always have and probably always will. I can eat burgers every day and not get tired of them. Recently I did something that I believe is healthier and makes me feel really good. Those in the know probably wonder what took me so long?.
I've been a self employed carpenter for over 30 years and am winding down. I was working for a person installing some new windows in a very old house and hanging a little drywall. This person has a love of cattle and keeps around a dozen steers. I'm no farmer so forgive me if I get the terms wrong, I believe a steer becomes an ox after so many years. Bill, the homeowner/farmer explained how cows were designed to eat grass and the grain that they are fed in the giant feedlots will actually kill them if they were kept too long causing all kinds of health issues for the cows. I think of it almost as foie gras as they are given shots to make them grow faster, shots to protect from disease as they are packed together in unsafe pens, and given all the high fattening food they can eat. I remember from grade school how cows were a great food source as they could eat basically grass and digest it with 3 stomachs designed to do just that. Turns out the grass fed beef living a life in pastures and barns are healthier for you. The fat content is much less than the grain fed and the good fat, the omega-3 fatty acids are much higher too. There are all kinds of sources for this info, here's just one link
Even though the commercial slaughterhouses are government inspected, the rules allow for a very small percentage of animals to be butchered even if they aren't dead! I won't go into all the other stuff as like most meat eaters we don't want to hear about it. I do believe that the commercial animals are way more stressed out than the mom and pop operation animals are and this has to affect the meat.
Once I learned all this I asked Bill if he had any meat to sell, which he didn't and where could I find some. In the meantime he asked if I wanted to buy a half of steer in the future so I said yes and said I'd swap my labor for it which we agreed. Somehow this arrangement made me not think to hard about the cost. It's different for me anyways with coming up with over a thousand dollars to buy something than it is to simply not get a paycheck, which these days isn't foreign to me at all.
So about a month ago I picked up about 200 lbs of vacuumed packed frozen beef with all kinds of cuts. For me it's like Christmas every time I go to the freezer.
You have no idea how good it feels to cut out big ag on this, including the factory farms, slaughter houses, corporate corn farms, and the large supermarket chains. There's probably even more. I think if we can support our small farmers we can reduce a lot of whats wrong with corporate agro-business. Also a small local operation was used for the processing. Some say there are only 3 giant meat processing companies in the country forming a monopoly of sorts. Since they are so huge it's actually much cheaper to ship your animals to them and have them process them, again something I'm glad not to support, not to mention you aren't going to get the same animal you sent back.
I know lots of people don't eat meat which is anyones choice and I'm not trying to change anyones diet. I'm just saying local is better for everyone.