By Ashley See, CFSA Communications Coordinator & Firsthand Foods| Thursday, Mar. 7, 2019 –
How do three masters degrees, two mothers, and 30 family farms add up?
In honor of women’s history month, we’re shining the light on the co-founders and co-CEOs of Firsthand Foods, Jennifer Curtis and Tina Prevatte Levy.
While we’ve written about how this women-owned, Durham-based business works, what we haven’t explored is how this dynamic duo came to owning and running a specialized meat business that works with local farmers and processors to allow meats to be in the hands of consumers within a few days of processing.
How two women, passionate about feeding their families humanely-raised meats, are connecting NC’s pasture-based livestock producers with local food lovers, restaurants, and retailers.
Jennifer Curtis (right) and Tina Prevatte (left), the founders of Firsthand Foods
Hi! We’re the owners of Firsthand Foods, a women-owned Durham-based meat business specializing in local, pasture-raised beef, lamb and pork.
We run a mission-driven business that was built to help North Carolina’s pasture-based livestock producers thrive. In a world where commerce is dominated by global supply chain arrangements, small-scale producers are often denied access to market opportunities. Our aim is to change that by building out a robust market for locally sourced, humanely-raised meats while keeping our core values of transparency, equity and community at the forefront.
We first connected as business owners around a shared passion for using business as a tool for generating social and environmental good. We’re also moms, whose kids love to eat meat. When we met eight years ago, we were disheartened by the lack of local, sustainably-produced proteins available where we like to eat and shop. So we rallied around that problem and today you can find our meats at numerous area restaurants and natural foods grocery stores in the Triangle and Triad, as well as being offered by multiple home delivery services.
The biggest hurdle for livestock producers who want to sell their meats locally is what we like to call the “whole animal utilization” challenge. A good way to lose money fast in the meat business is to slaughter an entire beef animal for the ribeyes and have no market for the ground beef. So we buy whole animals from producers so they don’t have to worry about finding a home for all the parts. The 65 producers in our network get to focus on what they do best – raising animals humanely outdoors on pasture without growth-promoting antibiotics or added hormones.
While sustainable production practices are essential, meat quality and consistency are equally important. It doesn’t do much good to raise an animal with utmost care if the end result isn’t pleasing to the customer. Producers make decisions every day that ultimately impact meat quality – forage management, sire selection and breeding, nutrition and feeding considerations. But in the conventional meat industry, producers rarely if ever get feedback on how their management practices influence meat quality. Their animals are shipped off to feedlots or massive slaughter facilities and never discerned from the countless other animals moving through those systems. That’s why we work closely with our producers to provide feedback on size, marbling, color, and other qualities that result in a great eating experience. We want to build their capacity as producers while we build market opportunity for their products.
The 65 producers in our network get to focus on what they do best – raising animals humanely outdoors on pasture without growth-promoting antibiotics or added hormones.
To work with Firsthand Foods, farmers drop their animals off at one of three cooperating USDA-inspected, Animal Welfare Approved small-scale meat slaughter plants. These family-owned businesses based in rural counties are key partners for us. They do the hard, and often under-appreciated, work of slaughter and meat fabrication. They create the meat cuts and value-added products that our customers desire. We currently purchase 8 beef, 18 hogs and 4 lambs per week and sell most of our meats fresh to restaurants, retailers, and food service accounts. It takes about 80 different wholesale customers on a weekly basis to utilize all the parts of these animals.
Geoff and Jane Glendhill of Cedar Grove Windy Hill Farm raise beef for Firsthand Foods. Photo from Firsthand Foods’ Facebook page.
CFSA is on a mission to bring local, organic food to your table from a farmer who shares your values. Join us!
A few highlights from the Triangle:
Steak from Firsthand Food Farmers at Lantern Restaurant in Chapel Hill. From Firsthand Food’s Facebook page
Pork neck bones and feet are the basis for ramen broth at Dashi,
Beef shoulder goes into burgers at Bull City Burger and Brewery,
Top round becomes roast beef at Lucky’s Deli,
Lamb’s necks become a braised dish at Garland Restaurant,
Pig ears are featured at Pizzeria Toro,
Ribeyes are dry-aged at The Durham Hotel, and
Beef cheeks find a home at The Eddy.
