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Vegan Turned Butcher Talks About His Journey

Saturday, January 21st, 2012

The farm-to-table philosophy has been mostly about knowing where food was grown. For meat, that meant knowing if your chickens were caged and if your beef was grass fed.

But with the revival of the butcher shop, some young people are undertaking the largely lost art of butchering as a stronger way to connect with their food.

For 24-year-old Andrew Plotsky of Washington, D.C., that meant leaving his job as a barista in a snobby coffee shop to learn the process of raising an animal, slaughtering it and butchering it for a meal.

“I had a romantic idea of the way I thought animals should and could be processed,” he tells The Salt. He says he was attracted to the small scale tradition of a whole community having its hands involved in the raising of animals for food. “I wanted to be a part of that process,” he says. “Somehow, that manifested in pig slaughter.”

Long gone is the idea that only chefs care about the provenance of the meat they cook. Now, the notion of knowing a piece of meat’s history seems to be trickling into the mainstream. Who raised it? Who killed it? How did it die? Who butchered it? It was questions like these that led Plotsky across the country.

The former vegan went to Vashon Island., Wa. to learn the butcher trade from Brandon and Lauren Sheard. His goal was to document the process for about a week and half. He ended up staying for two years.

“I had been preparing myself intellectually for years,” he says. “The immediacy of taking life was difficult at first. It’s still something I’m figuring out how to rationalize.”

Pigs are first shot with a rifle to stun them. Then their throats are cut to let them bleed out. “The moment of silence before the shot is taken was difficult,” Plotsky says. “It came out of fear that the pig would suffer.”

By killing the animal himself, Plotsky says he strengthens his bond to that animal, as well as the food it provides, the ground it lived on, and the family and friends he shares the meal with.

Though killing the animal weighs heavy on Plotsky’s heart, carving the precise cuts from the pig weighs heavy because of its physical size. He has to wrestle the carcass and take awkward positions to make sure he gets exact cuts. “There’s a steep learning curve,” he says.

As a pork butcher, Plotsky typically uses a bone saw, a cleaver, a boning knife and another sharp knife to “break down” a pig. Each side of the pig will get cut into quarters: the shoulder, the leg, the loin and the belly. Using geographical markers, such as the sternum and vertebrae, butchers locate exactly where to slice first. For the leg quarter, it’s one vertebra up from the curve near the bottom of the spine.

Two years later, the butcher and filmmaker is still working at the farm and documenting the process with the Sheards for others to see. He says he finds the work enriching because he’s present for the whole process — something he hopes more consumers can connect with through his agrarian videos.

It seems to be working, too. “I see the ‘hipification’ of butchery in urban areas like Brooklyn and San Francisco,” he says. “It’s a good thing.”

His favorite cut of a pig? The trotter, or the foot. “If you have a trotter on a plate, you should feel blessed and not say ‘Ew,’” he says. “They’re kind of everything a chicken wing dreams of being.”

Andrew Plotsky’s film on pork butchery. Caution: Some images may be graphic for some viewers.

On The Anatomy Of Thrift: Side Butchery from farmrun on Vimeo.

Source: NPR

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Lierre Keith on The Vegetarian Myth

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

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Why Eating Meat Is Not Immoral

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

I came across this blog post today linked to from the Weston A. Price Foundations Facebook page. While I think in some ways their argument is a little simplistic. (e.g. The argument that, “It’s what we have always done”. The same could be said of slavery and foot binding, after all.) Although, generally I think it puts the issue out there in a pretty nice way.

From: Real Food Dudes

This is a special post where I  (Dude1) have the special privilege to interview Erik (Dude2) regarding a hot button topic.  Hopefully, you find it interesting and please feel free to voice your own opinion in the comments section.  Today’s topic is the controversial subject of meat eating vs. vegetarianism.

