A few reasons you should consider where your meat comes from

It just ain't right

"Ahimsa", a Buddhist tenet meaning "non-violence", is the idea behind the common prayer "may all beings live free of suffering." I feel deeply passionate about the humanity and respect with which we treat this planet and its inhabitants. I am going to go right out there with what many consider a hypocrisy in my beliefs: I am not a vegetarian. But being a vegetarian because you don't believe in killing an animal is, to my mind, to say that killing or dying is not natural or acceptable, and with this I disagree. This earth is a working system of which we are only a small part - and that system includes the survival of the species and birth and death. The distinction I do think is important is that of suffering. We must all die one day, but there is no reason anyone should live with suffering, and I believe this includes you, and me, and all the beings on this earth. The system that has kept this earth working (with or without us) for billions of years deserves respect and acknowledgment, which we're not doing when we step into an animal's life, relegate it to a completely unnatural setting, and incur suffering in the name of production - just to make a buck. We think this has no impact on the future health of the system that is the earth but we are starting, very slowly, to realize that this is wrong - that, in fact, the wisdom of the earth is not to be matched by our capitalistic endeavors.

I also believe that the things you put your energy into in turn reap more of that energy in your life. Ever gotten on the subway train in a bad mood, and someone bumps into you - what happens to your mood? Worse, right? This is a trivial example, but our actions and thoughts are a choice; and what we indulgepropagates more of that same energy. So what's happening to us when you telescope this theory out to include modern livestock practices in which there is systematic suffering put in place for sensitive animals that are giving their lives to feed us? I practice ahimsa, I do not believe in propagating needless suffering, and I think with a little consciousness we can easily eradicate a lot of it. Treating animals the way industrial factory farming does is simply unnecessary and unacceptable, period.

Environment

Cows used to graze on grassy pastures. The grass they ate was easily digested - because it's what they're meant to eat - and therefore they didn't get sick and need antibiotics. As they ate, they pooped, and their poop fertilized the pastures so more grass could grow. In this system, there is no waste - every element in the system is recycled naturally. In the 50s, when we removed the cows from the pastures and put them in factories ("factory farms" or, "Concentrated Animal Feed Operations" or CAFOs - as they're officially called ), the 'smart' idea was to feed them the grain we had from the surplus generated by highly politicized farm subsidies. Grain creates an overly acidic environment in the cow stomach, and introduces microbes cows have no defenses for, so they get sick and necessitate antibiotics. When they poop, the excrement is so toxic it can't be used for anything - it would kill any plants you would try to fertilize it with. So all the poop is brushed off into what CAFOs call "lagoons" (partially responsible, for instance, for the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone).

Sound charming? Well... as you guessed, they're not - they reek, seep into the local water supply, and emit detrimental fumes into the environment. Methane is 23 times as potent as the same amount ofcarbon dioxide, and the second leading gas contributing to global warming. In the United States, farm animals - mostly cattle - account for 19% of all methane emissions. Not only that, but the cows have no grass to stand on - instead they stand in crowded, confining stalls in poop all day, until it can be cleared out. The architects of the food industry in this country essentially took a perfectly functioning natural system in which the outcome of each part was the perfect solution to the next problem - and broke it into several problems, each with no solution.

To make matters worse, the end result is also an inferior product. But if you own a CAFO, you've made a lot of money from it, some of which - no doubt - finds its way to the pockets of legislators. I typically avoid the conspiratorial tone, but the business end is a very important dynamic in this conversation; this is really true. If you're learning about this for the first time, this is the reason it's true - because most people don't really know where their food comes from, and the systematic effect it has on our environment, health, and general well-being for creatures on this earth. Think about it: our current food system is only about 50 years old, and since then, a lot of people have gotten really rich - including the food, insurance, and pharma industries, and the rest of us have gotten really sick (heart disease, obesity and diabetes all became epidemics in this same time.) Learning about these issues and voting with our forks will eventually change the playing field.

