Category: Welfare

The Power of Muscle

TeriAdmin beef, Farms, Nutrition, Primal Living, Sustainability, Welfare bonebroths, grassfed beef, grassfed meat, healingdiets, maturebeef, nutrition, regenerative, regenerative lifestyle 0

31Mar

Regenerative agriculture emerged from a paradigm of regeneration that applies to a range of other disciplines such as leadership, economics, business, design and, most importantly, how we live and behave as empowered citizens – regenerative living

Vaca Vieja

TeriAdmin beef, Farms, Nutrition, Primal Living, Sustainability, Welfare agriculture, bonebroths, cullcow, GAPS, grassfed beef, grassfed meat, healingdiets, maturebeef, nutrition, regenerative, regenerative lifestyle 0

27Mar

Why You Should Try Nose to Tail Eating

Caroline Grindrod Feature, Nutrition, Sustainability, Welfare 0

05Mar

Did you know In 2007 almost 1.4 billion hectares of land were used to produce food not consumed? This represents a surface larger than Canada and India together. One-third of all the food we produce globally goes to waste when 870 million people go hungry every day. 28% percent of the world’s agricultural area – is used annually to produce food that is lost or wasted.¹

Running an ethical meat business is REALLY hard and is why many high street butchers no longer buy animals from local farmers or abattoirs. Many butchers now go straight to massive wholesalers where they can just order what they know they can sell. But with this comes consequences…

When we talk about the environmental issues around eating meat we focus on the inefficient use of land or cows farting! There is, however, a simple solution available to everyone that could make a HUGE difference:

Eat everything you buy.

In 1950 approximately 40% of our wage went on our household shopping and nowadays it is less than 10%. We have driven down the cost of production of our food – the supermarkets say we demand it! Then we attach so little value to it that we throw it in the bin! But the problems start before we even get the food on the shelves.

I have been running meat business for nearly ten years, and I can tell you the biggest issue we face by far, is what we call ‘carcass utilisation’. This is the art of making sure you sell all the bits of one animal before moving on to the next. If you have a lot left over all your profit is gone. This problem is made worse by the fact that you only have about 5 days in which to sell all these cuts.

Running an ethical meat business is REALLY hard and is why many high street butchers no longer buy animals from local farmers or abattoirs. Many butchers now go straight to massive wholesalers where they can just order what they know they can sell. But with this comes consequences loss of accountability, and knowledge of provenance.

Ten years ago in our butchery we filled several wheelie bins a week with beef bones and offal that nobody would buy. Now 100% grass-fed beef bones are in such demand at Primal Meats we have a waiting list!

So what is that all about? Well, overall a meat business has to achieve a certain profit margin on the sale of every carcass – this is straightforward business. The complicated part is that there are many different cuts of meat in vastly different quantities but they all need to sell equally. Out of a carcass that weighs 300kg you may only get 3kg of fillet steak but trust me there is a whole lot of mince and stew to sell before you can move on to the next animal. Yes you can freeze some to delay the issue but ultimately you still have to sell it.

The meat business decides on the price of the cut of meat depending on how much people demand it. You think that you pay more for the fillet because it is the ‘best’ but it has a lot to do with the fact that it is scarce too. In reality some of the most delicious and nutritious parts of the animal have become undervalued by the public because they are cheap.

What is even funnier is that 100 years ago we were valuing this stuff and eating it as a treat. In Eastern cultures the offal meat, connective tissue, joints and heads are highly prized and used in many celebrations. We have forgotten the value in our own wise traditions.

Offal meat is considerably more nutritious than muscle meat. Including ‘bone broths’ (formerly known as ‘stock’ by your Grandma) and ‘cheap’ cuts with connective tissue in your diet you can add considerably more important nutrients to your diet than just eating muscle meat.

Take a look at our ‘cow share‘ boxes which utilise a good range of the cuts in a carcass to prevent waste and provide a good range of amino acids.

We often use evidence of native populations and anthropological data to back up our meat eating habits and there is good reasons to assume humans are designed to be ‘meat eaters’. But ‘meat’, in these cultures and throughout our early history, means the WHOLE animal; brains, liver, kidney, blood, head, eyes – okay you get my point. The muscle meat was probably dried and used for rations during the lean seasons.