Dude1:
So let’s talk meat.  I know you have something on your mind that occasionally comes up and tends to drive you a little crazy.
Dude2:I read a rant last night about how people shouldn’t eat meat and it got me thinking about what exactly is wrong with their argument.
Dude1:What was the reasoning of this particular person for why nobody should be eating meat?
Dude2: Their argument had two key points. First, they say that people don’t eat other people, so why is eating other animals any different? Second, they say that meat animals are bad for the environment.  I think that’s pretty representative of most of these debates.  Sometimes they throw in a nutritional angle, but that’s easy to shut down if you specify humanely raised grass-fed meat.
Dude1:I don’t understand the people don’t eat other people argument.  Obviously, nature doesn’t work like that.  Funny how lions don’t eat other lions.
Dude2:Yeah, the first argument is a red herring.  They are trying to cast the issue as one of superiority and “speciesism” (discrimination based on species…), when the truth of the matter is that it’s an issue of ecological natural order.  Some animals eat meat, and humans are in that group.  It has nothing to do with some kind of power trip, it has to do with biology, nutrition, and digestive systems.  Conflating that with the moral issues of human society is simply a distraction.  Another issue I have with this argument is that it’s trying to make an absolute moral distinction where there is none to be made.  If breeding, killing and eating animals for sustenance is immoral, why does the same rule not apply to fruits, vegetables, fungi, and microbes?  When you start talking at an ecosystem level, it is difficult to distinguish so-called “sentient” life from these other life forms — their interrelationships are so complex that they develop a form of intelligence all their own, and it is certainly disrupted by tilling it under to grow domestic veggies.
As for the environmental part of the argument, this is a little more nuanced.  I have to agree with them that the vast majority of meat animals currently being raised in industrial society have enormous bad impact on the environment.  The grain that is raised to feed them, the antibiotic resistant pathogens that result from constant drugging, the air, soil, and water pollution that come from the concentrated herds are all detrimental.  However, this is a problem of the practice of animal husbandry, not a problem with the existence of the animals.  Animals raised correctly on pasture do not cause pollution, and they actually  improve biodiversity and sequester carbon into the soil at the same time they promote healthier soil and plant life.  They are healthy and do not require maintenance dosing of any drugs, and they generally live a life much like you would expect to see in a wild population.  So, CAFO meat is indeed bad for the environment, but pastured meat is not.
Dude1:I often hear it being argued that if humans can survive on nothing but fruits, vegetables, and grains, then why should we be eating meat?
Dude2:Because it’s good for us, and we like it!  Humans are a part of nature, and our natural role includes the consumption of both meat and plant foods.  Besides, the burden of proof is on the people making that kind of argument because they are proposing a radical lifestyle and nutritional change.  The “why not” approach is not sufficient for them, but it is for me; i.e.  we’ve always eaten meat, so why shouldn’t we?
Dude1:But can you tell us why you think it might actually be important that humans eat meat?
Dude2:I’d say that it’s important that at least a significant portion of humanity continues to eat meat.  There are several reasons, but the two biggest are nutrition and ecology.  While it’s certainly possible to have a complete diet based entirely on plant foods, it is more difficult and expensive to do so.  Access to meat greatly improves the likelihood of getting an appropriate amount of fats, protein, and other trace nutrients for the average person.  Additionally, good quality meat animals can be raised easily on land that would not support the type of agriculture necessary for plant-based crops of the same nutritional value.  On the ecological side of things, humanity is basically the only functional predator remaining in large areas of the world.  While I agree that this is not a good thing, it does mean that we have the responsibility to play that role appropriately or face the degradation and likely extinction of many prey animals that have co-evolved with their predators.  All life occurs in a cycle between birth, growth, death, and decay.  Participating in that cycle is not immoral, and upsetting it would likely have dire consequences.  If prey animals are not to be allowed to go extinct, then they must be part of a functioning predator prey cycle.  If it is okay for “natural” predators to eat animals, but not for humans, then the argument is basically saying that humans exist outside of nature.  I don’t think that’s the case, and I’m sure that the other side of this debate would agree.  In fact, the argument I read last night seemed to be saying that because humans are part of nature they must not eat meat.  My mouth was left hanging open on that one.
Dude1:That’s where I see that some environmentalists go wrong.  They define nature as the state of the earth without human interference. Therefore, they are implying that humans are not part of nature.
Dude2:I consider myself an environmentalist, in that I do as much as I can to leave the world in better condition that it was in when I found it.  I believe that they share that goal, but in my opinion they seem to have a misunderstanding of ecology. Being part of nature means fulfilling your natural roles, and for humans that includes consumption of meat. Ironically, there are a lot of environmentalists that say there are too many people, then argue (possibly even correctly) that the only way to support more people is for everyone to be vegetarian.  That seems like it would exacerbate the problem to me…
Dude1:Good point.  But they may be talking about supporting existing humans that are starving to dealth across the world.
Dude2:They may be, but then if they make life supremely comfortable for everyone by providing a bountiful harvest (with or without meat), it is an absolute certainty that we would end up with even more people unless there is some serious education regarding the reasonable ecological role of the human.  Besides, the lack of hooved animals is a prime contributor to the desertification of those arid areas where people are actually starving.  Governments regulate the rangeland to limit “overgrazing” (which they have incorrectly defined), and the side effect is that the grasses and forbs that co-evolved with the ruminant animals are killed from lack of animal impact.  That’s a large part of what the holistic management book is about.  Arid areas NEED meat animals in order to maintain their ecosystems.

