American Meat

Centralized production is not the answer

American meat is a loaded topic.

Yet, it is a normal and natural part of our diets, throughout our evolutionary history.

The perversion of meat production and processing has largely occurred over the last 170 years as industrial practices have taken over what was—for millennia prior—small-scale, humane and intimate, family or community affairs.

Nothing quite sums up the realities of 19th century American pioneer life quite like the Laura Ingalls books. The reader viscerally experiences what it was like for an early homesteader to prepare for winter in one of Ingalls’ passages.¹

Pa owned a pig. It ran wild in the Big Woods, living on acorns and nuts and roots. Now he caught it and put it in a pen made of logs, to fatten. He would butcher it as soon as the weather was cold enough to keep the pork frozen…

Then one day Uncle Henry came riding out of the Big Woods. He had come to help Pa butcher. Ma's big butcher knife was already sharpened, and Uncle Henry had brought Aunt Polly's butcher knife.

Near the pigpen Pa and Uncle Henry built a bonfire, and heated a great kettle of water over it. When the water was boiling they went to kill the hog. Then Laura ran and hid her head on the bed and stopped her ears with her fingers so she could not hear the hog squeal.

"It doesn't hurt him, Laura," Pa said. "We do it so quickly." But she did not want to hear him squeal.

In a minute she took one finger cautiously out of an ear, and listened. The hog had stopped squealing. After that, Butchering Time was great fun.

It was such a busy day, with so much to see and do. Uncle Henry and Pa were jolly, and there would be spare-ribs for dinner, and Pa had promised Laura and Mary the bladder and the pig's tail.

As soon as the hog was dead Pa and Uncle Henry lifted it up and down in the boiling water till it was well scalded. Then they laid it on a board and scraped it with their knives, and all the bristles came off. After that they hung the hog in a tree, took out the insides, and left it hanging to cool.

When it was cool they took it down and cut it up. There were hams and shoulders, side meat and spare-ribs and belly. There was the heart and the liver and the tongue, and the head to be made into headcheese, and the dish-pan full of bits to be made into sausage.

The meat was laid on a board in the back-door shed, and every piece was sprinkled with salt. The hams and the shoulders were put to pickle in brine, for they would be smoked, like the venison, in the hollow log.

"You can't beat hickory-cured ham," Pa said.

He was blowing up the bladder. It made a little white balloon, and he tied the end tight with a string and gave it to Mary and Laura to play with. They could throw it into the air and spat it back and forth with their hands. Or it would bounce along the ground and they could kick it. But even better fun than a balloon was the pig's tail.

Pa skinned it for them carefully, and into the large end he thrust a sharpened stick. Ma opened the front of the cookstove and raked hot coals out into the iron hearth. Then Laura and Mary took turns holding the pig's tail over the coals.

It sizzled and fried, and drops of fat dripped off it and blazed on the coals. Ma sprinkled it with salt. Their hands and their faces got very hot, and Laura burned her finger, but she was so excited she did not care. Roasting the pig's tail was such fun that it was hard to play fair, taking turns.

At last it was done. It was nicely browned all over, and how good it smelled! They carried it into the yard to cool it, and even before it was cool enough they began tasting it and burned their tongues.

They ate every little bit of meat off the bones, and then they gave the bones to Jack. And that was the end of the pig's tail. There would not be another one till next year.”

The passage goes on to detail the way Laura, her mom and her sister further processed the meat into lard, sausage, and other foods for their winter meals. This small tale of a family producing and processing their own meat seems almost foreign to most Americans at this point.

Could you butcher, clean, and cut a whole hog? Much less, preserve the meat for winter? Would you know how to turn the individual cuts into exactly what your family needed?

The vast majority of us would answer "NO” to that. What happened to divorce us so completely from our ability to feed ourselves? Can we return this wisdom to our communities and families?

Photo by Kelly Visel

Pork was common in early America.

Families such as Laura’s could raise a hog even if they did not have enough pasture to graze cattle. Pigs could eat almost anything. They were an ideal animal for families to raise and process for protein.

Their high fat content allowed for salting and longer preservation at a time when refrigeration was scarce. It was, understandably, a staple food in early America. And, under traditional methods, it was safe!

The popularity of pork in America gave rise to moderate centralization of pork processing during the 19th century. The city of Cincinnati was nicknamed “Porkopolis” for the amount of pork processing that occurred there.

Over the next hundred years, railroads and then refrigerated trucking allowed us to consolidate our meat supply—beef, pork, and then chicken—into funnels for “efficiency.” The prices became fixed on both ends. The processors control what they will pay the farmers and ranchers. Then, they set the price as it heads out the door to your local supermarket or big box store. The fast food industry relies on this vertical integration to keep their prices artificially low and their workers (including the meat producers and processors) in a constant state of slavery.

Today, 85% of the meat on American tables comes from only 4 large companies. This monopoly of large-scale, centralized production and processing makes long distance transportation a necessity and heavy reliance on fossil fuels inevitable.

What about food safety?

Those who are tasked with “food safety” see these modern methods as advances. The data collection they can get from centralized production and processing makes them drool. Data is king.

If we can track and recall millions of pounds of meat that had potential bacterial contamination, this is a “food safety” victory, right?

I assert not.

There is no victory in commingling millions of pounds of meat so that one can claim “success” when this meat is recalled and destroyed. What happens when our fragile transportation system breaks down or there is a catastrophic event that cripples mass production facilities? Even without imaging worst case scenarios, it is too easy to see the harm already done to American’s health with easy access to cheap fast food and heavily processed meat.

There is a better way.

Imagine this: those who want to farm are able to. Small, custom slaughterhouses (following safety protocols in each state) process the majority of the locally produced meat for that community. They are revered members of our communities. They are conduits bringing people together around the joys of food. These shops give hope to the communities. They are there to serve them. They can make decisions on pricing without the artificial competition caused by monopolistic corporations.

Perhaps some of you believe that we have that here in America. But we do not.

Can we return to a system where food is produced within and for communities?

We gain intimacy and true connection as we learn the patterns of the ecosystems that support us and as we support them in return.

Those who want fast food and centralized meat production will still have that. But those who want the option to support small, local and independent farms–to keep the American farm alive–must have that option as well.

We must find ways to support our community custom slaughterhouses so that they can continue to serve us.

It is the only thing that makes sense for America and the only way to step into a food-secure future.

1. Full text of the book.