THE GOOD BUTCHER AND THE GOOD CHEF

Italian master butcher Dario Cecchini, who is highly respected as a legend throughout the trade, often says that four distinct elements define meat that can be deemed “good”:

1. A Good Life

The animal lived as nature intended, with access to space, fresh air, and the natural diet appropriate for its species.

2. A Good Death

The animal was treated with respect up until its final breath. Death came swiftly.

3. A Good Butcher

Only a skilled hand cut the meat, to maintain its integrity, to obtain the most meat, and to keep valuable cuts intact.

4. A Good Chef

Only a talented cook dignified the animal and all whose labor brought it to that point.

It is easy to see why each of these elements is as important as the next. Every step must be made to ensure that your meal is the best it can be, and any hitch in any given key will take away from that quality. I can cook up a steak of factory-farmed beef, but it wouldn’t hold a candle to a hunk of local, grass-fed beef. A farmer could hand me a case of gorgeous heritage breed chickens for processing, and if not careful I could turn those thirty-dollar birds into piles of valueless mangled meat instead of perfect leg quarters, breasts, and so on. All must be in balance, or all is lost. This golden rule is so solid that each of these key elements can be extended to create an excellent means of determining the holistic sustainability of all our food choices. So it is through these four easy-to-remember keys that we will examine the final few points.

A Good Life

We’ve already covered much of what it means to have a “good” life as an animal in the food industry. It involves an appropriate diet, exercise, social interactions, and generally any other elements that make one’s life worth living. Many of these factors can be verified through a simple visit to a farm or by questioning the source. This rule can also be applied to the life of our plant-based foods. A good life for a plant would be one free from pesticides and other chemicals. It is also one that is free from human suffering. Labor abuse and human rights violations are commonplace in the produce industry, so assuring that your food was produced by companies with respectable records on these matters is paramount in assuring a clean conscience.

A Good Death

A good death is one that comes quickly and painlessly. Humane slaughter does not ensure that the animal enjoys its death—just that it be kept as happy and calm as possible throughout the process and transition from farm to processing plant. Just like Jim Parker, who gives his pigs trailer rides their entire lives to make them see even their final ride as a fun outing, farmers who respect the sentient nature of their animals work to make sure the inevitable does not become the unconscionable. With seafood, this step would refer to the capture methods, which we want to make sure are the least damaging to the environment. Similarly, we can extend this to our plant-based foods by ensuring that they are harvested in responsible ways and transported minimally. All that effort to raise organic, biodynamic grapes is lost if they are trucked, shipped, and flown across the globe before they reach your kitchen.

A Good Butcher

We’ve finally made it to the question of WHERE to find good meat. I’ve waited this long to say it this plainly: Meat you can truly trust comes from a face you can truly trust. You have to know where your meat is coming from, plain and simple. This means buying meat only from a neighborhood butcher shop, from grocery stores with real butcher counters in plain sight of customers (not shady backroom operations), through meat CSAs or buying clubs, or directly from farms through on-farm sales, farmer’s markets, or mail order. Whatever the source, the person helping you should possess a wealth of knowledge about meat in general and in particular, and even more about the farms that provide the meat. It is not enough to list the name of a farm. Ask questions about specific practices. The butcher should be able to field your questions with confidence or find someone who can without much fuss. Your butcher should be working from whole animals to the extent space allows, and he or she should be willing to cut meat to order and to your specifications, within reason.

If you can’t find a trustworthy shop, forming or joining a meat buying club is a great way to get good meat. Some meat buying groups are informal groups of friends who take turns driving to a farm to pick up meat and animal products to be split among the group. My bacon club was a type of meat buying club, as I made the journey to farms for heritage breed pork so that my customers didn’t have to. Community supported agriculture (CSA), a system by which small to very large groups of people buy shares in a farm, or sometimes an individual animal, and over the season receive periodic deliveries of goods, are a more organized version of this arrangement. It should also be noted that many markets accept EBT (electronic benefit transfer), or “food stamps,” making good foods accessible even to those who rely on government assistance for food. Some states even double the benefits for those who buy at a farmer’s market—so you could go to the market with ten dollars in food stamps and walk out with twenty dollars in local produce. For lower-income folks, a healthy diet is especially important to combat diet-related health issues such as diabetes and hypertension, so this access to fresh, real food is invaluable. Check with your state’s food assistance program to find out more about accessing better foods.

