Long story short, I'm getting enough of pretty much everything, and not too much of anything. Surprised the hell out of me, but there ya go. If I'm doing okay with the crap I eat, chances you're not doing too badly either.
Today's not about that, though. Today's going to be a little bit ranty, which I'm not at all self-conscious about because nobody's reading!
I like vegetables. I sometimes go out of my way to eat vegetarian, or close to it, for days at a stretch. However, apparently unlike *any* person who has *ever* chosen to post a vegetarian recipe online, I have *no* ideological reason for doing so!
I like meat! On the bone, off the bone, fresh, frozen, pasteurized, processed, breaded, smoked, salted, deep fried *meat*. I'm well aware of where it comes from and how it's processed; I spent a year on a beef/mutton farm, and I've been on an extensive tour of a pork processing plant (during which I was heavily reminded of the short story "Pig" by Roald Dahl, but anyway). I was probably eight or nine the first time I realised that my own calves were pretty decent drumsticks, and I was proud of it! I even spent a little while trying to make my upper arms meatier for if/when the aliens/zombies decided to start eating us. If I was meat, I was damned well going to be tasty meat.
Do I think that some of the ways in which animals are treated prior to slaughter is inhumane and unnecessarily cruel? Yes, absolutely. Do I buy organic, free-range, hand fed or any other "earth friendly" meat/poultry products? Absolutely not. You see, here in the USA, what you're paying for in these cases isn't actually happier, healthier animals; you're paying a little bit for the extra space and maintenance required to raise the animals, but more than that you're paying for a brand.
I'm going to focus on chickens, because the regulations regarding their treatment prior to processing in order to qualify for special labeling are more comprehensive than those for beef and pork. Let's take a look at a few common terms and see what they actually, legally mean.
• organic: "Organic" birds are "fed an organic diet (without hormones or non-organic additives)". Never mind that it's illegal to feed *any* chicken in the US a diet with added hormones. Was it George Hrab, or was it Dr. Crislip who talked about the genius of the guy who came up with this kind of marketing? Just because this cereal is labeled "asbestos free" doesn't mean that the cereal next to it without the same label contains asbestos. Next time you see a package of chicken labeled as having been raised without "added hormones", follow the asterisk next to that proud little label and read the legally required disclaimer. As far as feeding the chickens an organic diet as defined by the USDA's guidelines on plant materials, fine, cool, whatever. Just remember that for the same money it took to feed that chicken, you could have fed a few Third World kids using more modern growing methods.
• free-range: "Free range" chickens are defined as birds "raised in heated and air-cooled growing houses with access to the outdoors and fed a traditional high protein diet". The level and duration of the "access to the outdoors" are not defined: three chickens living in a spacious, temperature-controlled growing area with a wide open door that leads to a 40' x 40' grassy paddock are just as free range as twenty traditionally cage-raised chickens on shelves that are let out for "recess" once a day to peck at sand for ten minutes. The chickens are by definition fed the same way (or at least offered the same food) as mass-produced chickens. As far as eggs go, there are no laws whatsoever defining what is and isn't a free-range egg. It's purely branding. Note that terms such as "cage free", "free roaming", and "naturally nested" also have no legal definition, and can be applied just as well to the twenty chickens above if placed on the floor of the growing house sans cages as they can be to the three "ideal" chickens given their freedom to roam.
• pastured/pasture-raised birds "are raised outdoors using movable enclosures located on grass and fed a traditional high-protein diet". To many people, this seems to imply something like those collapsible playpen-type fences you can get for containing toddlers. It could also mean something as simple as gated paddock rotation, where every few days you herd the chickens through a gate into a different paddock to give the first one a chance to regrow. Then again, it could also mean that those dreaded wire cages are brought outside and placed in the grass, hopefully not in direct sunlight. Again, there are no regulations defining the size or composition of the enclosures, and the chickens receive the same food as their caged cousins.
• antibiotic-free: raised without "drugs that are intended to prevent or treat animal illnesses". This does not include vaccines. I'm all for vaccines, but I get the feeling that there's a certain cross-section of the population who would crap themselves silly if they knew that their "antibiotic-free" boneless skinless chicken breast medallions came from animals who might have received vaccines. "My child was nugget injured!" and so on. There is possibly a bit of a good side to buying "antibiotic-free" chicken, if you're looking to ease your conscience, since raising chickens in cramped quarters without being able to treat them for diseases is a risky gamble. I say possibly because it *can* be done, in conditions of absolute sterility. No human contact, no outside air, no chickens you've never met; in short, ovary-to-packing-plant isolation of chicken populations. Guess which way is more cost-effective?
What I find funniest about this whole thing is that not one of the labeling definitions addresses the part of chicken processing that occasionally squicks me out, the part that causes me, a meat enjoyer, to stop and think "wait, we *do* that?". That thing is debeaking. In case you're unaware, chickens apparently hate living too close to other chickens, and in crowded conditions can exhibit cannibalism, autophagy, or both, so their beaks are routinely removed to prevent this. Apparently, the only way to make sure that the chicken you're eating wasn't debeaked is to buy it with the head attached, which I'm pretty okay with but most people find hard to swallow.
I fully intend at some point in the future to have a flock of ducks. I'm comfortable with the idea of naming them, becoming familiar with their "personalities" (to the extent that ducks have personalities), and ultimately consuming them. (Incidentally, the first flesh I ever consumed from an animal whose name I knew was just about the toughest, most flavorless piece of beef I've ever had. Thanks for the effort, Ianto.) A lot of the same people I end up arguing with about what they're really paying for when they purchase organic food have strongly negative emotional reactions to this idea, which I find more than slightly hypocritical; if in an ideal world, animals whose flesh or products we consume come from environments in which they are fed "wholesomely", free to roam essentially at will, and "cared for" in a personal and meaningful manner, then at some point those animals had identities, if not names. If you find the idea of consuming an animal whose name you know abhorrent, *don't eat meat*, because no matter how free-range or organic or lovingly nurtured that animal was, you're denying that animal its "right" to an identity.
Will my ducks be free-range? Probably, but only incidentally. Will they be organic? Only if the organic feed is cheaper. Will they be tasty? I fully anticipate enjoying every shred. I also intend to continue consuming normally produced animals and animal products up to and following the point where I make stock from Penelope. Yum.
Definitions are taken from the US Trade Descriptions for Poultry.