And of course, without our retail partners, we’d be hard-pressed to sell all of our sausages, ground beef and ground lamb. Indeed, on the average, about 60 percent of an animal ends up as a ground product!
Our Evolving Ethic – Eat Less, Pay More
Our goal as business owners is to help build a supply chain for local meat that creates healthy delicious products, compensates everyone fairly, takes care of the planet, and reinvests in our community.
Gerald Miller from H&H Farm Photo from Firsthand Food’s website.
One of the challenges to growing the market for local, pasture-raised meats is that the cost to the consumer is often twice that of confinement-raised meat products. Compared to indoor houses and crowded feedlots, local pasture-raised production is less efficient, takes more time and is best managed on a smaller scale. But its these more responsible production systems that a growing number of consumers are demanding – humane conditions for animals, a fair price to the farmer, eliminating routine use of antibiotics and added hormones, building soil quality and protecting natural resources.
In the past six years, Firsthand Foods has directed over $5.2 million in to our local food system.
In our journey into the local meat industry, we’ve gravitated toward an “Eat Less, Pay More” ethic. It’s a cultural shift toward eating less meat overall so that we can afford “the good stuff.” If we all eat less meat, we reduce the demand for mass-production. And if we accept a higher per pound price for what we do purchase, we can pay farmers fairly for the work involved in raising animals humanely. We’re proud to report that a full 75 percent of the revenues we generate every year go back to the farmers and family-run meat processors in our supply chain. In the past six years, Firsthand Foods has directed over $5.2 million into our local food system.
One way to make the “eat less, pay more” philosophy a practical reality is to consider using pasture-raised meats as flavor-enhancing ingredients rather than center-of-the-plate features. We’re in the process of developing recipe cards (see two below; also available in cooperating retailers and on our website) that feature our products as accompaniments, alongside hearty portions of beans and vegetables. A favorite is Lentejas, a Spanish lentil soup that features our chorizo sausage. And a recent addition to our collection is an Indian chili that features garbanzo beans and ground lamb. Of course, there will always be special occasions worthy of splurging on your favorite steak or roast but week-to-week, it makes sense for meat to play a smaller role.
We invite you to try our pasture-raised meats and “eat less, pay more” philosophy. We’ve noticed that it has moved us in alignment with our core values. Eating less and paying more makes it easier for us to honor the hard work and sacrifice involved all along the supply chain – the land, the animal, the farmer, the processor, the distributor, the restaurant, and the grocery store all make it possible for us to enjoy good local meats.
Less is More Recipes
At CFSA, we’re on a mission to bring local, organic food to your table from farmers who share your values. To make it easier to shop your values and understand all of the label claims out there for meat, dairy and eggs, CFSA has created this handy pocket-sized guide that you can fold up and carry in your wallet!
Join CFSA to ensure the farmers and food you want are more and more available – now and for future generations.
Chicken Butchery Basics
by Meredith Leigh, author of The Ethical Meat Handbook
Learning to use the whole chicken (or other bird) is one of the most foundational things you can do to support ethical meat. Why? It ensures that the farmer can profit from the entire animal, eliminates processing fees from the equation, and contributes to a better kitchen economy in the home. You’ll benefit from better prices per pound when you use the whole bird, and you’ll get more meals from a purchase.
Chicken is a great place to hone your cutting skills. We’ll cover the standard, eight-piece cut, and offer a slight variation, which will come in handy when you’re frying chicken.
Begin by removing the wings. Stretch the wing as far as you can and move the joint up and down to find the socket. Using a semi-flexible boning knife, cut the wing off at the shoulder, aiming for the space between the ball in the arm bone and the socket in the shoulder.
Pull on the wing to discover the joint, and remove.
Variation/Confession: I’m not big on the stand-alone chicken wing, so I like to cut the wing off with a bit of breast meat to accompany. To do this, simply angle your knife at about 45 degrees from the wishbone and cut off part of the breast as you remove the wing.