Many of the sites listed in the heritage breed section are good for locating farms to source through. CSAs and meat buying clubs can be found through an Internet search or by asking around at local markets and co-ops. The best directory for good butchers in the United States is The Butcher’s Guild, a network of sustainability focused butchers, chefs, and meat processors.

Any company you source food through should respect its employees as well as its customers. Safe working conditions, access to health care, and a living wage for all are integral parts of a holistic, sustainable food system. My mantra here: If you aren’t buying from someone who is clean and honest, you are buying from a dirty liar. It might be a bit harsh, but it is true and easy to remember. If a shop, restaurant, or farm is not clean, both physically and morally, and you can’t trust information regarding particular practices, they do not deserve your business.

They are taking your trust for granted, when it should be earned. I have walked away from meat and fish counters or left restaurants after one too many blank stares and “ummm’s” in response to simple questions. I wouldn’t have blamed anyone for walking away from me years ago when I was a hapless vegetarian pretending to know meat. If a business appreciates your patronage and cares about change, it will care deeply about filling its ranks with approachable, knowledgeable, well-treated people who are more than happy to answer any questions you have. Thankfully, there are trustworthy farms and butcher shops across the country, so a Good Butcher is never far away.

A Good Chef

The buck stops here. It all comes down to what happens in the kitchen. If you are the cook, well, your job is easy. When you invest in better food, it makes sense to be nicer to it. If you spend money on a whole pig and you and a friend drive an hour each way to pick it up, you’ve invested quite a bit before you even think about applying heat. Honor your investment with exciting, delicious preparations and festive, celebratory meals. Branch out and try new flavors and new ingredients and find yourself gaining confidence. As a chef, I feel humbled by the opportunity to elevate and share the work of farmers when I turn their animals into succulent meals. When you eat that twelve-hour pulled pork, the human and porcine energy trapped in each bite is almost a flavor unto itself.

When you put your trust in us, your chefs and food producers, you are indeed taking a gamble with this final key in “good” meat. I believe wholeheartedly that the role of all chefs, food writers, and others in this field is to elevate food, not demean it. We should all take the harmful actions of the food industry as personal offense and seek to not only reverse these irresponsible practices but to distinguish ourselves from the world of dishonest, disgusting fake food. We should be explaining and correcting the deliberate and rampant misinformation and exposing the lies. We should be rescuing our precious baby from the Big Bad.

This role is of utmost importance for chefs and food writers in the spotlight and at the top of the culinary world. Unfortunately, though, money talks, and a disgraceful trend among chefs has emerged. Many reputable and talented chefs now lend their names and likenesses to the same large food corporations responsible for producing the food that is literally killing the world and everything in it. It is deplorable for any person who claims to love food to entice consumers to buy powdered cheese, microwavable cake, or chemical-filled sausages when they could be using their talents to show how easy these things are to make at home. Good food is easier to make than many think. It is our job as talented food athletes to show others that they can cook, too. We should be demystifying the act of cooking, not making the fog thicker and harder to wade through. Though, aside from this more surface offense of using culinary talent to sell mediocrity, many chefs are guilty of an even worse grievance.

It is beyond imagination that any chef would use his or her position to encourage higher consumption of fragile or depleted resources and unsustainable practices. This problem is an issue when it comes to seafood in particular. Nearly every food program on TV calls for the use of seafood items categorized as “red” or “to be avoided” choices by leading seafood sustainability organizations. Rather than use their wide reach to educate consumers on better choices, these shows actually suggest that customers go off into the world requesting items that we shouldn’t even be catching anymore, such as red snapper. Not to mention that many of the most expensive restaurants source from the same widely distributed commodity meat suppliers that fast-food chains use. If that burger costs seventeen dollars, at least make sure it is local and grass-fed. If it isn’t, you are paying only for the ambience.

