give the manure to some farmer for his fields. We also keep a large "mound" of dirt in the middle of the pens so when it rains, the cattle have a place they can stand out of the mud. These aren't cages, they're large pens, starting at about the size of a football field and going up. A grass-fed animal is still going to be walking in, sleeping on, and eating manure; in fact, grazing cattle often look dirtier than ours. I'm not exactly sure how watching a sensationalist film is going to erase the 18 years of animal husbandry experience I've accumulated. I've assisted in slaughtering cattle, sheep, and pigs, I've shoveled every kind of manure imaginable, I've birthed sheep (starting at about age 5), I've hauled the inevitable dead animals, I've assisted in various basic surgical and veterinary operations. I've been to numerous other feedlots and dairies, and having observed all these things I am quite happy and secure in eating beef and drinking milk.

by dzlobin 17y ago

ars 17y ago

What if I live near a "commercial" plant, so it's local to me? Local is nonsense. If you want grass finished say so. Don't say local. And calling it commercial is misleading too, since grass finished is also commercial.

ecuzzillo 17y ago
Empirically, Giant Eagle (the crap chain supermarket in PA) beef tastes like crap, and local butcher beef tastes really good. Locality is a good proxy for people caring about food tasting good, and for not going through enormous horrible disease-ridden meat-packing plants. The latter tends to produce meat that tastes bad and periodically makes you sick.
- wooster 17y ago
  AFAIK, there are only 4 cattle slaughterhouses in PA: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/downloads/slaughter_list.pdf http://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/downloads/slaughter_... Only one of the 4 is not owned by Cargill or JBS. Unless your beef vendor is taking delivery on whole carcasses and then packing it themselves, the beef is probably packed at the slaughterhouse, as well.
  - ecuzzillo 17y ago
    Heh. The local butcher whose very happy meat I ate actually was in the Ferry Plaza in SF. But really, I don't know if the goodness in non-Giant-Eagle meat has anything to do with the meat packing industry. I just was trying to convince ars that food people aren't being totally dumb when they say that local is often better than GEagle equivalents.
  - bmj 17y ago
    The beef we purchased directly from a farmer (all cows are 100% pastured and grass-fed) are processed and packed by Cheplic in Finleyville, PA. Of course, the farmer isn't processing an obscene amount of cattle each year, either, and he only sells directly to consumers, face-to-face, so a small butcher can actually handle that sort of volume.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    I haven't looked into buying local beef (I'm in Chicago and have good sources for high-quality beef), but I have done the legwork on pork, and all of the farms I can order from outsource "processing" and add a couple bucks per pound to the cost of the meat to cover it. I don't think slaughterhouse ownership is any kind of smoking gun.
    - cynicalkane 17y ago
      I live in Chicago. What are your sources of high-quality beef?
      - tptacek 17y ago
        Fox & Obel, Paulina - first two that come to mind.
  - wooster 17y ago
    Since I can't actually respond to any of you directly (thanks HN commenting code!)... [ugh. now the reply links are there, my bad?] It's illegal to resell beef to consumers which wasn't slaughtered at a facility with a USDA inspector. If you buy the whole animal, like bmj does, then it can be slaughtered by anyone who knows what they're doing and packed (cut and wrapped) by any competent butcher. You then cannot resell that meat (and, in fact, all of the packaging should have not for retail stamps on it). Now, personally, having actually toured a slaughterhouse (the one in Fresno, CA), I've got no problem with them. I definitely take issue with the "enormous horrible disease-ridden" characterization. Most of the food safety problems have been artifacts of the high volume hamburger production process. If you buy steaks, or even hamburgers made by butchers from whole cuts of meat, you should be in the clear. I was merely trying to point out, somewhat obliquely, that unless you're slaughtering an animal you own and then buying all of the cut and wrapped meat, any beef you buy in the US was slaughtered at a huge slaughterhouse. That's just the reality of the situation, and it's a combination of regulations intended to keep you safe (having a USDA inspector on site is really, really expensive) and the continued consolidation of the packing industry (enabled by the government, NIMBY organizations, environmental groups, etc). At the same time, as an Nth generation cattle rancher (where N > 4), I don't want to discourage anyone from buying locally raised beef. ;-)
- jsolson 17y ago
  Hah. If you think Giant Eagle is crap, you should step into a Kroger sometime. I grew up around Pittsburgh, then moved to Atlanta for school ~9 years ago. Talk about a substantial drop in supermarket quality...
ErrantX 17y ago
you wont find the "commercial plant" selling locally. You could go further afield for your meat (I do myself actually) but a "local producer" is certainly the style your after.
blasdel 17y ago
Until the whole "USDA Organic" program came along, 'organic' was a reasonable (if inane) proxy for decent-tasting produce. The lack of pesticides never had much to do with the quality, except that it attracted people with graduate degrees to farmwork. The 'local' thing has been a reasonably successful attempt at taking the place of 'organic' as a proxy marker for non-crap. It has the nice property of still mostly working after being coopted by the big supermarket chains. It's just as bullshit, if not moreso, but it's useful bullshit.
- peterb 17y ago
  I like to buy local simply because I like Dwight (my Angus beef farmer), Steve (my lamb guy) and the chicken lady down the street (I forget her name). Seriously, these are interesting people who work hard at their craft and have to perform some serious "hacks" to get their work done (how do you keep coyotes out of the hen house?). I like them, I like them in the neighborhood, and they inspire me for my own work. I'm willing to pay more for that ... but in reality only the chickens are more expensive. Everything else is cheaper ... but you can't just go to Dwight at 6:30pm nad pick up a steak for dinner. You have to plan around the slaughter and freeze stuff.
bmj 17y ago
But what if I am buying locally raised and processed grass-fed beef? Local is hardly nonsense. Every two weeks I meet the guy actually raising the animals to buy our food (beef, chicken, milk, cheese, eggs). I can't think of a more appropriate way to do business with something as important as what I put in my body.