To remove some breast meat with the wing, cut at a 45-degree angle, downward from the wishbone, and then remove at the shoulder bone, as if you were removing the wing only.
Next, free the oysters. This will assist you in pulling the legs off intact. The oysters are the small, round, tender pieces of dark meat located on the chicken’s back, one on either side of the spine. You’ll find them right at the spot where the legs join the body, and this is where you’ll make the first cut, across the back.
You’ll see the oysters on either side of the spine. Use your boning knife to make small cuts close to the bone, undercutting the oysters and scooping them free. Leave them attached to the skin.
Cut across the back to access the oysters.
Freeing the oysters.
Now, flip the chicken back over so it is breast up, so you can remove the legs. Stretch each leg out at the hip and cut through the skin until you see meat.
Cut through the skin between the breast muscle and the leg to access the leg joint.
Find the hip joint by gently wiggling the thigh to and fro, following accordingly with your knife. Pull back on the entire leg, peeling it away from the breast. You’ll eventually pull the hip out of joint, after which you can follow through to remove the oysters along with the entire leg.
Pull back on the leg to dislocate the hip. Then, you can easily complete the cut through the skin to remove the leg with the oyster attached.
Next, divide the drumstick from the thigh. First, identify the seam of fat at the joint, and begin your cut there. Once you’ve cut into the meat, you’ll be able to see the joint clearly, and cut directly between the bones for a clean break.
Separating the thigh from the drumstick.
The next step is to remove the backbone. You can use poultry shears for this if you’re nervous, but it’s not that tough to do with your boning knife. Just come at the spine at about a 45-degree angle, making close, downward cuts parallel to the spine. If your knife gets too vertical, you’ll run into resistance, so as long as you keep that nice, slight angle, you’ll be fine.
Keep your knife at an angle to remove the backbone.
Finally, split the breast. In between the two breast pieces is the sternum, or breast plate. I make straight cuts down either side of the keel in the breastbone and then start pulling the breast meat off of it with my hands, running fingers under the meat and close to the bone. Once you’ve exposed enough of the bone that you feel like you can pull it out, do it.
You’ll be left with breast meat that has ribs attached. You can remove the ribs by hand if you like, or use your boning knife to separate them from the back of the breast muscles.
After making straight cuts along either side of the keel bone, begin pulling the breast muscles away from the bone, using your hands.
About the author:
Over the past 15 years, Meredith Leigh worked as a farmer, butcher, chef, teacher, non-profit executive director, and writer, all in pursuit of sustainable food. She has developed a farmer co-op, founded and catalyzed non-profit ventures, grown vegetables, flowers, and meats, owned and managed a retail butcher shop, and more. She’s a single mom, and, the author of The Ethical Meat Handbook: A Complete Guide to Home Butchery, Charcuterie, and Cooking for the Conscious Omnivore. Says Meredith, “Above all, I am committed to real, good food, as a means to connect with people, animals, and plants, learn new skills, create intentionally, stay inspired, and experience deliciousness.”
by Kathleen Soriano-Taylor | Jul. 22, 2016 –
Elliott Moss of Buxton Hall Barbecue in Asheville, NC
Photo by Andrew Thomas Lee
Buxton Hall Barbecue’s food philosophy is printed on all of their menus: “Pasture Raised Pigs, Seasonal Produce, Local Products.” Talk to their head chef and pit master, Elliott Moss, and he’ll say it plain and simple, “If it’s not pasture-raised, we don’t serve it.”
When Elliott opened Buxton Hall last August, he fulfilled a life-long dream to have his very own barbecue joint. One year later, both he and his restaurant have made national news, gracing the pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Bon Appètit, doing what they do best: smoking mouth-watering barbecue, making the recipes of Elliott’s childhood famous.
Growing up in Florence, South Carolina, Elliott would help his parents build cinder-pits and cook up whole hogs for the block. His grandfather’s farm was still in business back then, and he has vivid memories of the realities of farm life. “I used to get chased by all kinds of animals, especially this one rooster. But one of my first crazy memories was a [slaughter]. I can still hear that pig squealing.”
