Honest Meat

What Do We Know About ‘Clean’ Meats? Not Much

Various substitutes for meat have been receiving a considerable amount of media attention lately. I am not talking about the relatively simple garden burger that you maybe tried in the 1990s, with an ingredient list mostly composed of whole grains, pulses, and vegetables. I am talking about products that tout how much they taste, smell and look like meat but are not meat. They may be grown in a lab or manufactured from a whole host of plant, fungal, and insect ingredients, but they are designed to be meat substitutes. Some companies who make them call them ‘clean’ meats, but I will just call them fake meats to not confuse you all (since I know how hard many of you work to produce and process the cleanest animal meats possible).

First, a little science on how fake meats compare to a real meat- in this case chicken.

The peer-reviewed article in The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Meat alternatives: life cycle assessment of most known meat substitutes, Sept. 2015, by Sergiy Smetana, Mathys, Knoch, and Heinz, uses a functional unit approach for comparing chicken meat with six other meat substitutes. These products include: dairy-based, lab grown, insect-based, gluten-based, soybean-based, and mycoprotein based meat substitutes. The research compared the average cradle to plate life cycle of each product and specifically looked at 17 environmental factors and 2 nutritional factors (food energy and protein content). Since many of the meat substitutes are still in development phase, often taking place in small quantities in a lab setting rather than a manufacturing scale, the energy use can be quite high. In fact, this study found that lab grown meat had the highest overall environmental impacts (considering all 17 factors) and the lowest was insect and soy-based meat substitutes. Chicken fell in the middle. However, for food energy, chicken performed the best. Lab grown meat substitutes also performed the worst for food energy and protein content compared to the other products. If anyone wants to read the full article, I can email it to you. It is quite fascinating and one of the only studies that I could find of this nature.

The media is strongly influencing consumer perception of fake meats. One study in Meat Science by Goodwin and Shoulders, Nov. 2013, showed that the vast majority of media either discussed the problems with current livestock production or shared the perceived benefits of cultured, lab grown meats. The most common sources sites in print media in the US and Europe were cultured meat industry scientists, academia, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) or New Harvest (a private cellular agriculture research organization). Because of the sources of information and the inherent bias of the articles, consumers are likely to be more influenced to accept fake meats.

The popular media often likes to focus on the mass investment pouring into the fake meats sector and how potentially ‘disruptive’ it could be (although rarely if ever mentioning the actual disruptions to land use and livelihoods if meat sales diminish). From the Forbes article, Why Bill Gates and Richard Branson Invested in ‘Clean’ Meat, these billionaires are investing millions into the sector for two main reasons- to disrupt an industry and to make money. They think they can capture a share of the trillion dollar meat market while creating products they believe are better for the environment and human health. Says Branson, "I’m thrilled to have invested in Memphis Meats (a maker of stem cell meat analogues). I believe that in 30 years or so we will no longer need to kill any animals and that all meat will either be clean or plant-based, taste the same and also be much healthier for everyone.”

After reading these studies and articles, I wrote my own article for Local Harvest, a large online community of farmers and consumers looking for local food. Here is an excerpt, with a link to the whole thing. It has generated a lively debate in the comments section, to be sure.

There has been considerable media hype about how different fake meat products (and all imitation animal products, such as those trying to replace milk, eggs, leather, fibers, etc) are clearly more environmentally sustainable, better for human health, and better for the animals if they don't have to die to produce your food. In reality, things are not so clear. There is significant wealth and whole organizations tied up with convincing consumers that "meat analogues" and plant-based meat replacements are the ones you should be choosing. Just to be clear, none of these organizations or investors would make any money should people choose to just eat less meat or buy better sources of meat. They only make money if consumers shift to the new processed products that they have invested in.

