Over the past few months, I’ve been working steadily to eliminate all CAFO meat from my diet. I’ve slipped up a couple of times (once when my parents were visiting and wanted to go to one specific Seattle restaurant, once for a party, and once when I was so tired I just needed a taco in the worst way). But for the most part, I’ve done well on my goals.
One of the keys for me has been contacting as many of my favorite restaurants as possible to ask them about their meat sources. The response I’ve gotten has been overwhelmingly positive. I’ve only had one restaurant not respond to me at all, many have responded with positive information, and the restaurants that have responded with negative information have done so in a way that makes me believe that they really would like to make changes and will work towards that goal.
If you’re interested in finding out whether your favorite restaurant sources ethically, here is a template that you can copy and email to them. I encourage everyone to contact as many restaurants as they can. The more inquiries a restaurant gets, the more likely they are to try to make changes to eliminate CAFO meat from their sources.
Greetings,
I am a long time patron of your restaurant and I’ve always enjoyed my meals there. However I have recently decided that I need to eliminate all meat from my diet that comes from CAFOs (confined/concentrated animal feeding operations). So I am writing to you today in the hopes that you’ll be able to share whether your meat is sourced from a CAFO or from a humane and natural source. If you can confirm this, I will happily continue to order animal products from your menu. If not, I hope you’ll consider sourcing your meat from free-range, pasture-fed, and hormone and antibiotic free farms and I will simply order vegetarian dishes when I patronize your restaurant. I appreciate any information you might be able to share with me.
Sincerely,
A concerned lover of food.
I have had excellent response from this sort of email message. When a restaurant confirms that they source ethically, I always send them a nice thank you note and ask them if they would mind me sharing the fact that they source well on my website. I will have a list published soon and will continue to update it as I get more information. If you find a restaurant in Puget Sound that sources well, please let us know, we’re always looking for fantastic local restaurants that source well.
Really cool piece, i cant wait for that links, and your email is a great idea for a campaign. we should get a list of restaurants with their emails and initiate a grass roots email campaign via twitter and facebook! Thoughts?
Zachary Cohen´s last blog ..Live Wine Blog Part 2
We’re working on a list of Seattle restaurants on Twitter and that might help with this cause. If everyone just picked two of their favorite restaurants and emailed them or tweeted this link to them (or any of a number of links about CAFO meat) and why they were asking, we could probably make a lot of progress. Cook Local has a Facebook page, I’ll throw something up about that and write a follow up post here where people can comment with the response they’ve received.
The key is to be polite, but firm in the asking and the response. Thank the restaurant for their honesty, particularly if their answer is something like Tyson or Smithfield, but commit to only eating vegetarian when you eat there. We need to vote with our restaurant dollars and while I am more than happy to support local restaurants, I am not happy to support CAFOs. So if a local restaurant serves CAFO meat, I want them to know that I won’t eat it, but I still support their existence and urge them to make some changes.
My thought on this, and how you need to approach the restaurant:
This isn’t about berating the restauranteurs, this is about educating them about (or at least suggesting) better options.
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