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Plants Don’t Want To Be Eaten

Friday, March 25th, 2011

Several years ago, after having to drive for too long behind a truck full of stinking, squealing pigs being delivered for slaughter, I gave up eating meat. I’d been harboring a growing distaste for the ugliness that can be industrial agriculture, but the real issue was a long-suppressed sympathy for its — or really, my — victims. Even screaming, reeking pigs, or maybe especially screaming, reeking pigs, can evoke stark pity as they tumble along in a truck to their deaths.

If you think about it, and it’s much simpler not to, it can be hard to justify other beings suffering pain, fear and death so that we can enjoy their flesh. In particular, given our many connections to animals, not least of all the fact that we are ourselves animals, it can give a person pause to realize that our most frequent contact with these kin might just be the devouring of them.

My entry into what seemed the moral high ground, though, was surprisingly unpleasant. I felt embattled not only by a bizarrely intense lust for chicken but nightmares in which I would be eating a gorgeous, rare steak — I could distinctly taste the savory drippings — from which I awoke in a panic, until I realized that I had been carnivorous only in my imagination.

Temptations and trials were everywhere. The most surprising turned out to be the realization that I couldn’t actually explain to myself or anyone else why killing an animal was any worse than killing the many plants I was now eating.

Surely, I’d thought, science can defend the obvious, that slaughterhouse carnage is wrong in a way that harvesting a field of lettuces or, say, mowing the lawn is not. But instead, it began to seem that formulating a truly rational rationale for not eating animals, at least while consuming all sorts of other organisms, was difficult, maybe even impossible.

Before you hit “send” on your hate mail, let me say this. Different people have different reasons for the choices they make about what to kill or have killed for them to eat. Perhaps there isn’t any choice more personal or less subject to rationality or the judgment of others. It’s just that as far as I was concerned, if eating a tofu dog was as much a crime against life as eating bratwurst, then pass the bratwurst, please.

So what really are the differences between animals and plants? There are plenty. The cells of plants, and not animals, for example, harbor chloroplasts, tiny green organelles that can turn the energy of light into sugar. Almost none of these differences, however, seem to matter to any of us trying to figure out what to eat.

The differences that do seem to matter are things like the fact that plants don’t have nerves or brains. They cannot, we therefore conclude, feel pain. In other words, the differences that matter are those that prove that plants do not suffer as we do. Here the lack of a face on plants becomes important, too, faces being requisite to humans as proof not only that one is dealing with an actual individual being, but that it is an individual capable of suffering.

Animals, on the other hand — and not just close evolutionary relations like chimps and gorillas, but species further afield, mammals like cows and pigs — can experience what pretty much anyone would agree is pain and suffering. If attacked, these animals will look agonized, scream, struggle and run as fast as they can. Obviously, if we don’t kill any of these animals to eat them, all that suffering is avoided.