Buxton’s number one standard is a pasture-raised pig. Between the higher quality of meat for the customer and higher quality of life for the pig, there’s no question.
Buxton’s number one standard is a pasture-raised pig. Between the higher quality of meat for the customer and higher quality of life for the pig, there’s no question. “I hope that we can make a difference with the pig industry, at least in our little part of the world,” Elliott says. “There are a lot of folks using pasture-raised pigs now that weren’t before and a lot of small farms. My grandparents wouldn’t feed me commodity pork, so I don’t want to feed that to [our customers]. I just remember a time when there were pigs running around, and that’s almost gone.”
In a recent interview with Asheville food-writer, Stu Helm, Elliott admitted that he had once been delivered commodity hogs, despite being reassured that they were pasture-raised. “We had two racks that we hang our hogs on; we had those nasty pigs on one side and Larry [Crocker]’s pasture-raised pigs on the other. I had every single employee come in and look [at the difference]. I had them touch the pastured pigs and feel their feet. And then they turned around and saw the other pigs. Some of them were crying. The pigs were bruised like they had been hit by a baseball bat; their feet were so soft like a baby’s butt because they’d never even walked.” He refused to serve them in the restaurant and ended up donating them instead.
CFSA has been bringing the farm to the table for 37 years, and with your help, we can continue to support farmers across the Carolinas as we build a healthy and resilient food system. Join us!
To see the kinds of free-roaming pigs Elliott grew up with, head down the road to Vandele Farms, one of Buxton Hall’s main farmers. Kathleen and Larry Crocker’s bucolic property lies just down the mountain from Asheville. A horse farm for thirty years, they were encouraged by their niece and nephew, Dawn and Mike Smith of Big Oak Farm, to raise pigs alongside Big Oaks’ cattle during the 2008 recession. The idea was that together, they could take on the niche market of pasture-raised meat.
Larry Crocker of Vandele Farm. Photo by Johnny Autry.
As we walk over to see a sow with her litter of playful piglets, Kathleen Crocker mentions seeing her racing down the hill just the other night. The pigs of Vandele Farms, a cross of Berkshire and Yorkshire breeds, are accustomed to an active lifestyle. They have several pastures, all equipped with water and a main center for feed, encouraging them to walk to the lower pasture to get their meals. Here in the corner of the property, the pigs have all congregated in a shaded pool.
Vandele is a relatively small operation of about 250 pigs, all raised by Larry and a long-time intern. His wife, Kathleen, is the one who processes them, alongside two helpers. They recalled some horror stories from when they would outsource the processing. “One time we sent three pigs and got back four heads! With that kind of large operation, they just mass process. It’s virtually impossible to get your product back,” she says. Even worse, they couldn’t guarantee a timeline or the requested cuts to local chefs. If the processor got it wrong, there was nothing they could do.
They initially started out with a meat handler’s license, as most of their business was selling “hanging pig,” or whole hogs, which require scant processing. Coincidentally, Larry had started converting one of their horse stables into a canning facility for his wife, and it just took off from there. “I tore up the walls, poured concrete on the ground, and it just kept growing! Next thing I knew I was going out to sales, buying equipment. All those panels on the walls come from Ingles coolers,” he smiles. Their frugal and patient transformation proved worth it: their fully equipped state-inspected facility cost only about one-third of the cost of a new building. Noting his rail system, he says, “It took five years, just waiting for the right tracks. Every piece has a story.” Finding success this way, they are now gearing up to be a small processor for other small farms, providing a much-needed service.
For every pig that he sells, he needs to ensure that another piglet will be born, requiring foresight and planning, especially as they prepare to grow the business.
When Buxton Hall officially opened, it was clear Elliott would need more than just the occasional pig. “Elliott probably buys 75% of what ten sows can do. If [Buxton] continues to grow like it does… we’re going to need maybe 20 sows to fare before they need them,” Larry notes, as he discusses the challenges of raising hogs for a restaurant that relies on his consistent product. For every pig that he sells, he needs to ensure that another piglet will be born, requiring foresight and planning, especially as they prepare to grow the business. They hope to have 500 pigs on their farm in the coming year.