The fake meat industry will tout how it has a lower environmental footprint, yet there is actually almost no scientific research that shows this. Most of the fake meat industry is incredibly opaque, full of trade secrets and very little data sharing. As a result, nobody actually knows the full life cycle impacts of these products. Yet we know very well the life cycle of a beef steer, of a sheep, or of a chicken. And we know that we can make tremendous improvements towards reducing the environmental footprint of meat by purchasing it closer to where it was raised, from rotationally grazed animals, from breeds that thrive in a specific environment, and by eating the whole animal so there is less waste.

Next time you read about or hear someone touting the solution that is fake meats, ask them why they think it is a solution and what will it solve for? What data do they have to back up their claims? You will find, most often, they have nothing to say. It is just a seductive story with no substance.

You can find the full article, “Fake Meats, False Solutions” here. I would love to hear your thoughts or other research that you know regarding meat substitutes in the comment section.

May you pursue the truth using critical thought,

-Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Transparency in a Box?

There is a company that will ship you a variety of frozen meat to your door. They got their start just a couple years ago by raising funds on Kickstarter. People donated over $200K to get this company off the ground. On their Kickstarter campaign site, they said exactly this:

"Where do you source your beef from?

All of our beef is sourced from various farms in the Midwest. We have partnered with amazing farms who are revolutionizing the grass fed industry. Our beef is of the highest quality and is always 100% grass fed and finished."

On their website, they don't list where their meat comes from, but they do mention that consumers should buy from them because they use "transparent sources". You can see that in this snapshot of their website here:

 

I wanted to know more, so I initiated a chat on their website with a customer service rep named Kristin. This is the exact conversation I had with Kristin.

RDT: I have asked this question before, but I still don't see anything on your website about where you meat comes from. Is it from US farms & ranches or is it imported?
(08:11:31 PM) *** Kristin joined the chat ***
(08:12:06 PM) Kristin: Our farm names and locations re proprietary. We source from the highest quality and best price suppliers
(08:12:14 PM) Kristin: *are proprietary.
(08:12:29 PM) RDT: US or imported? You don't have to tell me the names.
(08:13:20 PM) Kristin: I understand. The locations are proprietary as well, I am unable to provide you with a more definitive answer, I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

What happened to "transparent sources" if they can't tell me anything? Then I got this follow-up email with more information. I am surprised this information is not listed on their website. I wonder why they sent it to me, but they won't put it on their website.

"Hi RDT,

We believe everyone should have access to the best quality, best tasting grass fed & finished beef available and want to make receiving this accessible to everyone by offering your meat for the month delivered right to your door. We scour the world looking for the best possible quality, and have used beef from US and Australian producers. All of our beef producers are audited for the strictest of humane standards and practices. Our US producers are from both co-ops and independent farms with stringent definitions of grass fed and grass-finished. Finishing cattle properly on grass takes a lot of land and supply is limited in the US where grass availability changes with the seasons. We source from Australia because their grassland and the quality of their beef is exceptional. Grass fed beef in Australia undergoes a stringent grading process factoring in attributes contributing to tenderness and flavor that are not considered in the US.

Niman and DuBreton, our two main pork suppliers are Certified Humane.

Chicken from SVO who we currently source all chicken from is Certified Humane.

You can read about Certified Humane here.

Beef is certified by Australian Animal Welfare Certification System (AAWCS). and information can be viewed here.

If you have any other further questions, please let me know.

All the best,"

-Kristin
Customer Support Specialist

 

So I guess the whole premise of their Kickstarter campaign (sourcing from the MidWest) is no longer valid. And I guess "transparent sources" means they don't actually list their sources and when you ask, you are told they are proprietary. If they are proud of their company and the meat they sell, they should be proud to name them on their website. It is really that simple.

I have a better idea. I know lots of real family-farmers around this country that offer meat in bulk or meat CSAs. There are too many good ones to mention. Look them up on search sites like LocalHarvest or EatWild. Many are just as convenient as ButcherBox, but are actually transparent. If we want to see a thriving agricultural economy and farmland protected from urban sprawl, we must support farmers and ranchers in this country. If we want to see more pasture-raised, grassfed, and organic proteins in this country, we have to actually buy from those producers doing it right. Here's to more honest meat.