In fact perhaps we should be a bit more cautious about eating muscle meat with gay abandon! There are some credible concerns over the possible toxic effects on our bodies of eating too much of the amino acid methionine in human subjects. Evidence to suggest that a diet excessive in muscle meat could cause a rise in plasma homocysteine.

Homocysteine is used as an index of the susceptibility to disease. The great news is that if we eat enough glycine (found in offal and connective tissue) and get the ratio’s in better balance, this risk negates.3

This is why foxes who get into your chicken shed only take the heads – they have got what they came for – the vital bit that has all the nourishment – they will only take the muscle meat if they are starving!

The other issue with eating muscle meat is that when amino acids, sugars, and creatine react to high temperatures harmful compounds called Heterocyclic Amines (HAs) can form. If you allow charring to occur when cooking your meat from flaring flames or dripping juices then another harmful compound Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) is created. PAHs can result in DNA mutations after being metabolised by specific enzymes, these have been associated with cancer in animal studies. Muscle meat is mostly cooked at high temperature – grilling, frying, and roasting so this issue is more common in this type of meat eating.⁴

Joints and cuts of meat with a lot of connective tissues tend to require long slow cooking at a lower temperature; this allows the fats and tendons to melt down into a delicious sticky gravy. Happily this way of cooking is not associated with the harmful compounds PAHs and AHs.

So you see throughout the development of man we have adapted to eating the whole animal carcass and our bodies don’t do well when we cherry pick the steak!

We want to support farmers who grow food this way and encourage people to demand it. But at the moment 100% grass-fed meat animals reared on regenerating soils are very scarce. Only approximately 50 farms in the UK are rearing to this grain free ‘Pasture for Life’ standard; we need to make sure we utilise every bit of these precious carcasses.

We can help here by buying the ‘cheaper’ cuts of grain free 100% grass fed animals and expanding our horizons beyond the need for fillet, sirloin and rump steak. Some of these farms have small farm shops or sell meat by mail order, you can find these here. Many of the pasture farms are in remote locations or don’t have farm shops. It is not a good idea to transport live animals for hundreds of miles to reach the abattoirs of the small number of meat businesses already selling ‘pasture for life’ produce, so these animals often ‘dissapear’ into the food chain unmarked.

This could actually make me cry!

If we want to be in control of what we eat for the good of our health and environment we need to vote without pound and stop being led by convenience. And anyway what is more convenient than having a freezer stocked up with nutritious meat for every occasion?

By being more conscious about the process of meat eating from the field to our fork, we can get a sense of responsibility for what we demand and the processes involved in getting it. A better awareness will hopefully make the food we eat more valuable and appreciated so less will ultimately end up in the bin.

References

Marsh, E. (2013, Sep). Ten food waste facts to make you stop and think. In Love Food Hate Waste. Retrieved from http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com/blog/2013/09/ten-food-waste-facts-make-you-stop-and-think
Kresser, C. (2013, Aug). How to eat more organ meats. In Chris Kresser. Retrieved from http://chriskresser.com/how-to-eat-more-organ-meats/
Garler, P. J. (2006, Jun). Toxicity of Methionine in Humans. In Journal of Nutrition Vol. 136 no. 6 1722S-1725S. Retrieved from http://jn.nutrition.org/content/136/6/1722S.full.pdf+html
Minger, D. (2013, March). Denise Minger Meet Your Meat: An Objective at a Controversial Food. In YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaEBMoHFrQA

Is it morally right to eat meat?

Caroline Grindrod Welfare 2

30Nov

I recently saw a video shared on Facebook of a hyena disembowelling a wildebeest. The shocking part was that the wildebeest was fully conscious and sitting upright, it was simply immobilised due to injury or exhaustion. I was totally horrified and it made me angry at the hyena for a ‘silly’ second. I wanted the hyena to have compassion for the poor beast, or at least put it out of its misery before he started tucking in!

This started me thinking; if this is just nature in action, it can’t be inherently ‘bad’ to take another’s life in the name of food or survival, can it? In other words, isn’t eating meat a natural instinct?

