Bambi, Babe, Ferdinand, and the cast of Chicken Run were not harmed in the making of this piece. Promise.
LOS ANGELES – It’s Friday night, after work, and the symmetrical grocery store aisles are flooded with drones of human beings trying to get dinner on the table. For most, meat will be on the menu.
Exceptions: Vegans, Vegetarians, Pescatarians, subscribers to GOOP, people who attended Woodstock in the 70’s, whoever drinks Skinny Tea… quite frankly the list is long and you get the point.
Empty pockets, much like stomachs, usually incite people to opt for the easiest options, but will you make that extra effort to find ethical, sustainable and significantly pricier meat, as opposed to the average cut at your local grocery store?
Before we get to the glitz and gore of where you can purchase said “ethical meat”, it would be helpful to figure out what that entails. Picture rolling hills, maybe even a ranch, with green grass swaying in the wind. Very Grapes of Wrath. Animals, like chickens, pigs, cattle all roam free, grazing on whatever the land has to offer.
The farmer, let’s call him Ted, doesn’t really fuss too much with the animals. Ted lets them be, makes sure they are healthy, and lets them live a life worth living. No hormones, no steroids, no antibiotics. Ever.
Once the animal has reached maturity, it is off to the slaughter house, but it’s not the Ford assembly line type of Kill Bill moment we are all accustomed to picturing. The animal will be sleeping with the fishes, no doubt about it, but they won’t suffer in the process. The steps usually involve stunning the animal, and then slitting the throat à la Sweeney Todd, suspending them upside down, and letting them bleed out as fast as possible.
SHOCK.
HORROR.
GUTS.
Slaughtering will always be controversial, but that is what sustainable, ethical, and humane meat production looks like. Now that we have all said our Hail Mary’s 100 times for putting sentient beings through that, just so we can chomp down on a medium rare steak on the BBQ, here is where you can venture off in Los Angeles to find these morsels of premium meats.
(Text and reporting: Julian Bellemore, data visualization and mapping: Vivian Medithi)