GO HUNTING! Seriously folks, if you are looking for the pinnacle of "sustainably and humanely raised" meat, you need to leave animals raised to be slaughtered for our consumption behind, take a hunters safety course, get your license, and head upstate. Let's take venison. The meat tastes spectacular, like rich beef - it is by far my favorite, and is healthier than anything you could possibly buy. And if it is young enough and properly prepared (rare, trimmed of the silvery membranes surrounding the muscle), it can be as tender as can be. So the meat is intrinsically fabulous.

Now how about the morality of it? Deer weren't raised to be slaughtered for our consumption - they live their lives according to their whims, munching on your parents dahlias in Scarsdale and bedding down beneath some hemlocks just outside Fido's invisible fence. Life is pretty good as long as they can avoid getting hit by some vegan's Prius, in which case both the vegan and the deer would agree that it would have been much better if the deer had ended up in your freezer than in a ditch along the road.

What about the environment? There are so many deer that in many places there isn't any understory, which many species desperately need to live their lives. A horde of city folk headed out to the country to shoot some deer would be a boon for the environment.

Of course, you have to kill the animal, which most hunters will agree is parodoxically THE WORST part of hunting. But if you don't take any risky shots, the animal will go down with a fraction of the suffering that it would endure even on the most pastoral farm.

For more, read all of The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has an excellent chapter on the topic.

mmm....meat,

My dad and I have started selling some of our grass-fed Devon beef to a few buyers around the city and here is an indication of what our beef will cost you (and why it costs what it does).

It makes sense for a farmer with a small herd to either sell to a co-op (and thus pretty much relinquish control of pricing) or find a restaurant or crazy foodie willing to buy in large quantities.

The incentive for a small farmer to sell to individual consumers is pretty much non-existant, but we'd like to start because we are confident that people will prefer our beef over the garbage they have to buy in grocery stores. In fact, it is the class considerations you talk about that are at the heart of our decision to want to sell to individuals.

The hanging weight of our Devon steers is about 650 lbs. and we can sell a 1/2 steer at about 3 bucks a pound (grossing about a thousand bucks) to a restaurant.

That side of beef will yield about 160 pounds of various cuts of meat. If you consider specific cuts, you can see what kind of prices we'd need to charge in order to make at least a little money.

That 1/2 steer will yield about 40 pounds of hamburger and at 4 bucks (which is what we charge the restaurant in essence) that amounts to $160. When selling to individual customers, we wrap up the burger meat in roughtly 1 pound packages and freeze them. Obviously, we need to sell the packages for a bit more than $4/pound to offset the extra cost of not selling the beef in bullk. Especially if you sell at a Greenmarket where you need to pay for a permit and for dry ice (I've actually found the Greenmarkets to be prohibitively expensive). I've been selling those packets for $5 to friends and whoever wants it. A website and online business is in the works. The permit in the Greenmarkets are $40/day I think. Since you are only grossing $40 more charging $5/pound, you'd need to sell a higher price in the markets.

Go to Key Foods, Gristede's, D'Agostino's, wherever and take a look at the pale, disgusting pre-packaged burger meat they sell. Maybe they sell it for $3 something a pound. I don't think there is any doubt that our beef is just plain and simply a lot better.

It is more expensive and (I agree with you) that should correspond to lower consumption, but not at the level you seem to be envisioning.

So let's stick with hamburger and hypothesize that some person out there eats 50 pounds of burger meat a year. At $3.50/pound, that person spends $175 on meat. Spending the same amount but buying a vastly superior product at $5 per pound, that's 15 pounds less per year.

That doesn't really mean the end of meat for that person, I think it just means smaller portions or 15 more days of pasta.

I realize I didn't answer your question about the numbers of farmers or the amount of land required for a veritable grass-fed beef industry (you also have to keep in mind that corn subsidies are integral in keeping the price of Meatrix meat low), but I hope I've given you some insight into why some people don't think a grass-fed beef industry would result in social upheaval like the one you described above.

Finally, I think the fellow above makes a good, if a little hyberbolic, point regarding the economic consequences of moral decisions. In the case of slavery, there was no room for considering the economic ramafications of a purely moral decision. The case of Meatrix vs. grass-fed beef is less cut and dry (despite what Peter Singer might say), but I dare you to take a look at the industrial processes that bring you your meat and not have your convictions tested.

I wonder if anyone read such a long post.

man, some of you foodies are scary like abortion clinic bombers. take a chill pill.

Michele, you're obviously crazy and a bit polarizing. "Any way you look at it, it's evil." what is this? A fairy tale? Where's your evil godmother and your pumpkin carriage? Let's go back to the real world here.

Seriously, you folks need to relax a little. Stop drinking so much koolaid, and realize that food purchases are affected more by cost than inherent evilness associated with the exchange.

I wish they would do a study also. However, most human beings are omnivores- in the sense that meat is used in only small amounts. Most people around the planet use meat in stews, soups, stirfries, or to flavor veggies. The idea of meat as the main event for most people is a new one, even in the US. When I was a kid here in New York, we didn't have meat every night. My parents didn't grow up with meat on the table every night either- they were Depression kids, and they lived quite nicely without all that meat. There's a reason why 'a chicken in every pot' was once a campaign slogan- because chicken was once an expensive luxury meat for many people. That's not necessarily such a bad thing.

You know, when slavery was on its way to being abolished, peole didn't like it. They knew it would drive up the price of textiles, and make clothing even more expensive for the poor than it already was. It might mean the loss of decent wages for white working men, since there would be so many slaves willing to take jobs. But you know what? Slavery was STILL WRONG. And the economic advantages it gave was offset by the human misery, political hypocrisy, electoral disenfranchisement of urban peoples, and other issues it caused.

I'm a confirmed meat eater on a budget and I avoid fast food like the plague. I pay more to buy direct from farmers, and I'm still able to cook a chicken once a week or so. I also eat less meat now because my food is more satisfying. It's all a matter of what you get used to. Heavy duty meat eating makes pretty much everyone sick, from the consumer to the community members where agribusinesses are located. Any way you look at it, it's evil. And eventually it will stop, because it's detroying human health in every way imaginable.

Just once I would like one of these groups or authors like Michael Pollan to do an analysis of how much land it would take for grass fed cows to replace the cows we now consume that come from corn feed lots. And how many new farmers we would need. I don't know the numbers myself but I'm guessing it would be a lot of both. Meat prices would soar, consumption would fall (probably a good thing), but beef would end up a luxury item. You think you have class issues now? There may end up being more involuntary vegetarians.

...or just go vegetarian.