The only reason humans are ‘superior’ to animals is that we happened to be the species who knocked over the first domino on a run of fortunate evolutionary developments.
Now you could argue that the hyena was simply trying to survive and it doesn’t have a choice or the brain power to make ‘better’ decisions – this is totally true – but it still stands that as part of a natural eco-system it is perfectly right that animals consume each other; morals don’t come into it.

Wild omnivores are able to digest both animals and plants very effectively and so have the choice, but they know that in order to be healthy they need to have the flexibility to select foods when in season and to eat the full range of foods that will keep them well. Their craving for meat is not just a self-indulgent desire, it’s a genetic compulsion based on the hard wiring that helps them survive.

Are Humans Different to Wild Omnivores?

I don’t think so; we have the same genetic wiring and the same compulsions, it’s just that social conditioning leads us to believe that we should ‘know better.’

I find the notion that humans are superior to other animals, and somehow don’t need to be part of the world’s eco-system, both arrogant and naïve. The only reason humans are ‘superior’ to animals is that we happened to be the species who knocked over the first domino on a run of fortunate evolutionary developments.1

The development of tools to crack big animal bones allowed us to access nutrient-dense marrow effectively, and the development of tools for slicing meat allowed us to chew flesh more easily and quickly. These two significant breakthroughs accelerated the quality and density of nutrients we could digest in our food in a day.2

A further leap in human evolution was when we learned to control fire. Cooking food3 increases the bioavailability of nutrients and significantly increases the number of useful calories we can assimilate in a day.4

These seemingly simple advances allowed us to reduce the amount of bulky plant matter we had to find and eat to sustain us – apparently this takes up to 80% of a large primate’s daytime activity – and allowed our digestive tracts to shrink, turning us from big bellied creatures using hands and feet on the ground, to an upright ‘six pack’ sort of person who can run and hunt. After tucking into a fatty, meaty feast we had the energy to last a few hours without food and could now afford to take the time off endlessly foraging for relatively low-nutrient, low-calorie foods in order to hunt down the next nourishing high-calorie meal!5

But Should I Be a Vegan Now?

It’s not hard to see how this process made us into who we are today. Nowadays, of course, we are able to eat a vegetable-based diet; we no longer have to forage for our food – the grocery store has done it for us! Eating a vegan diet can certainly be healthy – and is giant leaps away from an unhealthy modern Westernised diet – but you need to work pretty hard, plan carefully, and supplement the diet in order to keep yourself well. This is really tough. You’re fighting with hundreds of thousands of years of genetic programming which is telling you you’re missing something important in your diet. This isn’t a ‘choice’ like deciding which colour shoes to buy. It’s a deep inherent yearning that often leads to many vegans filling the ‘hole’ with junk food. A less-than-perfect vegan diet is very likely going to make you sick!6

You may be one of the ‘elite’ modern humans that can resist scratching an itch that is more persistent than an infestation of fleas; I am in awe of people who have such self-control in the name of a cause. But for a huge portion of the world a ‘perfect’ vegan diet isn’t even available or affordable. Millions of people in this world live in environments so dry, wet, mountainous, inaccessible, or poor that their only reliable source of nourishment is meat, eggs, and milk, supplemented with whatever can be grown or foraged. Millions more have a seriously limited range of foods available to them, be it raising their children on milk yoghurt and butter from a backyard cow in India, eating meat and milk from a herd of goats in Afghanistan, or eating a diet of fish and seals in the Arctic regions of Canada. Are these people tragically forced into having to take immoral actions in order feed themselves? Or are we Westerners arrogant enough to consider ourselves ‘beyond’ the need to be part of a natural food web?

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says ‘animals can offer several advantages over crops in developing parts of the world’ and goes on to note:

Meat and milk can be produced year-round, being less seasonal than cereals, fruit, and vegetables.
Animals, particularly small ones, can be slaughtered as the need arises, for food or income.
Both milk and meat can be preserved – milk as clarified butter, curd, or cheese; meat by drying, curing, smoking, and salting.7
So maybe it’s reasonable to think; ‘OK, if you have the money and access to a full range of nutritious foods THEN it’s morally wrong to eat meat.’ With this in mind, we have to dig into why we think it’s wrong in the first place. I tackle the environmental arguments here, here, and here, so let’s not go there, or this article will never end! In this article, we’re talking specifically about cruelty.