Despite the fact that the bluefin tuna is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, it remains popular with many in the food world. An easy Internet search will turn up numerous recipes by Martha Stewart, Mark Bittman, Jamie Oliver, and other celebrity chefs that call for the use of “red” items such as monkfish, skate, and bluefin. Nobu, one of world’s best-ranked restaurant chains, proudly serves bluefin alongside the vulnerable and often poached Chilean sea bass, while nearly every well-respected sushi spot lists it, as well as other red-line seafood choices such as yellowtail, sea urchin roe, and unagi (farmed eel). Top chefs are making their names on serving endangered sea life and processed foods while lining their pockets with money from companies that strangle the lines that bring good, real food to market. When we’ve successfully outfished the seas, we can thank them for the great recipes.

How Rachael Ray Destroys Good Food in Thirty Minutes or Less

It is scientific fact that every time Rachael Ray says “yummo,” an angel loses its wings. In the few years she’s been on air, her simple 30 Minute Meals have gone from quick and simple to dumbed down and bland. Her posting of recipes that make use of boxed macaroni and cheese and other Kraft products, which are almost invariably highly processed corn-based products, might have something to do with her role as a spokesperson for Kraft and just might have something to do with her apparent abandonment of all that is good and true in the world of food. Ray started with a good concept. Thirty minutes is actually a perfect amount of time to create a wide range of delicious, healthy meals from simple and even inexpensive ingredients. If you learn the basic rules of cooking and play around a bit, you will always end up with something at least palatable if not downright scrumptious.

There is an endless abundance of culinary knowledge that can help us learn how to grow or make anything. Compared to the chemistry of that energy drink your coworker is drinking and the micromechanics of our smart phones, cooking is a walk in the park. Martha Stewart, whom I admire for her dedication to old world techniques, may not always use sustainable products, but at least she keeps it real by making culinary techniques accessible for the home cook. Conversely, Rachael shamefully just proves how bad one can screw up this final stage in the “good” food process. I’m sure I’m not the only food lover who loathes her lamentable creations.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m the kind of guy who identifies as a capital F Feminist. I don’t take lightly the possible misogynist or sexist implications of my assertions about Rachael Ray. Men discredit and dismiss the work of women as a matter of course in the culinary world, as they do in the world in general. I constantly attack the patriarchy of the kitchen, I respect women chefs, and I am in no way attacking Rachael Ray personally. She is an avid pit bull lover and works against dog-breed-specific legislation—both redeeming qualities in my book. She’s probably a hoot to hang out with and might even still have a strong cooking bone in her body—when the cameras are off. I guess I just expect more of the gal. Few chefs have attained the level of mass exposure she has. Rachael Ray could have been more like Julia Child. Julia made the exquisite accessible. A chef of her standing ought not to be actively working to eradicate traditional food and food production methods. A chef who is the mouthpiece for Kraft, Nabisco, Coca-Cola, or any similar corporation is a disgrace to her coat.

According to the famous Japanese food critic Yamamoto, a great chef should do five things:

1.Take work seriously.
2.Aspire to improve.
3.Maintain cleanliness.
4.Be a better leader than a collaborator.
5.Be passionate about his or her work.

Rachael Ray and many other celebrity chefs would sadly not pass that test. Thankfully, there are many, many of us who are working ourselves ragged fighting this system. The chefs and butchers I know and respect wouldn’t be caught dead tossing boxed macaroni into a dish. I know butchers who would love nothing more than to lock the USDA out of the shops forever. I know chefs who have gotten into physical altercations over what pig farm another chef used. Some of these people were introduced in earlier chapters. It is my joy to share several of the most influential friends I’ve made in food before closing this final chapter.

These are the people who have shaped the chef and butcher that I am today. But most inspiring of all, they have defined the kind of chef and butcher that I want to become. I am just thirty, a very young chef, and I didn’t attend culinary school. But I have learned from and created a food philosophy through watching every chef, butcher, mixologist, cheese maker, and sommelier I’ve worked with.

