16 ms·

I've gone vegetarian, except for a single grass fed animal I bought from a local farmer. (I live in a city, it was easier than I thought it would be to connect

• bluntfang 8y ago
  >free from cruelty. Do you mind if I ask what your requirements for this are? At the end of the day, isn't ending life cruel, no matter the means?
  • ZeroFries 8y ago
    If the animal is free from suffering, including lacking awareness of what's happening during the killing, that's as free from cruelty as you can get. If lacking life is what's cruel, then vegetarianism doesn't really solve that problem, since the animal would never be born without farming.
    • bluntfang 8y ago
      > If the animal is free from suffering, including lacking awareness of what's happening during the killing How do you measure this? How do you know for certain that what you're eating had no idea it was about to die when it did? How do you know animals don't experience existential suffering, similar to how humans experience it? Why do you believe that humans are in control of their livestock's emotional state, even when they provide the best environment for them?
      • Pfhreak 8y ago
        You can't know. You can know what acute suffering looks like and try to avoid it. You can observe animal behavior and say, "They appear not to be suffering from existential dread beyond what they would in the wild", you may be able to measure cortisol levels in the meat. But you'll never know for sure.
    • delecti 8y ago
      Lacking life isn't a remotely useful metric for cruelty, or every minute decision anyone has ever made is responsible for an infinite number of states of the universe not happening.
      • lucb1e 8y ago
        They're not saying that this is a logical metric, they're saying that if that is your metric, then vegetarianism won't help you.
        • delecti 8y ago
          But they were the first one to mention anything resembling that metric. There's no reason to bring it up unless you think someone uses that metric, or alternatively as a straw man to argue against.
    • PerfectElement 8y ago
      I don't think lacking life has ever been an argument vegetarians use. Once consciousness emerges, there is an innate desire to remain alive and to be free from suffering. Even if we could give animals a wonderful life in our current capitalist system, and then kill them without their awareness, we'd still need to justify (from a philosophical standpoint) why it would be immoral to do the same with a human animal.
      • lucb1e 8y ago
        > I don't think lacking life has ever been an argument vegetarians use. That would make sense, since GP said: > If lacking life is what's cruel, then vegetarianism doesn't really solve that problem. So if vegetarians used the argument that lacking life is cruel, then vegetarianism would be cruel, right? It makes perfect sense (given GP's point) that they don't use that argument. You're the third replyer that writes as if they disagree about this while making the same point. I'm wondering if I'm reading this wrong, or if GP edited their comment just before I loaded the page.
        • PerfectElement 8y ago
          The GP implied that vegetarians use the logic "ending life is cruel" as a basis for their stance.
      • ZeroFries 8y ago
        I suppose that argument could be used to justify killing some hermit unbeknownst to them. Most people, however, are connected socially, and killing them would make others suffer.
    • bronson 8y ago
      > If lacking life is what's cruel Nobody's arguing this, are they? If you do believe this, then I hope you're breeding rats, rabbits, and insects as fast as possible!
      • lucb1e 8y ago
        I think you two agree. They said that if that is your definition of cruelty, then vegetarianism can't help you. Not that the lack of life is cruel. You're being cynical with someone who didn't even say one side was right and the other is wrong.
        • bronson 8y ago
          But nobody has EVER argued that, have they? I'm saying it's a pointless statement and trying to demonstrate its ridiculousness.
  • Pfhreak 8y ago
    I'm the first one to admit that the line is fuzzy. I read this story [1] by Glenn Greenwald (of Snowden interview fame), and I realized that I was not ok with gestation crates for pigs, or the practices espoused by the industrial farming of any animal. I do not object to raising animals and eating them, but I do object to essentially keeping them in brutal, squalid conditions. Animals should have access to the outdoors, be allowed to pursue their own social connections, have enough space to stretch and exercise, have feed that's natural and high quality, and generally exist in a comfortable way. Totally acknowledge that's my own definition. It's an arbitrary line in the sand to say, "Killing an animal is ok, causing suffering to an animal before killing it is not". I just... read the article and couldn't stomach letting any of my money flow to companies that would think that sort of behavior was ok. [1] https://theintercept.com/2017/10/05/factory-farms-fbi-missing-piglets-animal-rights-glenn-greenwald/ https://theintercept.com/2017/10/05/factory-farms-fbi-missin...