Is a Plant-Based Diet Kinder Than an Omnivore Diet?

If you have spent any time in well-managed pastures or meadows, you’ll know they’re teeming with life. The buzz of insects, the scuffling of small mammals, the wonderful bird song; if you lie down in the long grass you’ll soon be covered in inquisitive invertebrates. So if you think that dragging large metal blades deep into these areas and turning the ground upside down will be a bloodless pursuit, then you are deeply ignorant of the destructive nature of conventional arable farming for plant food.8

Once you get over the immediate ‘mini-mammal carnage’ and the tearing up of snakes, frogs, beetles, and other insects, you should perhaps consider the harm being done to the micro critters in the soil. Healthy soil – of the sort you would find in a pasture – has more micro-organisms in a cup than there are humans on the earth! Tilling the land is incredibly effective at damaging soil health and reducing the diversity and numbers of earthworms, fungi, nematodes, and bacteria. The underground microscopic army of healthy pasture takes carbon and methane from the atmosphere and locks it underground. If a pasture is grazed in a rotational pattern with rest periods, it will be even more effective at storing carbon and has been shown to have the capacity to store all the methane a grazing cow can produce.9

Adding inorganic fertiliser, spraying with herbicides and pesticides, and irrigating the land – all practices more likely to happen when growing crops – can compound this issue further, leaving the soil a lifeless desert unable to absorb our ever-increasing greenhouse gases.10

There is no food system in the world that can feed us without death – it’s impossible.
In a conventional arable system producing vegetables and cereals, a crop will receive multiple dressings of pesticides – sprays that kill small creatures or ‘pests’ including pollinators like bees who are essential for so many eco-system functions. The soils in these fields are often very poor at absorbing water and soil washing into streams and rivers is a huge environmental problem, not least as they carry the aforementioned pesticides with it, killing fish and leaving dead zones in our oceans.

It is true that currently many of the crops produced will end up being fed to animals intensively reared indoors; this system is energy hungry, carbon heavy, inefficient, and simply bonkers. BUT, if we were ALL to eat more plants instead of animals, we would need more grassland to be converted into arable land to meet our additional food needs. There is a limit to how much food can be produced from the world’s potentially cropable lands – intensification, monoculture, and overuse of chemicals are inevitable. Not to mention that on a vegan diet we need a broader range of foods, many of which are very inefficient to grow.

Can We Afford Not to Produce Food From Our Grasslands?

It is clear that by eating plants we are killing many life forms as a ‘by-product.’ The worst part is we are not even getting food from these dead creatures; they are essentially wasted.
When these creatures die, we have no control over how they die either – the nest of field voles starving to death because their decapitated mother is no longer around to feed them probably won’t bother you; after all ‘out of sight out of mind!’

You could argue that the number of lives lost overall will be fewer for each person fed, but that’s not necessarily true either. It’s pretty hard to count, but some studies suggest that there is ‘least harm’ in an omnivore diet.11 And anyway at what size does a creature’s life become valuable? Do we add in worms and micro-organisms or is it only fluffy animals that count?

Perhaps there’s actually a good moral case for eating the biggest animals possible – that way we feed more people from fewer lives. You can feed a whole lot of people from a beef steer, with the loss of a single life!

We tend to use the word ‘agriculture’ as a dirty word these days and associate it with intensively reared animals behind bars and farmers feeding grains to animals – there is no doubt that this is a huge problem and it needs to stop. But ‘agriculture’ feeds ALL modern humankind with ALL types of food – plant and animal; omnivores, raw vegans, vegetarians, and a few dedicated carnivores all require agriculture. There is no food system in the world that can feed us without death – it’s impossible. But does this mean we should just throw our hands in the air and accept anything? Definitely not, but we need to stop oversimplifying this argument and start taking some responsibility for sourcing our own food from agricultural systems you support, with a proper understanding of what’s involved. Blanket claims that one diet or another is ‘moral’ and the other ‘murder’ is simply a cop-out. If you are shunning meat in favour of an entirely plant-based diet, be careful before taking the moral high ground – you’ve simply swapped the killing of large animals in favour of a food system that kills small creatures.