Bryan Mayer

I’d be nowhere without Bryan. That first year of butchery started this whole project, and Bryan was there rooting me on from the start. Bryan’s salty sweetness introduced me to the culture of butchery and is the soft lining around his exacting standards and meticulousness. I am eternally gratefully that I came up cutting with Bryan, who went on to run Fleischer’s Meats in New York after we parted ways. Bryan is opening up his own shop in Philly sometime in 2013. Look him up. A word of advice: Bryan’s overall demeanor at any given time can be judged by the state of his facial hair.

Tressa Yellig

Tressa Yellig is the first chef I worked with as an equal, though I was nowhere near her in skill or technique. Tressa and I formed a close working relationship that lasted about a year, doing events together on a regular basis in the space where Salt, Fire & Time, her rad community supported kitchen (CSK), is located in Portland. A CSK is like a CSA, except customers buy shares in the production of the kitchen instead of the farm. Every week, Tressa fills baskets with slow-cooked bone broths, fermented veggies, fresh pâtés, and other homemade kitchen staples.

Tressa influenced and encouraged my love of traditional foods and preparations. It was also with Tressa that I began to focus my attention on providing accessible, low-priced meals to the community. She and I spent the entire summer of 2010 serving ten-dollar BBQ plates every Friday night. All local foods, one menu, no reservations, food goes till it’s gone. That was the deal. By midsummer we had lines down the block and our BBQs began to feel like family cookouts. I was hooked on that atmosphere, and that free-flowing familial energy is what I always shoot for with my dinners. Tressa’s dedication to slow foods and timeless methods inspired me to fully commit to my own vision of what food “ought” to be. Tressa also makes the best kombucha in the world. Go for the rose-cardamom or lemon verbena and be ready for transcendence.

Tessa LaLonde

What does one say about Tessa LaLonde? You have probably never heard of her, but chances are if you’ve eaten at a top-notch restaurant around the country, you’ve had her food. Tessa has me beat by ten in the Vagabond Chef contest. She’s been traveling the country doing everything from stages at four-star restaurants to working as the private chef for porn stars. Tessa is a whirlwind in the kitchen. I met her several months before I scheduled my first tour, when she volunteered to help Tressa Yellig and me with a few events. Her adventures in chefdom were entirely the inspiration for my decision to become a traveling chef. Tessa also really likes to talk about gas. Yours and hers.

Tia Harrison

I always describe Tia Harrison as Superwoman, as I am genuinely convinced that she hides a cape under her chef’s coat. Tia is a mother and the executive chef/owner of Sociale in San Francisco, and she co-owns the women-owned and women-run butcher shop Avedano’s, also in San Francisco. Tia also cofounded The Butcher’s Guild. With my perpetually full plate, it is thinking about Tia that helps me reel myself back in and take one bite at a time, or at least chew those far-too-big bites with my mouth closed. Tia’s respect for me as a chef and butcher has been humbling and has pushed me to fully inhabit the niche I have created for myself in the food world. I chose a very different route for my culinary career, one that confuses some of my peers. But Tia has always understood my work, and that recognition became a drive to excel in this world. When you want to master a craft, you must come into contact with those who have mastered it already. Tia Harrison is that person for me. She is also the only person I know who can watch as many reruns of Law & Order: SVU as I can. It’s our favorite pastime.

Marissa Guggiana

Marissa Guggiana is an author and a fifth-generation meat cutter. When Marissa chose to include me in her book Primal Cuts in 2010, I had barely been a butcher for two years. The exposure from her book pushed my work out into the world in a way I couldn’t have imagined. Marissa cofounded The Butcher’s Guild with Tia Harrison, and together the two of them are truly the vanguard of the Butchers’ Revolution. Two lady butchers taking on the meat industry while shaping its future—how could you not love that? I admire Marissa’s love of not just food itself but of food culture. We’ve shared stories of sleeping on borrowed floors before successful events and scraping together our last coins for public transportation to expensed flights and lavish meals. Marissa follows this food trail in much the same way as I do, with a blind faith that this is the only way to Truth. Food is love, food is family, and food is history. Marissa gets that, and she gives her all to help others see it, too. Having just published her third book, Marissa almost makes me think that writing another book is a good idea. Almost.