Meanwhile, whether you pluck a leaf or slice a trunk, a plant neither grimaces nor cries out. Plants don’t seem to mind being killed, at least as far as we can see. But that may be exactly the difficulty.

Unlike a lowing, running cow, a plant’s reactions to attack are much harder for us to detect. But just like a chicken running around without its head, the body of a corn plant torn from the soil or sliced into pieces struggles to save itself, just as vigorously and just as uselessly, if much less obviously to the human ear and eye.

Source: NY  Times

 

Posted in Vegetable Production | No Responses »

Common Myths About Food & Nutrition

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

By Raine Saunders

Are you a person who believes low-fat foods are healthier than those with fat in them? Have you ever starved yourself or limited your calories thinking that if you did this, you would lose weight? It has become a common misconception that if people eat low calorie and fat-free foods they should be able to lose weight because they are eating less fat.

Although in theory, this sounds like a logical conclusion, nothing could be further from the truth! With that idea in mind, have you ever wondered whether the food in your kitchen that reflects those ideas is healthy to eat? It can be confusing to try and sift through all the information available on food and nutrition. So much is available. How do you know what to believe? Don’t worry, I’ll answer this question later on in this post.

Right now, let’s go over some of the most common myths about nutrition as well as detailed explanations as to why those are untrue.

Here’s a short quiz you can take to determine how nutritionally aware you are about the foods in your kitchen:

  • Do you eat low-fat or non-fat foods?
  • Do you count calories?
  • Do you believe “lean meats” are healthy to eat?
  • Do you believe red meat is not healthy to eat?
  • Do you believe saturated fats and cholesterol are bad for your heart?
  • Do you eat soy products because you’ve been told they are health foods?
  • Do you maintain a vegan diet?
  • Do you eat boxed cereals because the labels read “low-fat”, or “high-fiber”, “all-natural” or “no sugar added”?
  • Do you believe eggs and butter are bad for your health?
  • Do you choose vegetable oils because you have been told they are healthy to consume (canola, cottonseed, corn, and safflower oils)?
  • Do you take synthetic vitamin/mineral/dietary supplements to “fill in the gaps”?
  • Do you pay no attention to organic, sustainable, antibiotic/hormone/spray/pesticide-free meats and produce because conventional is “cheaper” and “it doesn’t really make a difference”?
  • Do you buy processed foods such as enriched breads, crackers, cereals, bagels, English Muffins, pretzels, rice cakes, tortillas, croissants because you believe they are low-fat and healthy?
  • Do you eat highly-processed lunch meats, sausages, hot dogs and other similar items?
  • Do you eat products containing hydrolyzed proteins or protein powder?
  • Do you buy “food” and “protein” bars and powdered drink products because you believe they are an acceptable substitute for a real, balanced meal?
  • Do you believe that raw milk is unsafe to drink, and pasteurized is superior?
  • Do you buy factory-produced eggs and industrially-produced meat?
  • Believe salt is bad for your health?

If you answered no to most of these, hopefully you are on the right track!

If you answer yes to more than 2 of these questions, it might be time to re-evaluate what you are keeping in your cupboards and refrigerator.

Here are some things you may not know about the food you eat:

  • Fats and cholesterol are healthy and necessary for your health. All humans need real, unadulterated fats in their diets. Fats contain some of the most necessary nutrients and enzymes for us to maintain all types of bodily functions – even more than many vegetables, believe it or not!
  • Butter is good for you! A slice of real butter is delicious, filling, and provides Vitamins A & D, and K, and also Omega 3 essential fatty acids – especially butter from healthy cows on pasture.
  • The kind of meat you eat is important – learn the differences between conventional and sustainable-raised, grass-fed meats. Conventional meat is really the culprit of many of our health problems.  Animals in conventional environments are usually fed grain, soy. These animals are not made to eat these substances – but should be eating grass instead. As a result, animals become ill and often develop the pathogenic variety of E. coli and other diseases, are administered antibiotics to keep them from getting sick, are given growth hormones to make sure they grow fast enough to turn a profit quicker. The balance of Omega 6s to Omega 3s in conventional meat is grossly out of balance, and eating this kind of meat causes degenerative disease over time.
  • As a rule, supplements don’t replace healthy eating.
  • Remember when grandma used to give you cod liver oil?  Cod liver oil with butter oil is really good for you, and is an important source of Vitamins A , B, C, & D. Cod liver oil with butter oil contains the important Vitamin K that is so lacking in much of our diets. Fermented cod liver oil is the best type of this oil to consume.  
  • Sprouted, soaked, and fermented grains, nuts, and seeds are more digestible to the human body. Have you ever stopped to wonder why there are so many grain and food allergies, and why obesity, heart disease, and other illnesses are so prevalent? In modern times, the grains most of us consume are processed and extruded. Extrusion involves grains being forced through a very small hole in a machine and subjected to extremely high temperatures, which damages the grain. For thousands and thousands of years, our ancestors prepared grains by soaking and sprouting to increase the digestibility of these foods.  When eaten in moderation and properly prepared, grains, nuts and seeds can be a part of a truly healthy diet.
  • Eating healthy doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.
  • Cheap food is not really cheap – cheap foods are full of chemicals and toxins, and are not really food – so you can eat it all day and not be full.  We are seeing more and more of these foods on recall lists every day. Eating these kinds of foods will actually result in a net deficiency of nutrients stored in your body. In the end, you will spend more money for less food, and then you will pay in health costs later.
  • The Food Pyramid (designed by the USDA) actually tells us to eat the wrong foods!
  • The most unhealthy oils to consume are those that are the cheapest (such as canola, cottonseed, and soybean) – and you will find these everywhere you look : in grocery stores, restaurants, and in processed foods everywhere.
  • The healthiest oils are virgin and extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, and palm oils from a sustainable-source.
  • Soy is not a health food unless it is in fermented form. Ninety percent or more of soy sold on the market is highly-processed, industrial waste – and beyond that can cause severe disruptions in the body in the reproductive, digestive, endocrine, nervous, and cardiovascular systems. Soy milk, cheese, fake meats, most tofu and soy sauces, soy “mayonnaise”, and soy filler ingredients you will find on the market are not good for your health, despite the claims made by food companies on labels. Natto, tempeh, and miso that are naturally fermented are good choices for health.
  • Table salt is an industrial waste product – the heating process during refinement takes temperatures upward toward 1200 degrees in processing, which destroys the majority of naturally-occurring elements. Mostly comprised of sodium chloride and no more than one or two other elements, table salt is toxic to our bodies. Unrefined sea salt has a balance of trace minerals our bodies need, which we currently don’t get from many of the foods we eat. Because conventional farming methods destroy our soil and mineral levels, the earth becomes depleted of many important nutrients that would otherwise greatly improve the nutritional content of foods that are grown (produce, grains, legumes, etc.) and raised to graze (animals for meat and meat products). The best choice is a good quality unrefined sea salt.

Overwhelmed? Confused? You are not alone!

Modern food processing methods remove nutrients from foods and denature them so that our bodies cannot recognize those substances. Modern food processing uses heat, pressure, and industrially-produced oils and fats to make foods more convenient and easier to package and sell. If your digestive system cannot absorb something, it will have a difficult time delivering something nutritious that will actually do your body benefit. What’s more, these foods can actually increase the toxin load and deplete existing nutrients, which cause long-term health problems.

Remember at the beginning of this post – I asked a very important question - how do you know what to believe?

When you aren’t sure, a good rule of thumb to follow is that if your grandmother doesn’t know what it is, you probably shouldn’t be eating it!  People have eaten real, traditional foods for thousands of years and survived very well.

It’s only been in the last 160 years or so that human beings have developed processing and automation to mass produce packaged foods. And yet since that time, disease rates and illnesses have changed considerably. For example, our records in the study of heart disease show that death from heart problems was a rare occurrence in pre-industrial societies.

Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution (19th century), the incidence of heart disease began to increase sharply, and since then more people have died from heart-related disease.  If you are a person that needs statistical data to be convinced, just take a look at this graph of statistics on heart disease from Google showing heart disease rates since the 1860s to now. It’s quite startling to see the change in this disease since that time on this graph.

Source: AgricultureSociety.com

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What Veg*ns Can Learn from Traditional Foods

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Source: Nourished Kitchen

While the traditional foods movement seems to focus heavily on the inclusion of high-quality, pasture-raised meat and dairy products and is, indeed, a largely animal food-based diet, that doesn’t meant that it offers no guidance or dietary wisdom for vegetarians.  Indeed, there’s a lot that vegetarians can glean from the traditional foods movement and, in many ways, the practices advocated by traditional foods enthusiasts and organizations like the Weston A Price Foundation and the Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation might prove even more important for vegetarians and vegans who rely on grains and legumes for much of their foods.  From soaking and souring grains and legumes to fermenting veggies and eating healthy fats, here’s five things that vegetarians can learn from the traditional foods movement.

1. To soak, sour or sprout grains, legumes, nuts, seeds and beans.

Grains, nuts, seeds, beans and legumes often make up the foundation of a vegetarian or vegan diet.  For this reason, it’s critical that vegans and vegetarians learn to prepare these foods to reap the greatest nutritional reward from them.  To prevent premature sprouting until conditions for plant growth are optimal, grains, nuts, seeds, legumes and beans are potent sources of antinutrients which include phytate and enzyme inhibitors.  These antinutrients cause reduced mineral absorption and reduced ability to properly digest foods.  Since vegans and vegetarians forgo mineral-rich meats and bone broths, deriving much of their mineral intake from plant-based sources, one of the most significant and beneficial actions an adherent to a plant-based diet can take to maximize nutrient intake would be to soak, sour or sprout all their grains, nuts, beans, legumes and seeds – a traditional practice that renders the nutrients in these foods more bioavailable1.

Sprouting, soaking and fermenting grains, nuts, beans, seeds and legumes activates the enzyme phytase which neutralizes phytate, and these traditional processes help to free up minerals otherwise bound in a raw, untreated state.  Indeed, once phytate has been adequately degraded, legumes can become good sources of both iron and zinc2.  The simple act of sprouting and roasting oats, or malting, before preparing a breakfast porridge has been shown to increase zinc absorption by 55% and iron by 47%3.  Sprouting mung beans followed by a simple fermentation increases the absorbable iron by over 70% compared to the untreated bean4.  Simply choosing to bake whole grain sourdough bread over regular whole grain bread not only reduced antinutrient content, but significantly increases the availability of magnesium5.  Incidentally the process of souring grains as required in sourdough bread appears to naturally increase the levels of folate by as much as three-fold13.

In a plant-based, vegetarian or vegan diet you miss out on animal foods as a dense source of minerals, for this reason you can do your body a favor by making sure to properly prepare grains, nuts, beans, seeds and legumes to maximize the availability of iron, zinc, magnesium and other minerals. Read more about soaking grains, beans and legumes.

2. To only consume traditionally fermented soy products and with iodine-rich companion foods.

For many vegans and vegetarians, soy and soy foods make up a base of the diet: soy milks and yogurt, tofu, texturized vegetable protein, soybean oil, soy-based protein powder, cooked soy beans and other soy foods. Unfortunately, soy foods, much like all beans, are a potent source of antinutrients.  Soy’s potent isoflavones can also interfere with human endocrine function, particularly the function of the thyroid and reproductive health of both men and women and may have broader implications for the population as a whole7.  Properly prepared through traditional means of fermentation (note that soaking and germinating on their own prove inadequate), as in traditional soy sauce and tempeh can reduce phytates found in soy almost completely.  Also, by serving small condiment-sized portions of soy foods with traditional iodine-rich accompaniments like seaweed, one may help counteract soy’s antithyroid properties.

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