With good abattoirs and careful practices, we can ensure a herbivore dies a clean and reasonably stress-free death by rendering them unconscious before slaughter. Some abattoirs have CCTV, staff trained in animal welfare, and specially designed pens to minimise stress and reduce what an animal can see – let’s campaign for more of these. An even more humane death is that of a wild deer killed by a skilled stalker. Grazing one minute; dead the next.

We often lump all animal agriculture into one steaming pot. Factory farming and intensive farming practices make me sick to the stomach, and I have dedicated my life to fighting it, but the reality is that a relatively small portion of the world’s meat comes from these systems.

By opting out of eating meat you are opting out of influencing the way our meat industry grows. A supermarket selling cheap factory farmed meat will probably not miss your sale too much, but by consciously buying 100% grass-fed beef or lamb you can easily convert more farmers to organic by creating demand for that special product. I believe in ‘fighting’ causes with positive actions, not resistance. Couldn’t we focus on trying to eat animals from pastures and grassland that can’t be used to produce crops AND eating plants from organic systems that minimise killing and encourage soil health? This is what I do; this is what I promote. And yes, you can feed the world this way.12

I believe all things are interconnected and we are all part of a circle of life that depends on birth and death. A recent study intrigued me; it showed that, in a controlled setting, a plant knew it was being eaten by a caterpillar and the plant responded by excreting a poisonous defensive substance. It’s obvious that plants don’t have brains or cognitive problem-solving ability, but it seems they do – on some level – know when they are likely to die.13

We are only just beginning to understand on a scientific level how life and death works and, as always, empirical evidence is a long way behind what we know inherently to be true. I know it can’t be wrong to eat other living creatures for food, but some of the ways we are doing it nowadays I find deeply disturbing and morally unacceptable. We all need to eat, and we are living in a world where we can’t participate in the natural cycle of life easily, but we can make choices that will help bring our planet – our eco-system – back into balance.

How about we all focus on doing that?

Do you think it’s morally right or morally wrong to eat meat? Do you resist or fight with positive action? Let us know your thoughts on meat-eating in the comments below!

References

Welsh, B.J. (2011, 22 August). Man Entered the Kitchen 1.9 Million Years Ago. In LiveScience. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://www.livescience.com/15688-man-cooking-homo-erectus.html
Gupta, S. (2016). Brain Food: Clever Eating. In Nature, 531, S12–S13. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7592_supp/full/531S12a.html
Wanjek, C. (2006, 4 July). The Raw Food Diet: A Raw Deal. In LiveScience. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://www.livescience.com/889-raw-food-diet-raw-deal.html
Watson, C. (2016, 30 March). Healthy Eating Habits You Can Learn From Your Grandparents: Slow Cooking Meat. In Primal Eye. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://primaleye.uk/healthy-eating-habits-you-can-learn-from-your-grandparents-slow-cooking-meat/
Wanjek, C. (2012, 26 November). Sorry, Vegans: Eating Meat and Cooking Food is How Humans Got their Big Brains. In The Washington Post. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/sorry-vegans-eating-meat-and-cooking-food-is-how-humans-got-their-big-brains/2012/11/26/3d4d36de-326d-11e2-bb9b-288a310849ee_story.html
Toro, B.R. (2011, 28 November). Vegetarians and Vegans (Infographic). In LiveScience. Retrieved 4 April 2016 from http://www.livescience.com/17200-vegetarians-vegans-infographic.html
(Anonymous). (n.d.). Livestock and Food Security. In Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://www.fao.org/docrep/x0262e/x0262e13.htm
Davis, S.L. (2002). The Least Harm Principle May Require That Humans Consume a Diet Containing Large Herbivores, Not a Vegan Diet. In Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 16, 387–394. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://fewd.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/inst_ethik_wiss_dialog/Davis__S._2003_The_least_Harm_-_Anti_Veg_in_J._Agric._Ethics.pdf
(Anonymous). (2013). An Exploration of Methane and Properly Managed Livestock through Holistic Management. In Savory Institute. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://savory.global/assets/docs/evidence-papers/exploration-of-methane.pdf
Philpott, T. (2010, 24 February). New Research: Synthetic Nitrogen Destroys Soil Carbon, Undermines Soil Health. In Grist. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://grist.org/article/2010-02-23-new-research-synthetic-nitrogen-destroys-soil-carbon-undermines/
Archer, M. (2012, 15 Dcember). Ordering the Vegetarian Meal? There’s More Animal Blood on your Hands. In The Conversation. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-theres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands-4659
(Anonymous) (2016, 3 February). Organic Agriculture Key to Feeding the World Sustainably: Study Analyzes 40 Years of Science Against 4 Areas of Sustainability. In ScienceDaily. Retrieved 4 Apri 2016 from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160203085855.htm
Bush, J. (2016, March 19). Study Claims Plants Can Feel When They Are Being Eaten and They Don’t Like It! In The Homestead Guru. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://thehomestead.guru/study-claims-plants-can-feel-when-they-are-being-eaten-and-they-dont-like-it/