 

A Brave New World

I'm baaack! After a year hiatus to have a baby, promote a new book, and start a new job, I think I *might* have the spare time to occasionally write a few prescient words. Don't expect miracles- probably once a month postings. But I intend to talk about the same kind of subjects with the same level of thought and research that I put into my previous work. This means no clickbait, fake news, pseudo science. If you want short tidbits, look elsewhere.

As the year 2016 comes to a close, I have been thinking about the vast amount of media and money that is now being thrown at factory foods. I am not talking about factory farmed foods, but rather foods that are developed in a laboratory and then reproduced en masse in food factories. Very different beasts altogether. One involves farmers, farmland, animals, pastures, and rural livelihoods. The other involves urban laboratories, industrial buildings, concrete, non-solar energy, workers, CEOs, venture capitalists and shareholders.

Yes, we all know that the production of animal products (meat, milk, eggs, wool, hides, etc) can and does have some vast environmental impacts, both positive and negative. But it is also a LIVELIHOOD for tens of thousands of people, mostly rural folks, around the globe. Animals, in large part, turn solar energy and photosynthesis into food. Plants of course do that too, but animals often eat the plants that we don't eat directly ourselves.

Now it is quite easy for a person almost anywhere on the globe to choose to eat a mostly plant-based diet. They can eat things like legumes, grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables, vegetable fats, and some dairy foods. I was a vegetarian for 12 years and ate my fair share of whole grains, beans, peas, olives, nuts, produce, eggs, and dairy. Most of these foods I ate in their real form or close to it. Grains were milled into flour which then are baked into bread. Beans were soaked and then simmered to be edible. Vegetables sauteed in fat. With exception of a little tofu, nearly everything I ate could be identified by name and closely resembled the original crop. Nothing was fake. I didn't have to eat a broccoli pill made from broccoli essence to get my need for broccoli. I just ate broccoli. If I needed more 'umami' flavors, I would saute some mushrooms or use seaweed flakes on my soup. But again, I knew I was eating mushrooms and seaweed flakes.

In the last few years and really exploding in 2016, there has been millions of dollars pouring into new fake meat or cultured meat products (over $300 million according to this Entrepreneur article). These companies either recreate the flavors of meat altogether using things like pea flour, nutritional yeasts, and other chemical flavorings, or they grow meat from animal cells. Some are developing fake leather (don't we already have that? I am pretty sure I have had multiple pleather shoes in my lifetime) or fake eggs that don't come from chickens but rather biotechnology. All of these companies websites purport to be saving the environment, freeing domesticated livestock from bondage, and freeing up crops that should be going to feed humans instead of animals. In a nutshell, they say they are 'saving the world'. Is this the case?

Since I don't have full life cycle analysis on all of the ingredients that make up these fake animal products (most of the info is proprietary at this point), I can only go with some gut feelings based on the scientific analysis of animal production and the production of other crops. I will compare a fake meat product that is made up of legumes, grains, vegetable fats, and synthetic ingredients (such as a Beyond Meat chicken tender). I will compare that to some pasture-raised organic chicken. I know it would make more sense to compare to confinement chicken, but I think a better choice than fake meat is choosing to buy from smaller scale farmers who raise their animals on pasture.

Fake Meat Chicken Tenders	Real Pasture-Raised Chicken
Main ingredient: Soy protein isolate	Main ingredient: meat protein
Energy source to manufacture: coal/gas	Energy source to grow: sunshine fueled crops
Ingredients grown: in monocultures	Ingredients grown: mixed pastures, diversified farms, some grains grown in monoculture
Manufactured in: an industrial warehouse	Manufactured in: family-farms all over the US
Location of headquarters: Manhattan Beach, CA	Location of headquarters: farmhouse table
Location of manufacturing: Columbus, MI	Location of manufacturing: on a family-farm all over the US
Packaging: plastic bag, non recyclabe	Packaging: plastic bag, non recyclabe
Serving size: 9 ounces	Serving size: 56 ounces (3.5lb chicken)
Price per ounce: .667 ($6 package avg)	Price per ounce: .3125 (for a $5lb chicken)
Key investors: Bill Gates, Tyson Foods, Humane Society of America	Key investors: farmers, maybe a smidge of USDA loan $ from US taxpayers
Where do profits go: to investors (see above)	Where do profits go: to farmers, to farmworkers, back into the communities