jff 17y ago

I grew up on a cattle farm. Is 3,000 head a "plant"? Was it evil because there was an "Inc" on the end of the name? A happy animal is indeed a tasty animal. That's why we raise cattle in dry pens (away from predators) with abundant fresh water and feed them carefully formulated food twice a day. Our cattle get better dietary planning than I do; they don't eat pure corn (as the term "corn-fed" might lead you to believe), they eat a mix including alfalfa, grass hay, corn, barley, silage, cannery surplus apples, oats, molasses, and other ingredients. The fact is, big or small, any cattleman is going to try and keep the conditions as good as possible. If your animals are standing in 2 feet of mud and eating moldy hay, they're not going to produce and you're not going to make money. Also, nobody goes into the livestock business hating the animals--we who grew up on farms probably have a better understanding and empathy for livestock than your average city-dweller, and we want to act kindly toward them. As for grass feeding, you want to know something? One of the biggest grass-fed beef producers back home only eats corn-fed beef. Corn-fed beef is more extensively marbled and more tender. Like organic produce, grass-fed beef is a niche market for people who think something tastes better because it has a crunchy image and damn the price/scalability/sustainability.

illumin8 17y ago
Call it what you want, but it's still a factory farm. Cattle are fattened on a corn-based diet to a point where they have extreme problems like heart disease and obesity that would normally kill an animal if it wasn't destined for the slaughterhouse already. Your beef still has to be treated and bathed in an ammonia solution to kill the E. Cohli that is everywhere due to the cattle living in their own excrement. Or how do you deal with the problem of manure in the pens? Surely you can't keep an animal confined in a cage it's whole life and expect it to shit somewhere else? Watch Food Inc. You will never want to eat "corn-fed" beef again.
- jff 17y ago
  You deal with the problem of manure in the pens by clearing them out regularly. The pens are large; just bring in a tractor and scrape the pen, then give the manure to some farmer for his fields. We also keep a large "mound" of dirt in the middle of the pens so when it rains, the cattle have a place they can stand out of the mud. These aren't cages, they're large pens, starting at about the size of a football field and going up. A grass-fed animal is still going to be walking in, sleeping on, and eating manure; in fact, grazing cattle often look dirtier than ours. I'm not exactly sure how watching a sensationalist film is going to erase the 18 years of animal husbandry experience I've accumulated. I've assisted in slaughtering cattle, sheep, and pigs, I've shoveled every kind of manure imaginable, I've birthed sheep (starting at about age 5), I've hauled the inevitable dead animals, I've assisted in various basic surgical and veterinary operations. I've been to numerous other feedlots and dairies, and having observed all these things I am quite happy and secure in eating beef and drinking milk.