Introducing Model Farm

Caroline Grindrod beef, Cow Share, Farms, Sustainability, Welfare 0

23Sep

We work with this inspiring Family be able to offer you some of the best beef available in the UK through our ‘cow share’ way of purchasing. Read why it is so important to support farmers like these.

Model Farm

Simon Cutter Farms on the wonderful rich pastures and meadows of Model farm, near Ross on Wye in Herefordshire.

Simon Cutter is the founder of Model Farm Society. Educated at Cirencester Agricultural College between 1977-1980, he has studied and practised traditional farming for over 30 years including time spent farming in Australia. Simon has been a pioneer in the rearing of Organic livestock and produce long before the ‘Organic bandwagon’ started to roll in the wake of the BSE crisis in the early 1990′s

Model Farm is home to a herd of 270 Hereford Beef Cattle and 400 Easy care ewes on sustainably managed grassland and forage crops. Simon’s cattle and sheep are 100% pasture fed and receive NO grains. Model Farm is managed to soil association standards for Organic status, the land receives no in-organic fertilisers or sprays and a forage crop rotation system produces natural organic foods for any winter feeds required.

‘Easy Care’ is a breed of sheep ideally suited to this topography and organic management system. They require minimal management and even shed their own fleece, so don’t require shearing. The torpedo shaped head of the lambs allows for easy lambing and Simon’s careful selective breeding program has led to the health of the flock to be nothing less than exceptional in the absence of routine medical intervention. The sheep require a small amount of supplementary feed in winter and this is provided by way of a home grown red clover hay.

Of the 270 Cattle, 100 hundred are breeding cows, the health of the herd is outstanding and the vet visiting is a very rare occurrence. There is NO routine medicines used and Simon maintains, that with extensive healthy grassland and soils, the cows and sheep receive all the nutrients they need to stay healthy from the diverse range of plants they eat.

The Hereford breeding stock stay outdoors on pasture, all year round. Hereford Cattle are a hardy traditional British breed originating in this area so are ideally suited to its climate and terrain. The young stock usually come in for the wettest parts of the year to avoid poaching the delicate grassland. Indoors the young stock will be bedded on local straw and fed Lucerne silage. Lucerne is a green, nutrient dense plant that grows very deep roots, it can access reservoirs of minerals not normally available to normal grasses and is considered a ‘superfood’.

The Beef is outstanding, due to the diet of the cattle consisting ONLY of natural herb rich plant matter and organic home grown super foods. The animals are getting all the minerals and vitamins they need and these will naturally pass on a range of these beneficial nutrients to you. The beef is dry aged for a minimum of 21 days.

Simon is ‘pasture for life‘ certified.

Simon handles all the transportation to a local abattoir and the meat will be cut by Simon’s butcher on the Model farm in a new purpose build unit.

High Welfare Meat

Caroline Grindrod Welfare 0

09Sep

I would like to make something clear, we are not about anthropomorphising animals (and in fact cannot even say it!).

