Tamworth Pig - photo courtesy Flickr user amandabhslater
Just after Christmas I picked up a quarter side of pork. The pig’s name was Daisy (I know, I know). Daisy lived a very piggy life outdoors on a small organic farm north of Comox, BC. She and her siblings look very happy and healthy in a video Bethany, the farmer, shot, taken a few days before they were driven to the slaughterhouse. These were the first pigs Bethany had raised on the farm, and she was quite attached to them. She admits she cried after taking them to the slaughterhouse.
And now I have a freezer full of chops, sausages and roasts, with bacon and ham coming soon from being cured/smoked. I’ve had some sausages and just slow cooked a shoulder to make pulled pork. Both were very, very good.
The larger plan
This is part of a larger plan: I am going to pay more for meat and eat less of it. I’m not a vegetarian (obviously), but I have a great deal of sympathy for critiques of the industrial agriculture system, and the more I know about how animals are raised on factory farms and what that does to them, us and the land, the less I can justify not thinking carefully about where my meat comes from.
I’d been thinking more and more about this, and taking half-steps towards it, when coincidentally, shortly after picking up the pork I also picked up a copy of The River Cottage Meat Book, by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Named by the Guardian as one of the top 10 food books of the last decade, this is a remarkable book – a hybrid between a cookbook and a manifesto and a comprehensive instruction manual on the art and science of cooking animals.
Hugh (I’m not going to refer to him by last name as it’s just too much of a mouthful) might have set out to write a cookbook, but if you’re serious about meat eating (and he is indeed very serious about it, both as a chef and a farmer), you can’t write a book on meat in the early 21st century without dealing with the morality of eating meat and the compelling reasons to reject the industrial meat system, not least among them that of taste. And you may as well throw in some of the best general advice I’ve read on selecting cuts of meat and the different cooking methods to bring out the best flavour possible in each creature and cut.
It takes 225 pages to deal with this before the first recipe arrives, and it’s a compelling read – worthy of doing on its own even if you never cook a recipe from the book. He discusses his own farm, and shows (fairly graphically) what happens when he takes some of his own cattle to the slaughterhouse. He also explores in detail the dismaying reality of what happens to the vast majority of food animals in the UK, and by extension the rest of the developed world, since we’re all in the same boat here, and all equally complicit in the system. He singles out people who are doing it right too. He wants you to know what to look for, to taste what a really good chicken or piece of pork tastes like, and why you should pay a bit more, for a bit less.
Short and Sweet
I’ll keep it short. If you care about eating and cooking meat, read this book. He is absolutely dedicated to the subject – ensuring that the quality, the taste and the preparation of meat are as good as they can be, and ensuring that the animals we eat have lives that are as also as good as they can be before they give these lives to nourish us.
I was originally going to mention the sense of smugness I felt after I’d picked up the pork. Someone had cried over this animal, though it wasn’t me, and I could congratulate myself for it. But Hugh has given me a wider context in which to put this simple purchase. If you’re going to eat meat, and care at all about the impact your eating has, then you have to make a commitment to know more about where your meat comes from and what sort of life the animal had.
So a resolution. No more supermarket meat unless the supermarket can provide meat that has been raised properly. No processed foods with meat in them. No restaurant meals with meat unless I can find out where it came from. It’s going to be hard to do; it’s certainly not going to be convenient. But then convenience is what brought us to the state we’re in.
About time we all started thinking this way. Just because something is cheap and accessible doesn’t mean it is good. Actually, usually means the opposite.
This is the second year we’ve bought a quarter cow from a local organic rancher who we originally met at the Farmers’ Market. He clearly cares about his herd and loves what he does. It makes a difference and it is a difference you can taste, too. When we have people over who don’t normally eat this kind of beef, they always rave about it. I could flatter myself and say it’s my cooking, but I know it’s the cow and how it was raised. Grain-fed, organic, hormone-free. While our family hasn’t gone as far as your resolution, we do eat this way most of the time. The only pork we eat (except, shamefully, the occasional bacon) is also from a local organic farmer. Haven’t found a chicken one yet, but we have cut down our chicken consumption radically since keeping so much beef in the freezer.
Great post, by the way!
One of the things I like about the books by Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) is that they take the responsibility of knowing about the live animals the eat (and sometimes slaughter) before they eat them.
I wish I could get meat out of my cooking, but my husband constantly complains about how little meat I serve. I hate to cook meat, although it does taste good. I’m a fisherwoman, though, and not about to stop fishing, although I’m not great with preparing fish, either.
One good thing, though. I’ll never eat any “Daisy”s because my religion precludes me from eating pig meet. Live on, little pigs!
My Mum taught me that you get what you pay for. It’s no good buying cheap but inferior meat, the meal is ruined and the dog is overfed. If you want to economise buy the cheaper cuts of best quality meat.
My butcher doesn’t usually put the prices on his meat, unless something is on special. If you want to know the price he’ll tell you, but from my observations most of his customers are like me and can’t see the point in enquiring. My main interest is in the total, but I am in the fortunate position of not having to pennypinch. However, there is a suppressed Presbyterian guilt lurking if the figure exceeds (at present) $60.00.
BTW, my butcher takes care only to get in pork from female pigs, to avoid the pissy aftertaste you get from male flesh.
I didn’t know that about female vs male pigs – something to note indeed. It’s definitely good to find a butcher you like and trust, especially if it’s not easy to find local farmers. I’ve just made contact with a farmer about 30 minutes drive from here who raises pigs and chickens in a pastured, free-range way, with heritage animals, so I’ll be going to the farm soon to have a look (and buy some pig fat to make lard for the first time… I’ll blog about that when it happens).