 

Seriously, if you crave the flavor of meat, eat good meat. If you don't crave the flavor of meat, eat grains, beans, and vegetables. There is no need for more manufactured fake meats in the marketplace. By eating this junk, you are not only taking away power and dollars from the farmers who could be stewarding our land and rural communities, you are also getting ripped off. Compare the per ounce prices above. Even a relatively expensive organic, pasture-raised chicken prices at $5/lb. is a bargain compared to the Beyond Meat chicken tenders which are more than double the price.

I've said it before and I will say it again: Just Eat Real Food

If you want to save the planet and humanity: Eat Less Meat, Better Meat

 

Meat Mindshifts for Chefs & Restauranteurs

I wrote this is a guest post for the Chefs Collaborative, but it does not appear they are posting it anytime soon. Perhaps it was too "in your face". Regardless, I think we in the food system need to have a frank discussion about how farmers can work with chefs and restaurants in a more positive, pro-farmer way. You are all "steak-holders" in this system. This is what I wrote:

___________________________________________________________________________________________

I write a meat-focused blog called Honestmeat.com and used to raise organic, pastured pork & poultry in California. I am now writing a book with Chelsea Green Publishing called "The New Meat Market”, a production and business guide for farmers wishing to direct market ethical meats. I go to great lengths to help educate farmers on how to run viable businesses, raise animals humanely, and care for the environment while producing fantastic food. But all that will be futile if we don't have the right mindset from buyers. Here are some key mind shifts that we need from chefs and restaurateurs if they truly want to shift the meat supply in the right direction.

Key Meat Mindshifts:

1) Farmers are not banks. You have to pay them in a timely manner. They cannot carry your business. Pay c.o.d. or within 14 days at the latest.

2) Meat comes from a whole animal. Learn to buy whole animals. Save money by learning how to break down whole animals in your kitchen and use every last part. Learn how to put a whole animal on the menu and educate your customers there is more to an animal than just tenderloins. Train your employees too.

3) Don't expect fresh meat year-round. Frozen meat tastes just as good if it is handled properly. Expect to buy frozen meat for around half of the year if you want to work with farmers. Even better, buy frozen meat year-round as that allows farmers to haul larger groups of animals to the slaughterhouse at one time. Buy a freezer or rent cold storage space so you can buy in bulk. Asking for one fresh carcass a week makes no sense for a farmer logistically.

4) Care about more than “local”. Local meat can still come from a feedlot, can still be fed lots of antibiotics, can still be injected with growth hormones, can still be given feeds grown with pesticides and GMO seeds. Local meat can still be produced by large corporations or hedge-fund billionaires and not family farmers. If you want healthy meat and a healthy environment, you have to do more than 'local'.

5) Be honest! If you buy from farmers, put their names on the menu or written up on a chalkboard wall. If you stop buying from that farmer, TAKE THEIR NAME OFF THE MENU. Stop lying, stop the bait & switch. Don't just buy local, organic meat for a special event once a year and then go back to your Sysco junk the rest of the year. Don’t call yourself a “farm to table” restaurant just because you buy local produce while your proteins come from a far-off factory farm. Commit or don't, but do not lie. Until this issue is resolved, farmers will not want to do business with restaurants. Train your staff too so that they know how to answer questions correctly without lying or making stuff up.

6) Promote more than just the farmer. Promote the local abattoir, without which you would not be able to source local meats. Promote the local smokehouse, the local feed mill, the local hatcheries, etc. All the parts of the system have to be present to have local meats.

Yub- that's a side of pork, American Guinea Hog to be exact. We used the whole damn pig and what doesn't go to feed us goes to feed our dog.