The Chef and the Farmers
Photo by Johnny Autry
Elliott and the Crockers have many things in common, but foremost, they emphasize the importance of community. The Crockers met Elliott through Matt Helms of the Chop Shop and Casey McKissick of Foothills Meats, whom they had met by chance, at a class at AB Tech. Helms and McKissick were immensely helpful in getting their operation going, from being loyal customers to being present for the state inspection of Vandele’s processing facility. It was McKissick who recommended Vandele as a hog vendor for Elliott when he began to smoke pigs for events like Mike Moore’s Blind Pig Suppers. Working together, Elliott has helped Larry know what kind of hog he’s expecting. “To be successful in this business, you’ve got to have a niche,” Larry says. “But it also means working closely with your customer to find out what they really want.”
They hold a lot of stock in the food mentality of the region, noting that Asheville is a hot spot of chefs and customers looking to find good quality products grown with good karma. Instead of finding competition between businesses, they’ve only come across people in the community who want to support each other. Remarking upon McKissick’s role in their success, Larry notes, “Anybody we ever asked for help, they jumped in, and not one person ever turned us down.”
Buxton Hall Barbecue is located at 32 Banks Avenue in Asheville’s recently developed South Slope area. There, Head Chef Elliott Moss cooks up all-wood, whole-hog barbecue alongside reinvented Southern classics and Lowcountry fare from his childhood days in South Carolina. Visit their website or give them a call at 828-232-7216.
Vandele Farms on Cedar Creek is located at 530 Cedar Creek Road in Lake Lure. You can find their hogs at several retail locations in Asheville and Hendersonville, including the Chop Shop and Foothills Meats. Their farm is available for events, and they are also now processing meats for other farms. Visit their website or contact them at 828-429-9312.
Photo by Cindy Kunst for The Ethical Meat Handbook
Everyone saw that clip on Portlandia about the chicken, right? The comedy sketch poking at modern culture portrayed two awkward diners asking extremely detailed questions about the chicken on the restaurant’s menu, all the way from what it ate, to where it lived, and whether it was able to lovingly put its wing around a chicken “friend.” It’s funny, for sure, and takes the idea of food-aware into the realm of relative absurdity. This does happen, doesn’t it? How funny. How appropriate, and timely this is, encouraging us to laugh at how eccentric it is to care about these things. Or, is it only a little funny (like at the part where the chicken has a name, and papers, etc.), but not truly funny at the root? Is it in fact kind of sad, how caring about the welfare of a bird we decide to eat, and its effects on environment and health is so out of the box as to warrant hyperbolic parody?
It is a little bit of both.
As I reflect on the question of how to make farm-to-table “work,” amidst recent press that attempts to blow the lid off of regionalized local food frauds, and as a huge fan of forward-thinking like Dan Barber’s “The Third Plate,” I think it is useful to look at what we local foodies have done with good intention to um…not really address the problem. To make a name for ourselves as privileged hipsters who don’t have a grasp on the truly accessible hinges of everyday reality. At the same time, I know the political, social, economic, and environmental reasons for our food’s origins being so utterly untouchable by the everyday person. As a result, I also see where foodies have moved the needle in a much-needed way, through actions precisely aligned with those that Portlandia so expertly lampoons.
Here’s the thing, folks: At this moment in time the people with the greatest ability to have a positive impact on animal welfare, soil health, and global warming are the people who eat meat in this country.
If we want that impact to be positive, we need to be the kind of eaters asking about the chicken on the menu.