    • firethief 8y ago
      That theoretical distinction makes sense to me, but I don't see how it would be possible to support one kind of animal agriculture and not the other with purchasing habits. When most consumers don't distinguish provenance, demand for animal products is fungible.
      • Pfhreak 8y ago
        What I did: stop purchasing meat from the supermarket. Stop eating meat at restaurants. Find a local farmer and source a whole animal to split with your friends. Visit the farm, meet the farmer. A whole beef is a few thousand dollars, and splits nicely into 8ths. We spent, I believe, ~$6.50/lb for organic, grass fed beef. It's more time and cost up front, but now we have a freezer full of meat to draw from when we need to. If I eat meat, it's from that one animal. We don't eat meat often at home.
        • EliRivers 8y ago
          Apropos of just shootin' the breeze, could you have also met the animal? I wonder if that would make a further difference. I eat meat, but I put my hand up and say that if I ordered a steak in a restaurant and they brought out the cow and gave me a rock, and I had to beat the cow to death with the rock myself, I think I'd change my order. I'm not trying to make any points here; just freewheeling in conversation with what I know about myself.
  • elhudy 8y ago
    Not sure what OPs requirements are, but mine are along these lines: "If animals like free-range cows have lives that are not worth living, almost all wild animals could plausibly be thought to also have lives that are worse than non-existence. Nature is often romanticised as a well-balanced idyll, so this may seem counter-intuitive. But extreme forms of suffering like starvation, dehydration, or being eaten alive by a predator are much more common in wild animals than farm animals. Crocodiles and hyenas disembowel their prey before killing them[1]. In birds, diseases like avian salmonellosis produce excruciating symptoms in the final days of life, such as depression, shivering, loss of appetite, and just before death, blindness, incoordination, staggering, tremor and convulsions.[2] While a farmed animal like a free-range cow has to endure some confinement and a premature and potentially painful death (stunning sometimes fails), a wild animal may suffer comparable experiences, such as surviving a cold winter or having to fear predators, while additionally undergoing the aforementioned extreme suffering[3]." -Thomas Sittler. "How Should Vegetarians Actually Live?"
    • meowface 8y ago
      His point about wild animals is very accurate, but that's not considering that animals bred in captivity ("free"-range or otherwise) would not have been if not for meat demand. It's debatable whether non-existence is preferable to being raised and then killed, but the dichotomy isn't between wild animals vs. free-range animals. I think this is more an argument for an eventual plan to deal with wild animal suffering (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_animal_suffering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_animal_suffering), not an argument that whatever we do to free-range animals is acceptable because it's no worse than the suffering wild animals experience. Of course it's not very pragmatic for humanity to make a dent in that problem in the near future, especially without causing externalities, but just because it's hard doesn't mean the alternative is to say "they all have shit lives anyway, who cares what we do with them?"
      • elhudy 8y ago
        >His point about wild animals is very accurate, but that's not considering that animals bred in captivity ("free"-range or otherwise) would not have been if not for meat demand. It's debatable whether non-existence is preferable to being raised and then killed, but the dichotomy isn't between wild animals vs. free-range animals The idea is is as follows. Might be worth just reading the article: "If ethical vegetarians believed animals have lives that are unpleasant but still better than non-existence, they would focus on reducing harm to these animals without reducing their numbers, for instance by supporting humane slaughter or buying meat from free-range cows. I will argue that if vegetarians were to apply this principle consistently, wild animal suffering would dominate their concerns, and may lead them to be stringent anti-environmentalists." http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2016/03/oxford-uehiro-prize-in-practical-ethics-how-should-vegetarians-actually-live-a-reply-to-xavier-cohen-written-by-thomas-sittler/ http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2016/03/oxford-uehiro-p...
  • WhompingWindows 8y ago
    Ending life is not necessarily cruel...how about for veterinarians utilizing euthanasia? Let's say you have an animal that's 95% going to die sometime within 12-24 hours. If your client can pay $5000, which they can't usually, the chances improve to 50% chance of living. In most cases, for money or for suffering, euthanasia is the least cruel option, as it's vastly more affordable and a painless, harmless process.