Jesse Gold

Jesse Gold is one of the most wildly talented chefs I’ve ever met. Jesse and I founded a radical chef collective in Brooklyn in late 2011 and curated many events together. Jesse not only influenced my cooking but revolutionized the way I think about the kitchen. Jesse was the first chef I met who was interested in deconstructing the patriarchy of the kitchen and the classism of the food world—the first truly radical chef I met. By “radical chef,” I mean a talented and visionary chef who is also staunchly against the status quo in all realms of life. Jesse possesses an extensive knowledge of traditional food practices and the medicinal use of foods. While being a pretty hardcore vegetarian, Jesse also supports the consumption of well-sourced meats—a true welfarist. Together with Jesse, I developed the full spectrum of vegan to meat menus for public events that I have now made routine. Our monthly Sunday brunches were all about sating every taste bud in the house and supporting personal food choices. Jesse openly challenges any vegan chef to a game of vegetal prowess called Salad Wars.

I have been afforded the chance to collaborate with and document the work of others who are building an alternative market and an alternative food system in response to a standard that rewards shortcuts, fillers, and falsification. I’ve walked the farmer’s markets of cities all over the continent at every time of the year. I know how much work it is to make time in a busy Brooklyn schedule to get down to Park Slope Food Co-op and how lovely it is to live in Montréal with a daily market four blocks away. I’ve met farmers who operate honor-system on-farm stores and butchers who take the time to share their skills with the community through workshops and apprenticeships. Each of these people has shown another possible way to fix the world’s food problems.

This journey has been more than just a formation of my own food ethics. This has been an ongoing opportunity to conspire with the leaders and unsung heroes of the true counterculture food movement.

Even after nearly four years of searching, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve yet to find the best balance of ethics and the realities of the industry; nor do I know everything there is to know about meat sourcing, farming, or the butchery trade. This is a mastery of skills that will take many more years to mold and shape, but knowing how to answer my own questions and how to observe and learn from my peers has helped me connect others to solutions for their own questions. Being invested fully in anti-oppression principles and working outside the capitalist structure doesn’t square so well with running a business, and this internal conflict was an early issue that had to be addressed. Financial sustainability has to be part of the “sustainable” foods conversation. If the fancy locavore backyard-garden-sourced café on your street tanks after a year due to lack of customers, high overhead costs, or whatever the case may be, that is indeed NOT sustainable food. Sustainable means “able to continue.”

I came to learn that lesson personally over and over again because I so strongly wanted my events to be accessible, as well as overflowing with transcendent foods from nearby pastures, that I routinely cut my own profit out of the equation. I wouldn’t call that selflessness or revolutionary business principles—just me being naive about how to best marry my desire for a wide audience with my desire for high-quality food. It took me three years in the industry to get to a place where I feel confident about my methods of engagement. I had to learn that what I was creating was not a business venture but a community-based political action centered on open discourse. I had to learn that activism can take many shapes and that political work can have absolutely nothing to do with politicians or the prescribed channels of power.

Over these years and scores of events, I have whittled myself down to a sharper, more accurate point. I understand my work and my role in this world, even as I continue to define it. I am here as proof that all of us can get where we need to be purely by asking the right questions, by never settling, and through downright willful self-determination and self-definition. Revolution is based in the realization that one is not a part of, or benefiting from, the system currently in place—and thus must demolish that system to replace it. Why would we think for one second that the entities that gave us this world, and continue to profit from it, are going to give us the tools with which to dismantle it?

There’s an often-repeated slogan among North American protestors and activists: “The system isn’t broken. It was built this way.”

The systems and cycles of oppression I have been referring to throughout this book—the systematic dishonesty of both industry and government and the befuddling labyrinth that has been put in place to keep the “good life” out of the hands of many—are all proof of this. Animals are not abused because people are mean; they are abused because it takes a long time to raise and kill animals humanely. People aren’t refused health care or higher wages because their bosses are evil; they are treated poorly because fair compensation costs more money. Good food is not expensive; bad food is falsely cheap—because it is not really food and is made up of government-subsidized ingredients. Bad food makes people sick, and sick people need medication, so why would natural healing and healthy diets be encouraged by the industries that profit from this cycle?

Yesterday was too late, and tomorrow is never promised. Build your world today.

