CallaFirestormBW
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Joined: 6/29/2008
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Most local farmers will have meat butchered for their customers. Here in TX, and in NC, GA, and NY (the markets I'm most familiar with), animals can be purchased by quarters, halves, or whole, and the cuts can be designated when the animal goes to slaughter, including custom cuts.
Several of our local farmers here also routinely take animals to slaughter and have the meat prepared in the most commonly requested cuts so people without large freezers, single individuals, etc., can also get grass-fed/grass-finished meat. BTW... when shopping for grass-fed meat, make sure that the meat you buy is 'grass finished'. One of the latest scams is for the animal to be "on pasture" during the months when it is is still nursing (therefore not eating grass anyway) from a mother who is being fed grains, and then having it be shipped off to a feed-lot for its "final feed-to-weight"... for 150+ days of forced grain feeding. This is just REGULAR TREATMENT of the calves. The other 'sneaky' option is what is called "finishing long yearlings", where yearlings are left on pasture for the summer, then sent to the feed lots in the fall for up to 120 days of forced grain feeding prior to marketing.
The best way to get around this is to buy local. Get thee to a Farmer's Market and meet the farmers. Ask whether they send their animals to a feed-lot. Ask whether they get grain at any point in their growth cycle. Ask how long they take to get to a suitable "hoof weight" for sale (it typically takes 4.5-6 years to feed a steer (neutered) on grass to sale weight, compared to 3-4 years if grain-supplemented and feed-lot finished!).
For pork, it's a lot harder to find naturally-raised pork than it is grass-fed beef, even someplace like here, where we have wild boars. Raising pigs "on pasture" takes a LOT of land, because pigs don't graze, they're foragers. They need a diet that contains nuts, fungus (mushrooms), leaves, grass, roots, flowers, and fruit (both berries and non-citrus seed fruits). Pigs also increase their protein when they need to by supplementing with insects, amphibians, and sometimes even reptiles, but for the most part, when left alone and not fed by the hand of man, they tend to gravitate towards a "greens and nuts" diet. Pig feed (the pellets) are addictive, though, and a pig that is fed pellets will typically eschew its natural diet in favor of the commercial feed (sort of like people, huh? Give us a Big Mac and we'll completely bag healthy food).
Talk to your farmers. Find out how much 'supplemental' feeding their pigs get, and make sure that they're at least fed organic feed that is free of corn and soy. (Our local farmer supplements with a coconut-based feed that maintains the natural CLA production and keeps the O3/O6 balance in its natural state for the animals. I pay more for my pork than most folks around here would, but I know that the animals are raised humanely, encouraged to maintain as natural a diet as possible, and the meat produced is as healthy as it can be, given the limitations of land availability and time-to-market that most farmers are bound by).
Calla
< Message edited by CallaFirestormBW -- 9/21/2010 2:19:13 PM >
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Said to me recently: "Look, I know you're the "voice of reason"... but dammit, I LIKE being unreasonable!!!!"
"Your mind is more interested in the challenge of becoming than the challenge of doing." Jon Benson, Bodybuilder/Trainer
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RE: Goodbye pork chops - 
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