We do not think animals should not be treated like humans and accept that pets are treated differently to the animals that produce our food.

Farm animals are bred and reared for the sole purpose of feeding us, any meat eater should accept this fact instead of ‘delegating’ the morally hard choices to someone else, then criticising it when it goes wrong!

Anybody who has decided they can not live with the moral responsibility of eating meat, frankly, should turn vegetarian. If you are a vegetarian for this reason, I salute you and wish more people would make a stand for what they believe in.

If you are a meat eater, I hope you understand that there are thousands of different systems, run by millions of different characters, in hundreds of different countries that produce your meat.

There are some general principles of purchase and labels carrying regulation that may help you chose meat less likely to be neglected or reared in conditions that are unacceptable. RSPCA Freedom foods, Organic Certification among others, will offer detailed standards to potential customers and inspect producers to try and hold them to these standards.

The principle and terminology of ‘free range’, ‘grass fed’ and ‘outdoor bred’ may give you some indication of what system has been used to produce your meat but it is very difficult to prove and regulate that the system is producing high welfare meat – it is wide open to abuse, in more than one way!

At the end of the day, when that inspector has walked away from their short Farm visit for another year, how are these regulations going to be enforced? They can’t be.

‘WE DON’T NEED A LAW AGAINST MCDONALS OR A LAW AGAINST SLAUGHTERHOUSE ABUSE, WE ASK FOR TOO MUCH SALVATION BY LEGISLATION. ALL WE NEED IS TO EMPOWER INDIVIDUALS WITH THE RIGHT PHILOSOPHY AND THE RIGHT INFORMATION TO OPT OUT EN MASSE’
JOEL SALATIN.

So how do we guarantee high welfare meat?

Well, we think it is down to judging the character of those who rear our animals. To get to the heart of issue you need to find out several things.

Why are they farming or running this business? Is it just for profit? because that what their family has always done, or because they are passionate about the environment and the animals they rear?
How do they talk about and act around animals? what terminology do they use? is it respectful? does it indicate empathy?
When they handle their livestock, are they gentle with an understanding of how the animals tick? Do they appreciate and work with the animals instinctive social and mothering habits?
Are their animals healthy? Is there any tell tale signs of neglect, disease, poor land management or indications that they are not thriving? Only another stock-person could judge.
Are there any hints that they are just not being truthful about what they are saying?

By working closely with our farmers and getting to know their characters we can make the best possible choices of who we can trust to produce our meat.

Grazing animals are designed to eat plants and require large amounts of fibre in their diet for their digestion to work correctly. When an animal is fed a grain based diet the nutrients are supplied very quickly, enabling the animal to fatten faster, returning a better profit.

Unfortunately this allows fermentation acids to accumulate in the rumen, stops the animal absorbing essential nutrients and often leads to ulcers and eventually abscesses on the liver. Anti biotics are then required (in some parts of the world these are routinely fed and added to the food) to manage the disease. The anti-biotics alter the microbial balance of the animals gut, leaving it the perfect place for pathogens to flourish.

In the US, feed lot beef is often subject to mass recalls due the difficulty in managing the e-coli problem, particularly worrying are the strains that seem to be resistant to the acid shock of the stomach. Farmers now face the problem that some animals are no longer responding to anti-biotics due to their overuse. There are also concerns over the effect of eating anti-biotic residues in the animal flesh and the effect this may have on humans.

Animals are designed to graze, moving around in the sun and the rain, they are acting in a natural way and therefore their welfare state is high. The ‘pasture for life’ label ensures that animals have been grazing and eating pasture for their whole life. By default this will allow them to have had a higher quality of life.

Grazing animals have adapted over thousands of years to know when something is wrong with their health, and what they need to eat in order to self-medicate. In extensive grazing systems, it is interesting to see the animals eating different plants and trees at different times of year. The grazing action keeps their teeth and gums clean and healthy and a farmers running a pasture based system rarely have to intervene medically with their stock, often they calve easily, lameness is rare, there is no need for mineral supplements and requirement of a vet is dramatically reduced if not eliminated.

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Category: Welfare

The Power of Muscle

Vaca Vieja