You’ve been wanting to quit your job and start a farm or apiary or become a baker—DO IT. You are thinking about trying a raw foods diet—DO IT. You have space for chickens in your yard and your city allows them— GET CHICKENS. You wish you could make your very own two-year-aged prosciutto or just-hot-enough hot coppa—study up for the next three years so you don’t poison anyone and then get your salumi on. You wish you had time for a garden—start an herb garden in your window and progress to outdoor spaces. Convince neighbors to turn lawns and fallow backyards into plots of food. Make your own pickles and jams.

Practice cooking new foods because eating locally and seasonally will likely introduce you to foods you have never seen before. Go for the bitter greens you’ve never tasted before or the odd-shaped radishes, the beets with radiating rings of rose or the multicolored duck eggs. Eat breakfast every day so you are never tempted to pull into that drive-thru of factory meat for a calorie fix again. Remember food groups? Vitamins and minerals and micronutrients are things to keep in mind, too. Are the plates of food you are eating full of different colors and textures? If not, proteins, good fats, fiber, and other necessary nutrients might not be present.

Learn to read the signs from your body about what YOU need to eat. How do you feel after meals? Food is fuel and medicine. Propel your gifted machine with foods that both treat and prevent illness. Because of the lack of access to affordable health care in the United States, there are probably millions who must choose between paying medical bills or the grocery bill. The $150 that someone spends every month for hypertension medications just may be partly why he or she mostly relies on fast-food restaurants for meals. That $150 could buy a lot of produce, even overpriced organic. With the guidance of an experienced doctor or nutritionist, many people find they are able to divest money from the pharmaceutical and medical industries and invest in local farms by switching to plant-based diets. Such diets have been proven to treat everything from heart disease to some forms of cancer in studies by doctors in both the United States and China. Most prominent of these is Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr., who was featured in the 2011 film Forks Over Knives.

Eating seasonally and locally provides you with the foods needed today, for today’s conditions. One eats squash and apples, citrus fruits, dark greens, root vegetables, and bone broths in fall and winter, storing up valuable iron, calcium, vitamins A and C, bioflavonoids, and other immune system boosters. We eat warm, hearty meals that repel the cold and repair the injured and irritated tissues of sore throats, congested lungs, and runny noses. In spring, we see new buds of green in the form of stinging nettles, fiddleheads, ramps, early onions, herbs, and wild mushrooms just as our palates and bellies tire of stews and braises. For me, that little glimmer of green is enough to keep me eating turnips and potatoes for another month or two, because it reminds me that summer’s bounty is near. Berries, elderflowers, and roses are just around the corner, and soon after, summer is in full swing. We are outdoors, eating bright salads and snacking on tree fruits, melons, and snap peas. There’s wild forage from hiking trips, fish from boating trips, and grills going with chops and cheeks from local pigs. Even as we are distracted with this bounty, the real harvest is yet to come.

Late summer and early fall bring us the return for a winter of temperance and months of increasing indulgence with a yield of crops that floods markets well into late fall. Then we are again left with the roots, apples, and squash that can survive the cruelest parts of the year along with us. But if we are smart, and well-prepared, preserves from summer and fall will be there to cheer us up on even the darkest days. Eating with nature is a pleasure and an opportunity for lifelong learning as we regain the wisdom lost over the last couple of generations.

If any of the topics of the last few chapters got you riled up—do more research, find some like-minded people near you, and join the fight! It is not about agreeing on a method of action. It is about being engaged with the search for solutions. There are so many little steps that will help you escape the current. It doesn’t matter which ones you take. It only matters that you keep moving.

It is time to break free. It is up to all of us to hone our points, to take better aim, and to continue liberating ourselves and the world. We’ve only scratched the surface. Name an issue facing the world today, and our food system is likely to be implicated in some way or another. Good food, REAL food is all we need to power the work ahead.

Read up. Teach up. Eat up. Get out there and fight another day. The world is waiting.

By Berlin Reed in "Ethical Butcher- How Thoughful Eating Can Change Your World", Soft Skull Press (an imprint of Counterpoint), USA, 2013, excerpts part II, chapter 7. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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