Hello Beef...

Yesterday we had the pleasure of joining our local Organic Growers Society on a tour of a beautiful organic farm that produces beef and olives. The farm is also where we have been getting our beef for the last couple of years. To this point we had only talked to the farmers on the phone, so it was wonderful to go and meet them and chat face-to-face.



We also saw our beef face-to-face; the actual cow that would fill our next beef order. We are usually so removed from the source of the meat we consume. I remember one of my kids asking what animal the dinner meat came from, and someone rushing in with a comment like "Oh, don't worry about that." We are taught not to ask where the meat comes from, how it lived or how it died.

I have also heard the comment that it doesn't matter what kind of conditions the animals experience in life or death, because that is what they are bred for. Increasingly, I find that I am not comfortable with that kind of thinking. I also suspect that if we saw first hand commercial chicken farms, sow stalls, feed lots and the like such comments would be harder to make. If you want to read more about this there is a great article at Sustainable Table.

If I want to eat meat then I feel I need to square up to the source of that meat, the conditions it lived in and the manner of its death. Or become a vegetarian. Facing the cow in the field was sobering - my choice to be a meat-eater means an animal must die. But I now know that the beef I consume spends happy days grazing in a field with it's herd, and then has a short trip to a local abattoir. I think it is great that my kids also have had this opportunity to see where their food comes from.

We had a tour of the olive groves too, where Nathan tried his hand at picking olives grown for oil...


There was plenty of time for the kids to play with friends, and for us the chance to chat with like-minded people was wonderful.