To understand the priorities in service of clean, safe, and quality food, as well as the living humans, plants, and animals that make it possible, is to see the system as a whole. Farm-to-table implies just this: that integrity and sustainability have been held throughout the food’s journey. In the case of meat, this relates to the animal’s life, death, butchery, and cooking. For all these steps in the meat supply chain to have occurred well is no small feat in regional systems, where farmers, meat processors, butchers, and chefs rely on relationships, a little blind faith, and yes, trends in the market to push a food model that is indeed still largely a misfit, when you look at the way the conventional system works. Without going into a lot of detail about government subsidies and chemical additives, let’s just recognize that if we really want to support positive change, we might want to find it in ourselves to both laugh at Portlandia sketches, without losing the will and the empowerment to ask about the meat on a menu.
Photo by Cindy Kunst for The Ethical Meat Handbook
Below you’ll find my top five recommendations for eaters seeking truly ethical meats on restaurant menus. It is my firm belief that for economic, political, and social reasons, the two groups best poised to inform the greatest amount of change in the meat industry today are the consumer and the much-lauded restaurant chef. Let us not be timid or ignorant in the one place where these two groups come together most meaningfully: the dining room of the farm-to-table restaurant.
CFSA has been bringing the farm to the table for 37 years, and with your help, we can continue to support farmers across the Carolinas as we build a healthy and resilient food system. Join us!
1. Ask how the animal lived AND died.
The precise reason that waiters and chefs are now more educated about the farms and flocks they purchase from is because foodies have done a good job asking about the lives of the animals on the menu. In service of system thinking, we ought to also be wondering whether the animal was afforded a swift and good death. I think you’ll find many waiters still baffled at this question. But if we are seeking for our meat to have quality standards across the supply chain, why should we be taken seriously when we care so deeply about its life, but have zero idea if it met a torturous death? In addition to concerns about welfare and suffering, poor slaughter practice leads to higher waste in processing, and lower meat quality. Add that to your environmental checklist, and your considerations about taste and texture.
2. Look for lesser-used cuts and cooking methods, with the goal of cut not actually mattering.
Eventually. In my book I explain why our demand of “rare-muscle commodity,” i.e ribeyes and filet mignons, has been so instrumental in totally screwing up the way we breed, raise, and eat meat animals. It is an absolute fact that the majority of an animal’s carcass favors slow cooking, and that those steaks we so value and are so accustomed to seeing on restaurant menus are a sign that we are still prioritizing improperly. A perfect example is the recent surge in popularity of the hanger steak. Did you know there is only one hanger steak per beef carcass? Knowing what I know about farm economy and meat processing, it makes the best economic sense for everyone in the meat industry if the end-user buys meat in whole portions. For the restaurant this means whole animals, primals, or subprimals. Guess how many hanger steaks and ribeyes would come out of the kitchen on a weekend in summer, if that were really happening? My dream, eventually, is to be able to read a menu that says something like Beef. Braised with cipollini. Carrot mousse. Fines herbs…and have ZERO idea what muscle I was eating. To trust my local chef enough to know that the cut was whatever the chef needed to use to make best use of the animal’s valuable carcass, and that chef was skilled enough in butchery and cuisine that it would be processed and cooked properly and deliciously. In service of your search for restaurants where chefs are buying whole or favoring lesser used meats, look for organ meats, braised, smoked or otherwise slow-cooked portions, and more unfamiliar restaurant preparations like Denver, ranch, London broil, sirloin, etc.
Photo by Cindy Kunst for The Ethical Meat Handbook
3. Understand that breed obsessions are part of the problem.
How many times have you read “All-Angus Beef Burger” on a menu and thought that you were getting a gold standard? Well, time to turn that marketing effort belly up, exposing it for exactly what it is. There is no universal breed of animal for truly ethical and sustainable meat. What is needed are animals adapted to local and regional environments. Again, in service of sound practice and sustainability across the supply chain, we need to favor animals that produce quality meat and milk while improving the land upon which they live. For farmers, this means deep efforts in developing adapted herds and flocks, which is no small task. Animals that can efficiently feed on grass, without inputs of hormones and antibiotics, and produce top quality meat are not the stud animals raised in the show industry. They are also not the breeds we have been raising for years for the cow-calf market or the auction. They are not the animals raised in a little stall with a constant supply of shade, water, and grain that will then be turned out into pasture and expected to perform. The sooner we get breed obsessions out of our heads and off of our menus, the better chance our farmers have of producing higher quality sustainable meats.
