Pledge to Sustainable Meat- An Elaboration

Perhaps the hardest part of being an Ecotarian is my pledge to only buy sustainable meat. It's hard because (1) I've had a life-long love affair with meat and (2) the cheap Asian in me loves deals. Like a lot- I even like junk mail. So I'm accustomed to chicken being $.59/lb, pork $.99/lb, non-steak portions of beef around $2/lb and steaks around $4/lb. And let me assure you, that these are prices Safeway or Lucky's has at least once a month. This week, NY Steak is $2.99/lb at Safeway, while chicken is $.69/lb. Pause and reflect on how cheap that is, 69 cents!

However, after reading of the sustainable farm of Omnivore's Dilemma, of Fast Food Nation's factory farm created shit geysers, and of the UN report (which I cleverly read two years late, btw), it became clearer that to me that the the real cost of meat was much higher, and it became harder to ignore the environmental impact of it. I tried to rationalize by saying my own personal consumption was an indirect contributor to meat production.

But, as I mentioned in The Beginning, I cut down my own meat consumption anyways (darn psyche), especially red meat. It wasn't too hard at all, considering I was out-meating everybody I knew (and an average American eats about 18 lbs a month).

Then came along Pumpkin, lovely significant other, who linked me to Marin Sun Farm's Meat CSA. We decided to share the 15 lb/month package (less than half an average American), which is currently being supplemented with 1/2 of a Canada wild caught salmon that I bought, butchered, and froze last month, and a sustainable chicken I bought from an egg farmer at the farmer's market on Sunday. The package comes in tomorrow, and I am SO excited! A CSA is like Christmas every month! Will I get mutton? Will I get grass-fed beef? All I know is that it is local and sustainable meat from a responsible farm. I even emailed them and got a quick response back, yah, that's right, I talked to the people who raised my meat! Old school.

I'm unhappy to admit this, as the optimist I am, but Americans love their meat and will always love their meat. So while I commend many Ecotarians out there for being vegetarian/vegan (thank you!), the truth of the matter is, most of America will never follow suit. However, I think Americans can be convinced to cut down their meat intake, we are a nation obsessed with health as well (some are obsessed with quality, to which grass-fed beef is supposed to be the superlative). If we cut down by half, we can hold carbon emissions as they are. But if we can do it by more, or support local, sustainable agriculture like Marin Sun Farms, then environmentally friendly producers alone can satiate our demand.

Because let's face it, it's not meat production in general that is our problem, it's factory farms with their intensive land use, externalizing internalizations (such as waste), unnatural diet and the sheer amount of animals which make each other sick (unless they are pumped up with delicious antibiotics). See UN's Report. Waste is toxic in giant mounds but it's actually a natural fertilizer on a smaller scale. See Omnivore's Dilemma. Cows fed grass don't burp as much and if cows get to roam instead of being kept in giant feedlots, they don't get sick often enough to require antibiotics laced food. See Of cow burps, beef, and methane.

So not only am I helping reduce factory farmed animal demand, but I'm also supporting local (and small) farmers, who have practices I firmly believe in. In other words, I'm putting my dollar where my mouth is. With direct benefits.