    • ppseafield 8y ago
      Euthanasia and factory farming are apples and oranges. Cows can live up to 20 years, but are often killed at 18-24 months. They aren't killed with euthanasia, but panicked and terrified, with bolts to the skull and slit throats, right after seeing several other cows killed that way. Their lives before that are often miserable to keep costs down. Is that the least cruel option?
      • virtuallynathan 8y ago
        Cows aren't panicked and terrified, the hormone release from that would result in poor quality meat that has to be discarded. The slaughterhouses are humanely designed thanks to people like Temple Grandin. The cows are calm until the end.
        • goldenkey 8y ago
          "This is fine!" https://i.imgur.com/c4jt321.png https://i.imgur.com/c4jt321.png
    • Falling3 8y ago
      I don't think anyone is saying ending life is necessarily cruel. We're saying unnecessarily ending life is cruel.
  • wickoff 8y ago
    It's not like the animal is going to live forever if you don't kill it. In nature animals are often eaten alive by predators, die from disease, starvation and get horribly injured in competition for mates. A free range animal that's being humanely put down by a farmer has a much more pleasant life. If you go down this rabbit hole deep enough you can begin to question whether life itself should exist.
    • bluntfang 8y ago
      What we do know for sure is that the animal would not have lived the same life if it weren't captive. >A free range animal that's being humanely put down by a farmer has a much more pleasant life. I don't think we can objectively say this. We have no idea what these animals want. Our humanity for these animals lives is nothing short of projection, purely because we have no idea what they want.
      • 0x54D5 8y ago
        What they want is pretty obvious if you've ever actually been around any of these animals. They want what you want: food, sex, comfort, entertainment - in that order.
      • pembrook 8y ago
        We can 100% objectively say this. Animals like chickens lack self awareness and the ability for future planning. They operate on instinct. We can prove this. Thus, they also don't know what they want--outside of the immediate satisfaction of an instinctual urge. They do feel pain and hunger however. In the wild, these animals suffer more pain and hunger. In free range "captivity" they suffer less. It's as simple as that. I swear most of the arguments against proper free range farming are grounded in either: a) A fallacious appeal to nature, ie. the false presumption that just because something is "natural" it is automatically better or b) Projection of human awareness and emotional intelligence onto other species Are factory farms more cruel to animals than proper free range farming? Yes. Is nature more cruel to animals than proper free range farming? Yes.
        • 8y ago
  • DamnYuppie 8y ago
    I guess this is a good place for a rant for some down votes. The concept that death is cruel is ridiculous to me. EVRYTHING DIES, every animal in nature either dies of starvation, freezing to death, dies in a conflict with their own species for breeding rights, or gets to be attacked and eaten alive by a predator. The entirety of nature revolves around life and death struggles. Dying isn't cruel, to think so is a rejection of nature itself. That being said there are quicker and better ways of taking an animals life, the quicker and less painful the better. I will categorically state that for me how they live is more important than how they die. I don't agree with many of the practices in the production of chicken, pigs, cows, and yes even farmed fish and generally try to avoid them.
    • geofft 8y ago
      Some further thoughts in two different directions (I don't personally have a settled opinion here): 1. Not only does everything die, many things naturally die as food. Being a victim of carnivores is a perfectly normal thing in nature. So even if you don't feel comfortable justifying killing animals in general with "everything dies," it should certainly justify killing animals for food. (BTW, my understanding is that halal- or kosher-certified meats are slaughtered very humanely/painlessly, so if you're worried about suffering and not death, sticking to those isn't a bad choice.) 2. Although things happen in nature, that doesn't mean they're not cruel, and as humans, we have the option of being more humane than nature. While many early humans would also have starved, frozen to death, or been eaten alive, we think it's pretty not great for modern-day humans to be subject to such a fate and we often think it's a moral obligation for society to prevent that from happening. So why should we not also save animals from their fate in nature instead of perpetuating it?
    • infruset 8y ago
      How does your argument not apply to eating human beings, say those who would objectively have had a painful life, by first giving them a quality life before slaughtering them?
      • goldenkey 8y ago
        Seems pretty fair. Imagine you are in the Matrix and eventually when you die, it wasn't actually your real death, it was the harvesting of your meat in the real universe above. They gave you a pretty decent ride, eh? At some point we all have to admit we don't have full control of the universe - and we hope the universe will treat us kindly. Unfortunately, the universe itself, and the powerful within it, can become muddled - when men determines fate of others, as if they are Gods, then one must question their allegiance to `going with the flow.` It seems like most of us are only happy going with the flow of the all-powerful universe, not his second rate stooges... Pretty sure most vegetarian philosophy comes down to - if you want to act like a God when it comes to determining other's fates, be the God you'd want for yourself.
  • telesilla 8y ago
    There is a distinct difference between being born naturally, or living a kind life free range, and suffering for a short period, than being bred for industrial purposes. Industrial breeding usually means male and females of the species are separated and artificially inseminated, the mothers are separated from their offspring, male animals are routinely killed or used for young meat, female animals are forced into often crowded conditions and given antibiotics and hormones to grow faster. This is not the pleasant life, it is slavery from the beginning with a most cruel end.
    • cageface 8y ago
      Not to mention that the breeds we raise for mass production are now Frankenstein creations that could never survive in the wild. A lot of broiler chickens can’t even walk because they’re so top heavy.
  • megablast 8y ago
    Do you drive? If so you are partly responsible for over 2 million world wide deaths a year. Many times that in number of animals cruely killed.
• telesilla 8y ago
  I'm with you. I haven't eaten red meat or birds for going on 25 years now and though I do enjoy a good salmon burger, I honestly prefer a beyond burger when I can find one (trying to cut down on the fish, for health and over-fishing reasons).
  • Pfhreak 8y ago
    I still periodically eat meat, as I mentioned I did work with a local farmer to buy a whole beef. But it's something special and deliberate -- should we make one of our roasts? We don't have very many, so each one is precious. We use all the bones we could get to make stock, etc. Try to really appreciate the one animal we've had harvested for our family, but still eat vegetarian or vegan on the vast majority of days (90-95%+ of our meals are probably vegetarian these days.)
    • telesilla 8y ago
      I would love it so much if there were a majority of meat-eaters like you. I personally am not against meat-eating: only unnecessary suffering as you have explained well in your parent post. I have great respect for those like you, who truly take care to both limit their intake, and source their meat from genuine cruelty-free farms.
      • windexh8er 8y ago
        This. I haven't eaten red or white meat since January of 2018. I don't mind people eating it, I don't cast judgement and I try not to have my personal choice influence large group decisions on where to eat. But people who eat meat egregiously from mass production sources do have choices and I wish more people thought about the options and consequences, even if minor. The OPs approach saves so much pollution and risk to our environment, I commend that and truly respect the conscious decision to bring meat back to a point of appreciation and delicacy vs right to copious overconsumption in the name of more protein.
      • chr1 8y ago
        Would you support creation of genetically modified cows with no brain/very small brain so that they don't feel any pain?
• dsl 8y ago
  "Published figures suggest that, in Australia, producing wheat and other grains results in: at least 25 times more sentient animals being killed per kilogram of useable protein" http://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-theres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands-4659 http://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-ther...
  • 8ytecoder 8y ago
    WTF, most animals that are farmed are fed agricultural produce - crops that are cultivated. It's simple math that it's inefficient to grow crops -> feed the animals -> eat the animals. There's efficiency loss at every step. Are you seriously claiming that eating meat is better than being vegetarian?
    • dsl 8y ago
      Eating grazing animals is more humane per unit of protein than industrial crops or factory farming.
      • sf_rob 8y ago
        The vast majority of meat is not 100% grazed. You have a point, but it's largely a theoretical one. If one can find a source of meat that is 100% naturally grazed then they could probably go through similar effort to eat non-meat products produced in minimally destructive ways.
      • cageface 8y ago
        It’s not possible to meet even current demands for beef by free grazing animals. There’s a reason 70% of American cows are fed grain in lots. Not to mention the greenhouse gas effect of that many cows, which is much higher for grazing cattle.
        • deleted 8y ago
          [deleted]
        • 8y ago
• ajharrison 8y ago
  So you haven’t gone vegetarian then - you just don’t eat meat a lot.