Breaking the Meat Processing Bottleneck: Part Two

After a farmer has put a lot of care and attention into raising a high quality animal (or at least one would hope), the butchering of that animal can either elevate or degrade the quality- it is the most critical step.  In order to sell retail cuts of meat a farmer must have it processed under USDA (United States Department of Agriculture, or as some folks call it- USDuh) inspection or in some states they can process under state inspection (which use USDA equivalent standards).  However, if a farmer plans to sell meat across state lines, they will need USDA-inspected meat cutting.  Having a USDA stamp on the meat’s label will give the farmer more flexibility in selling their meat- they can sell direct or wholesale to stores or restaurants with that stamp.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that meat is safer.  There are plenty of small, custom butcher shops that have impeccable food safety records.  But custom butcher shops don’t have the level of inspection that would allow a farmer to use them to process retail cuts of meat.  In fact, the custom shops often stamp the meat packages with “Not for Sale” on them.  I have seen farmers in a few states selling “Not for Sale” meat as so-called pet food.  But I doubt too many customers are buying $18/lb. pork tenderloin for their doggies, if ya know what I mean.  Of course, a farmer can always choose to do things illegally and process meat on their farms or in a custom facility, but it’s risky to run a business by breaking the law.  For personal consumption, friends and family, on-farm processing is the way to go (especially if they all come out to help!).

Nonetheless, finding a USDA-inspected butcher can be a frustrating endeavor. For illustration, we had only three USDA-inspected butchers to cut and wrap our pigs in the entire state of California (that we could find).  We tried all of them and were unhappy with the quality of all three.  After making a couple futile phone calls to the USDA to find another, we downloaded the latest list of USDA inspected meat plants for the state (see this link: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/regulations_&_Policies/Meat_Poultry_Egg_Inspection_Directory/index.asp ).  Unfortunately this directory is organized alphabetically by name of processor, instead of by state or by animal species they process, so you will get to waste lots of time wading through it to find facilities in your state.  We read through hundreds of pages to find around 20 potential butchering facilities in California and then spent another day calling each one of them. Turns out they all do specialty items like beef jerky, sausage, or meatballs, but only 1 out of 20 was willing to process whole pigs for us. Their employees had NEVER broken down whole pigs before because they were accustomed to working with 50lb. boxes of pork shoulder to make only a single product- meatballs.  We spent a day working with their butchers, explaining how we wanted things, and left them with detailed cutting instructions, crossing our fingers as we left.  Long story short, they messed up every single cut and we lost money trying to sell those inferior cuts at market.  They simply did not have the skills to work with whole animals, nor cut & wrap retail cuts for a farmer.

If you are a meat producer, there are all sorts of pit falls to be aware of when getting your meat cut & wrapped.  If you are a butcher, maybe this section will inspire you to communicate better with the farmers you work with and participate in educating both the farmer and consumers.  If you are a consumer, while you may never have to think about these things, understanding the logistics and the challenges might make you a better partner in the food system.  Here are some of the key lessons we have learned about butchering, both from our own experience as farmers and talking to other farmers around the country:

Truth in Advertising?

Family Farm.  Old Fashioned.  Gathered by hand.  What images do these phrases convey?  A small, quaint little farm complete with 1880s farmhouse, red barn, silo, and a big tree in front yard with a tire swing holding a cute little girl with pigtails?  How about ten 50 ft. by 300 foot long buildings each holding 10-20,000 laying hens pecking around at manure encrusted dirt and each other?  How about dozens of low-wage brown-skinned workers "hand gathering" the eggs?  Honestly (and that is what we are about here), the preponderance of feel-good words on egg cartons has to be some of the most flagrant violations of the concept of truth in advertising (which is only a concept since it is not enforced).  As egg producers ourselves, we get a lot of cartons recycled back to us from other companies (we only use the recycled cartons for CSA sales).  We chuckle whenever we are sorting cartons at the cr*p that is in print on these things. Here is some of the B.S. gleaned from those cartons and the companies websites: