I make no secret of the fact that Food, Inc. affected me. Even though I’ve read the Omnivore’s Dilemma, and am making my way through Organic, Inc., In Defense of Food, and Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, seeing the images in the film really drove the point home. I do not want to eat CAFO meat.
But is that really practical? After all, we can’t cook every night. Even though we both have jobs, we can’t afford to have takeout night be from Tilth. It likely isn’t feasible right now for us to totally and completely eliminate CAFO meat from our diet.
However, we can do a few simple things to greatly reduce the amount we eat, as well as help to reduce the amount that everyone eats.
1. Know your sources. These days, most restaurants are either on Twitter or have an email account. We fired off several emails in the space of about 10 minutes last night to some of our favorite restaurants asking them where they source their meat (explaining why and asking them to at least confirm whether their meat is hormone and antibiotic free). I’m sure not all of them will answer. However, if we just keep asking, and encourage other people to ask, they will start to get the hint. Eats Cafe in West Seattle was exceedingly quick to answer our email and confirmed they use natural, hormone and antibiotic free meat. Way to go Eats!
2. Try vegetarian. There is a fantastic little takeout place just down the street from us. It is reasonable, quick, and delicious. I’ve decided that I will still eat there, but if they cannot confirm that their meat is non-CAFO meat, then I’ll just order vegetarian.
3. Cook at home whenever possible. This is sort of a no-brainer. Obviously we love to cook, or we wouldn’t be Cook Local. However knowing that we want to make a commitment to being as CAFO free as possible, we just might cook at home just a tad bit more.
4. Vote with our restaurant dollars. If we find restaurants that source locally, organically, and CAFO-free, we will patronize them more frequently than other restaurants that either do not confirm their sources, or confirm their sources are CAFOs.
Great suggestions and I couldn’t agree more about asking restaurants what they’re putting on the plate. I would encourage people to ask the same thing of their grocer, butcher, or even farmer. If they can’t tell you the name of the breed, diet, growing region, or at minimum country of origin (yes, I’ve had grocers tell me the steak was from Canada the US, or Mexico), try thanking them and then walking away. I do this all the time (including with shrimp and most fish esp. salmon).
Sadly, I don’t think having a vegetarian meal is a slam dunk for sustainability or health. One of my only disappointments with Food, Inc., was the lack of focus on mono-crops and/or faux veggies/fruits (oh, and things that come in boxes, bags, or cans). They did talk a bit about pretend tomatoes but didn’t hammer hard enough on the implications.
No, a vegetarian diet isn’t a slam dunk for sustainable. However it is the way that I am currently willing to change. I freely admit that ordering vegetarian at the local taco truck probably isn’t very sustainable. However since those meals are few and far between it is what I am currently able to live with. I can’t even imagine eating a piece of CAFO meat right now. But making the choice for non-local lettuce or peppers is slightly better aligned to my beliefs than eating that CAFO meat.
The way I look at it is that asking the general public to change 100%, right away, is a recipe for failure. Heck it’s a recipe for failure for me and I’m a lot more educated on this topic than a lot of the general public. I didn’t get to where I am now (eating about 95% local, 99% non-CAFO meat) overnight. It took time. I hope to continue this series of blog posts on non-CAFO meat and then move onto eliminating the vast majority of corn in my diet that isn’t actually in the form of a corn kernel or locally processed corn meal. By simply eating local and sustainable for 95% of my meals, I am doing pretty well with that already, but I know I could do better.
Anyway, not trying to disagree at all with your comment, just trying to explain where I’m coming from. I will be posting more about this next week as I’ve just about finished reading Everything I Want to Do is Illegal.
You can eliminate CAFO meat from the diet. But you have to change the way you shop and cook and eat. We’ve done it, but in some areas it’s easier than others. We can do it because we raise our own meat. And I have a lot of experience with CAFO’s. I left a farm in AL to get away from a greedy neighbor who has just built two chicken houses that hold 44,000 chickens each. Both houses were built on about 5 acres right next to my property line. About 1000 foot from my family’s house. I for one shall never eat another store bought chicken because till the laws are corrected to allow us small farmers access to the market, CAFO meat is all you are likely to find. I hope that in time, I can raise my beef, poultry, pork and vegetables, have it processed in town and either sell through the local grocer or direct to the end eater. Until that time, we do not know liberty or freedom.