  • Pfhreak 8y ago
    I disagree. My eating choices have resulted in the deliberate slaughter of a single animal (to the best of my ability to track this) over a 1.5 year period. I've refused all meat except the meat that comes from that animal, and even then I eat it only rarely. I will refuse meat from other sources -- friends and family, restaurants, prepackaged foods, cheeses with rennet, gelatin, etc. Being a vegetarian or not has fuzzy boundaries and many denominations. It's much, much simpler for everyone involved to view me as vegetarian, even if it's not a strict, 100% no meat for years definition.
    • GrzegorzWidla 8y ago
      Half of cow meat in UK comes from used dairy cows. Every dairy cow has to give birth 8-12 times and over half of those born calfs are boys. As they are no use otherwise, they get slaughtered immediately after they are born for their tender meat. By eating diary of any kind you're doing as much harm to animals as you'd by directly buying steak. You're also doing more harm to your body as quality meat is better for health (still bad) than cheese.
• dzhiurgis 8y ago
  I still find none of the vege meals are as satisfying as plain old chicken, etc. Tofu is flimsy, tempeh kinda goes that direction, but not close. Fake burgers are absolutely gross and near vomit inducing. Quinoa has weird flavour of ashes or smth. Some indian peas, etc are OK, but I find it's best to stick to pure vege meals (not substitutes) and eat meat when I want to. I'm looking out for stem cell meat to come out.
  • Pfhreak 8y ago
    There was a mindset shift similar to what you describe that made it easier for me -- stop pursuing replacements for the meat in the dishes you already eat, and instead discover new dishes. Indian and Thai cooking, for instance, has a long history of delicious vegetarian dishes. Look at some of the rich foods developed by some of the poorest people and there's a whole culinary world there. Once I did that, and understood how to spice ingredients, then I circled back to my previous habits a bit.
    • ip26 8y ago
      Agreed, you have to stop trying to find a vegan steak that bleeds like the real thing, that's really critical to finding great veg & vegan food (science experiments like beyond meat aside) I've gone heavy on mediterranean style cooking, which is not strictly vegetarian, but might use 1-2oz of meat for a whole dish. Meat just kind of dwindled on our shopping list. It's delicious food, and it's really hard to go back to meat & potatoes now. Indian is incredibly good, but it's been harder to learn.
  • MaxLeiter 8y ago
    Have you tried the Impossible burger? I've had it at some restaurants (lots of other flavors at play) and it feels like meat, and with the other flavors it tastes very similar to a burger.
  • cheeze 8y ago
    The problem that I have is generally a social one. I live in a pretty progressive city, but even then it's a pain in the ass to order veg at many restaurants and get anything that doesn't suck. Many places do have at least one solid option, but there are a ton where a veg offering is still just an afterthought. And I'm in one of the most veg friendly cities in America. Eating out in many many places is practically impossible as a vegetarian. Especially many parts of Europe.
• adrianhel 8y ago
  This is why I love being Norwegian. Sustainable and cruelty free farming is the norm. So personally I wont stop eating regular meat until lab meat becomes available.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• JohnFen 8y ago
  > (I live in a city, it was easier than I thought it would be to connect with a farmer out in the rural part of my state.) I wish that more people would realize how easy this is! Plus, the quality of the meat you'll get (even if you aren't overtly buying the best possible) simply blows anything you find in the supermarket away. Here's what I've been doing with 4 friends for years now: every year, we go in on buying an entire cow from a local rancher. We have it butchered and packaged, then we each get a quarter. That's a huge amount of meat (a single cow gives us in the neighborhood of 600 lbs of butchered beef) -- enough to last for a year, including giving some away as gifts. I swear, even the hamburger from that is far superior to the best cuts I've had elsewhere. To do it our way requires buying a large freezer, of course.
  • dfischer 8y ago
    I've been using www.crowdcow.com and have been very happy with the quality and cost. It lasts a while.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • theNJR 8y ago
    How much is the full cow? Does the rancher vacuum seal the individual pieces for you, or do you pick up 600lbs of meat and have a meat packing party? Any other details?
    • SECProto 8y ago
      I've been involved in this from a relative and gotten it wrapped in butcher paper (waxed one side). It works pretty well at keeping the moisture sealed (avoiding freezer burn), but you could do vacuum sealing (or maybe even just ziplock bagging) for some improvement.
    • JohnFen 8y ago
      Because I'm concerned with the end price including butchering, my memory of the cost breakdown details is not ironclad. Take these numbers with a grain of salt. The price varies from year to year, but we tend pay in the neighborhood of $3-$4/lb live weight. An adult live cow tends to weigh around 1,500 lbs, iirc. All in, including butchering, there isn't a lot of saving here -- per pound of finished meat, we end up paying on the low end of supermarket prices. However, and I can't emphasize this enough, the quality exceeds that of much more expensive meat. I never understood what vegetarians were talking about when they mentioned the "smell of death" on meat until the first time I bought it like this. The meat I buy doesn't have that smell, and once I encountered the difference, I absolutely understood what the vegetarians were saying. The rancher doesn't butcher or package the meat. The rancher will deliver the cow to a local outfit that does that (and freezes the finished meat). We select what cuts we are most interested in, what cuts we want ground, and so forth. Then when it's done, we just show up with a truck to pick up the packages. They're packaged just like you get from most other butchers, wrapped in plastic with an outer wrapper of waxed butcher paper. The only "party" aspect to it is that none of us has enough freezer space to hold an entire cow, so we have to coordinate so that we can divvy up the packages and take them to each of our homes immediately. I should mention the other nice thing about doing it this way -- we (or one of us, really) actually go to the ranch to make arrangements and select the animal. That means that we can see with our own eyes that the animals were treated well, are in good health, and so forth. Doing this has made visible an awful lot of what used to be invisible and mysterious. In terms of feeling good about the process and intellectual curiosity, this is invaluable.
• bagacrap 8y ago
  Access to "amazing vegetarian cuisine" has a lot to do with where you live.
• fyfy18 8y ago
  > unless I was sure the provenance of it was sustainable and free from cruelty This is what I'd really like to see mainstream restaurants take up. Even in London, restaurants that position themselves as healthy (such as Pret or EAT) have maybe one or two organic things on their menu. I'd really like to see them take a stand against the conditions that animals are raised in. There are plenty of vegetarian or vegan options, but what if you just want some meat that wasn't raised in a factory?
• bitcoinmoney 8y ago
  Could you give more details about the steps and cost?
  • Pfhreak 8y ago
    Yeah. I should probably write a blog post going through all this... Keep in mind, I selected for the highest quality meat I could find -- organic, grass fed, grass finished, small farm raised, etc. Step 1: Find farms. I used my local farmer's market as a jumping off point, they publish a local farm guide. Step 2: Ensure the farmer meets your criteria, get information on cost and availability. Most farmers had this info on their websites or were a single call/email away. Farmers, btw, are generally not technologists. Some farmers will let you come by. Others won't. Step 3: Pay your down payment and wait. I put $400 down, and I waited a couple months for my harvest date. Step 4 (Optional): On harvest day, I could come collect the organ meat (tongue, liver, heart, etc.) if I wanted them, directly from the farm. Step 5: Pay the farmer -- I paid about $2000 to the farmer at this point. Step 6: Contact the butcher with your cut sheet. An animal has a number of different cuts that are mutually exclusive -- prime rib vs ribeye steaks, filet mignon/new yorks vs tbones, etc. The butcher will walk you through this. Step 7: Wait again. The butcher hangs the animal for a few weeks, then processes it via your cut sheet. I think this was 3-4 weeks for me? It was around the holidays, so they were slammed. Step 8: Pick up your beef, pay the butcher. Be prepared to fill your car with coolers, and fill the coolers with beef. I picked up ~415-480lbs of beef and bones, and paid the butcher ~$550. Every cut was packaged, neatly labeled in white paper, and I stacked them into coolers and drove off. Step 9: Deliver to your friends. I split my order into 1/8ths and delivered to friends. We kept 1/2, some friends took 1/4, some took 1/8th, and some further split their 1/8th with other friends. (For my own sanity, I refused to subdivide below 1/8th.) 1/8th is about 50-60lbs of meat, which packs a medium sized freezer above/below a fridge. Be prepared and clean that freezer out in advance! Step 10: Find lots of recipes. Share recipes. Explore global culture through your food. I discovered key wat, a spicy Ethiopian beef stew, because I wanted to go beyond just the meat and potatoes from my midwest history.
    • dbancajas 8y ago
      So this is 2550$ for 480 lbs of meat? not bad.