One more note about how eating beef from CAFOs affects the environment - which is does, radically. If you consider the sheer volume of cows being reared in this country (95,497,994 in 2002), you're forced to consider how much feed they're eating (7lbs of grain per 1lb of weight gained; 66% of all grain grown in this country - according to this guy), and then you have to consider all the non-renewable resources used to fertilize, produce and transport that feed - which is a lot (about 1600 calories of energy for every 100 calories of meat produced, according to the pdf of this study). And you also have to consider how much deforestation isoccurring to clear land to grow these grains - further detrimental because the trees help us mediate the amount of carbon in the environment. So this is a double-whammy. (Triple if you count the cows themselves.)

What this very simply boils down to is: if we left the cows on the pastures, we'd have lesspolluted water and air, happier cows, better and more nutritious meat, and no "what to do with the lagoon" problem to deal with. We'd also have less meat, you argue? Good - we need less - much less - eating as much red meat as we do is making us a very sick culture.

The Morass of Natural-Meat-related terms

Let's make like jedi and quickly deflect the most offensive and weakest issues confronting us when it comes to meat. "Organic", when talking about meat, means that whatever the animals are eating, it's organic - in many cases, the same biologically-inappropriate food sources, but organic ones. I consider this a polished turd in the world of sustainable eating - it's better than nothing, but hardly worthy of mention. Another term "cage-free" means that the chickens are not in cages - and that's all it means. Unless validated by further claims about the chicken's lives, I usually read this to mean they're in cell-free prisons. "Free-range" is another even more insidious term, which conjures visions, often aided by the illustration on the packaging, of happy chickens roaming the "range". In legalese (which is what many of the people selling you these products care about), it means that the chickens must have a way - whether they can actually find it or not is of no consequence - to get outside. In reality what this often means is that a huge indoor pen of birds has one little hole in the corner, covered by a door which only opens for about an hour a day for the last week of their lives. This topic just gets dismal - I'm sorry. But there really is a silver lining to this dark stormy cloud. It's the term "pasture-raised". Basically this term is a password to the product you're looking for. If someone you're asking isn't familiar with it, rest assured they are not "in the know" and probably don't have what you're after. if people know it, they can readily attest one way or another - people who go to the trouble to pasture raise their chickens - basically letting them live their happy little lives roaming free (truly) on the pasture, eating grubs, worms, and other insects - understand what you're after and are proud to tell you about it and show off their product - which, of course, is superior. The eggs from the hens have deeply orange-yellow yolks, chock full of heart-healthy omega 3's (from worms and grass; see below). Pasture-raised chicken flesh is juicy and tender and very tasty. When speaking of beef, "grass-fed" or "meadow-raised" is synonymous with pasture-raised.

One other term, "certified humane" is a little label you'll see on some meat products that looks like this. It a certification by an independent organization that ensures that "product was produced with the welfare of the animal in mind." I look for this on all my meat products, but like organic, some (in fact, many) small farms use humane practices and haven't gone through this certification process. Typically, if a product is pasture-raised, I assume it's being handled with care. Certainly it's not living the sad life of a factory animal.

Nutrition

Omega-3s are vitally important; they're called "essential fats" because they play a vital role in every cell and system in our bodies - and these are the ones we must get from external sources. Omega-3s are heart-healthy and essential for proper function. It's essential to have them in balance with Omega-6 fats in our systems, but the problem is that culturally, we eat a lot of Omega-6 fats (in veggie oils) and our original source of omega-3 fats (fish) has dwindled and become problematic (mercury, farmed fish - topic of the next installment of this series). Each of the fats provide the essential opposing forces for the process of inflammation - creating it (controlled by omega-6s: in case of injury, inflammation brings what's needed to the site of the wound, quickly) and stopping it (controlled by omega-3s: excess or chronic inflammation eventually wreaks havoc on the system), the imbalance of which is increasingly identified as the root of many diseases. Beyond this, omega-3's are heart-healthy (reduce risk of heart attack by 50%) and essential for brain development and health (depression and other mental disorders like schizophrenia, ADD, and Alzheimer's). Grass-fed beef has 2-4 times more omega-3 fatty acids than meat from grain-fed animals, and much less saturated fat. Pastured chickens and hens produce high omega-3 meats and eggs (eggs have 10 times more omega-3s than factory hens).