Photo by Cindy Kunst for The Ethical Meat Handbook
4. Expect smaller protein portions, higher prices, and a la carte meat selection.
If things are going well, this is the trend you will start to see in farm-to-table restaurants. No more 8 oz. middle-meat centerpieces (if they happen they will be in limited quantity, on special). No more cheap, huge protein dishes which take advantage of the fact that you’ve paid for the meat before arriving, via your tax dollars to government subsidies, into vertically integrated corporate farms. When we buy meat from local farmers, we must pay the true cost of that product right there at the point of sale. As a result, we will likely begin to eat protein in accordance to what our body actually needs, and meat will be used to flavor and nuance other foods. It’s possible that restaurants will begin building their entrees from pulses, vegetables, grains, and sauces, and you’ll be given the option to add animal protein, at a higher price than you’re accustomed to paying.
5. If you can’t tell, don’t eat it.
To eat meat only once a day, if not less than that, is huge activism. With that in mind, when you find yourself at a restaurant, and you can’t tell what’s going on with the meat on the menu, just stick to non-meat items. This is the greatest individual act an omnivore can take to make a statement about the importance of a good life, a good death, a good butcher, and a good cook.
Buy my book, The Ethical Meat Handbook, for more information on these points, plus recipes and butchery instruction for home cooks.
By guest author Ciranna Bird, a freelance medical writer who shares her passion for humanely raised and harvested meat, dairy, and eggs on her NC Food Blog.
When Meredith Leigh presented at the 2015 Sustainable Agriculture Conference, I knew I found a kindred fan of bacteria. She said “If you see me standing before you as one individual, one organism you are wrong.” She told the audience about the good bacteria that lives in our human intestines, our mouths, the surface of our eyes, and skin. Without bacteria, our bodies wouldn’t be able to digest and extract minerals and vitamins from our food.
Ethical Meat, photo by Meredith Leigh
The information below is what I gathered from Meredith Leigh’s presentation, a follow-up one-on-one call with her, and the contents of her book. Her book is the Ethical Meat Handbook: complete home butchery, charcuterie and cooking for the conscious omnivore. The first component of ethical meat is that it comes from an animal that enjoyed a good life.
As part of providing animals a good life, she encourages farmers to allow the animal to act out its natural tendencies.
Cattle, pigs, lambs and chickens are best suited to eat food that their bodies were designed to eat, rather than providing them with a high starch grain diet.
The second aspect is allowing them enough space for rotational grazing which interrupts the life cycle of parasites that could harm the health of the flock. Better health reduces the need to provide antibiotics indiscriminately to all the animals. She says “Just as you depend on your gut flora to survive, cattle depend on communities of bacteria in their rumens to digest cellulose and other complex compounds in grass.” She says that “consuming so much grain, exposure to harmful bacteria and then being treated with antibiotics- changes the animal’s gut chemistry”. An imbalanced gut chemistry reduces the well-being of the animal as well as the humans that consume the animal.
Another aspect of ethical meat is that the humanely slaughtered animal meat should be properly butchered to maximize the use of the entire animal. Leigh provides presentations and written guidance for butchers and intrepid home cooks on how to handle large sections of beef, pork, lamb and chicken safely and efficiently. Her book has step by step cutting instructions and black and white pictures which reduces the blood and gore aspect of seeing animal muscles being separated into steaks, strips, ribs and loin chops.
Without the safe cooking and preserving of the well butchered meat that came from animals who had a good life and were humanely slaughtered, the meat would still fall short of being ethical. As meat eaters, we have the opportunity to learn how to cook and prepare meat in new ways that will improve our diets, save money, and provide ourselves with delicious food. This is where charcuterie, which is the science of converting raw meat into preserved meat that has an increased shelf life, enters the conversation.
