Chefs Collaborative

Bill Buford’s cookbook review in the New Yorker looks at three new books that deal exclusively with meat. These authors–a food writer, a chef, and a butcher–know their subject intimately, and along with Buford, it seems, harbor a hope that the rest of us will one day follow suit.

But an intimate relationship with meat means confronting its source, which is difficult to do if the source is a factory farm in an undisclosed location. The more we hear about ground beef being recalled for e-coli contamination; the conditions in confined animal feeding operations (CAFO’s); the dangerous work conditions and low pay in slaughterhouses; the energy resources needed to prop up industrial meat production, and so forth, the more we are drawn to locally raised livestock, purchased from producers we might meet at a weekly market.

But in many states, federal regulations are making small-scale meat production a large-scale hassle, like in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a couple of farmers were arrested and had their farm raided for selling uninspected pork at a farmers market.

While New York magazine , in its response to Buford’s article, doesn’t see the point of trying to “reconcile meat with virtue,” reconciling our relationship with meat might be better seen as a responsibility, virtuous or not. At Chefs Collaborative, we advocate for purchasing meat from sustainable sources. Through our work on the project to Renew America’s Food Traditions (RAFT), we raise awareness about at-risk livestock breeds that chefs have a role in bringing back from the brink of extinction–by connecting with producers, learning how to break down whole animals, and challenging their skills to transform as much of the animal as possible into good food that restaurant guests will want to eat.

While working this way might seem risky, the bigger risk is not bothering to try–and being left with an option that makes less and less sense as the argument against industrial meat production mounts. “Good meat comes only from a good animal,” writes Buford. And good animals are raised humanely. It’s a system that deserves support–even if the motivation is  gustatory.

‘The eaters have spoken,” writes Michael Pollan in his latest article about the 2007 Farm Bill. As eaters and professional feeders, chefs have as much of a stake in the Farm Bill currently being debated in the Senate as parents, foodies, environmentalists, and public health professionals. As Michael Grunwald wrote in a recent Time magazine story, “If you eat, drink, pay taxes–or care about the economy, the environment or our global reputation–U.S. agricultural policy is a big deal.”

Read the stories by Grunwald and Pollan to get a clear sense of the issues, or read this article by Cornell sociologist Emelie Peine to get a better sense of what all the language about subsidies and commodity crops means. Grist magazine adds a layer of perspective to the understanding of commodity subsidies here. The Boston Globe recently described the efforts of Senators Lugar and Lautenberg to amend the current bill; and you can read here for one perspective about another proposed amendment by Senators Dorgan and Grassley.

Farm Bill critics contend that if the bill passes the Senate as is, large farm consolidation will continue, as will the tendency towards monocrops, confined animal feeding operations (known as CAFO’s or factory farms), and cheap calories in the form of highly processed food.

What can chefs do? Learn more by checking out some of the organizations working hard on Farm Bill reform. They include the Community Food Security Coalition, the Environmental Working Group, Oxfam America and the American Farmland Trust. You can keep supporting local food producers and Buy Local campaigns, you can call your senator to voice your opinion, you can tell the media what you think, and you can join Chefs Collaborative as a pledge to keep the momentum for local and sustainable foods going until the next time the Farm Bill is up for reauthorization: 2012.

photo: Iowa State University