The meat from pastured cattle is four times higher in vitamin E than that from feedlot cattle, and almost twice as high as the meat from feedlot cattle given vitamin E supplements. In humans, vitamin E is linked with a lower risk of heart disease and cancer.

Grass-fed meat is very lean and can have 1/3 the amount of fat as a similar grain-fed animal. Grass fed beef can actually have the same amount of fat as a skinless chicken breast. Lean grass-fed beef has also shown in studies to reduce the LDL ("bad") cholesterol level.

Finally, CLA - conjugated linoleic acid, is another type of good fat for which pasture-raised animals are the richest source. CLA may be one of our most anti-cancer defenses; there's a lot of research going on on this lately; in labs it has proven to reduce tumor growth in animals.

What you need to know for buying meat at the market/store

Again, visiting your local farmer's market is a great way to check in on these priorities. What you're looking for are pasture-raised chickens, pigs, and cows. In each case, the pasture may be a little different to suit the animal's needs, but no worry about such details. Remember, "Free-range" is not the same as pasture-raised. "Grass-fed", a term used to refer to cows, IS usually pasture-raised.

Beef: "grass-fed" means pasture-raised; antibiotic-free, hormone-free, and certified humane. Trusted local farms in NYC: Slope farm, Natural Acres, Violet hill

Pork: pasture-raised, antibiotic-free, hormone-free, and certified humane. "Heritage" is another label you'll see for pork - these are species of pigs that are known for their superior flavor and by their nature don't do well with industrial farming, so they're always small-farm produced. Some trusted sources: Flying Pig Farm, Violet hill

Chicken: pasture-raised, "free-range". Remember, "free-range" and "certified humane" claims are government certifications, so even though a farmer practices this way, they may not be certified. Talk to them, or go with these trusted local (to NYC) farms: Dine's farm, Murray's Chicken, Violet hill

Lamb: pasture-raised, "certified humane". Farms: Jamison

When dining out

I don't expect everyone to make this decision, but I will only eat naturally raised meat, so I am constantly refining how to suss out the meat situation in restaurants. Below is my latest approach - I'm open to yours if you have one, please share. Regardless if you eat this way or not, I think letting the owner know you care is important. Also, it's really interesting to get a peek into the considerations of a chef - many of them are eager to share their concerns and passions with you.

1. Ask the server if the meat is "pasture-raised", or natural. I used to think if the server didn't know it, then it wasn't an important issue for the restaurant, but this has proven wrong enough for me to ask these servers to ask the chef. You can tell pretty well if there's recognition on the receiving end - if there's any lack of confidence about what it is, exactly, you're looking for answers to, the answer is definitely that the meat is not 'naturally raised'. (Getting this meat not only takes a special effort, but it's expensive: you won't find places with a low price point carrying these meats, or they can't survive; an understandable byproduct of a supply and demand economy - so no one who doesn't know their issues is buying this stuff.)

2. If they know what you mean but don't know the answer, you can help figure it out by asking if their meat is from a local farm (and if so, what farm). Usually they know the answer on that pretty well. If I don't know the farm and they think it might be naturally raised and it's definitely local, I will go with it. Here (NYC), a local farm is not an industrial farm. If the restaurant has gone this far convincing me it's an important issue for them, I will trust their hunch about whether the meat is naturally raised or not.

3. If the whole situation becomes an awkward project - abort mission and have the salad or fish dish.

Speaking of fish dishes... join me next time for Installment 4 of All About Organic: Sustainable and Natural Fish

For More resources on where to shop, which farms to trust, and restaurants that support sustainability, visit the Sustainable Table Shopping. To learn about farms in your area and their products, visit Local Harvest.
Or learn more about the issues, here.