Photo by Meredith Leigh
Although the word charcuterie is unfamiliar term to me, I am well acquainted with the final results. Before, I started choosing to eat meat that was humanely raised, I use to love buying bacon, salami, bologna, liverwurst, and pepperoni from the deli counter at my nearby grocery store. In chapter 4 of the Ethical Meat Handbook, Meredith provides step by step instructions on how I can make my favorite deli meats at home.
As a prior microbiologist who grew Salmonella, Shigella and E.coli 0157 in petri dishes to identify the source of foodborne outbreaks, my favorite chapter is Chapter 4: Charcuterie. In this chapter Meredith Leigh reminds readers that animal meat has bacteria. And for the most part the bacteria is non-harmful just like the types of bacteria that live in our digestive system, mouths, surface of our eyes, and skin. However to protect yourself and those you prepare food for, it is important to reduce the exposure to bacteria that cause foodborne diseases. She reminds shoppers to keep raw meat from touching the vegetables they buy at the farmers market. Raw chicken and turkey meat carry more bacteria than pork, while meat and lamb carry the least amount of bacteria. Therefore, butcher shops and restaurants put eggs and chicken meat on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator to prevent them from dripping on anything else. Pork meat is stored on the second shelf, while beef and lamb get stored on the third highest shelf in the refrigerator.
There are six tools to promote the growth of helpful bacteria such as Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, and Kocuria which are vital for the fermentation and curing of meat, while decreasing the growth of harmful bacteria like Campylobacter, Listeria, and Clostridium botulinum. The toxin of Clostridium botulinum is familiar to me, because while I worked for the Massachusetts Department of Health isolating E.coli 0157 from people who ate improperly cooked hamburgers, my co-workers were isolating C. botulinum from baby food and honey. This bacteria’s toxin causes botulism which may lead to paralysis and death. Sorry, I got carried away with bacteria. Here are the six tools:
Salt reduces the water activity in the meat and it effects the growth and metabolism of bacteria.
Temperature can slow the growth or eliminate harmful microorganisms while promoting the growth of beneficial bacteria.
Humidity, which is the moisture in the air, is critical to proper drying of fermented meats.
Smoke contains compounds that will slow or stop the ability of bacteria to grow and prevents rot.
pH, which is the acidity of a product, affects the bacteria responsible for fermenting, curing, and flavoring the meat.
Nitrites and nitrates slow the process of meat becoming rancid and prevent the growth of Clostridium botulinum spores
To prevent these tools from becoming too abstract, let me relay a conversation Meredith had during one of her previous presentations. A child in the audience said his birthday was coming up. She jokingly suggested he ask his mom for an entire pig carcass. Why? Because he could take the ham leg, bury it in a box with kosher salt for a certain amount of time, and then hang it in his bedroom closet for six to 12 months to create prosciutto. The salt reduces the water activity, and the hanging in a dark cool space with high humidity causes the ham to lose 40% of its weight and therefore becomes safe to eat at room temperature. No cooking involved. Crazy cool, I know.
But why would you want to make your own cold cuts, bacon, or prosciutto? Albeit for me, it sounds like a fun science experiment. The reason is that creating your own deli meats helps small-scale farmers earn a living. In her book, Meredith indicates that transforming ethically raised animal carcasses into chops, and sausages is very expensive for small-scale livestock farmers. This process called the “cut and wrap” happens either at the slaughterhouse, butcher shop, or grocery store. Charcuterie enables the customer to buy and store larger sections of an animal in their own home which helps the small-scale livestock farmer and reduces the customer’s grocery bill.
Photo by Meredith Leigh
In conclusion, bacteria play a vital role in helping the bodies of animals and humans digest food. The good bacteria also have vital role in the fermentation and curing to transform raw meat into delicious deli meats. There are important precautions to take to avoid harmful bacteria from causing foodborne illnesses and spoiling the precious meat that has been ethically raised, butchered and prepared.
Note: Meredith Leigh speaks throughout the United States about food, farming, butchery, and cooking. Her audiences include food citizens, chefs, culinary students, farmers, food distributors, and educators. Visit her website to find out how to enroll in her hands-on butchery classes, and meat ethics workshops.
