Not All Red Meat

“But isn’t red meat bad for you?”

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In discussions about food, I hear this sentiment a lot. Don’t worry though. This week’s post isn’t about shaming folks who can’t or don’t eat red meat. I do however, take issue with the above common refrain in USian society because it lumps all red meat into a single general category.

If you’ve harvested, cooked, and/or eaten wild red meat, you know it is vastly different from the stuff produced in factory farms. By the end of this post I hope to convey to you that the red meat we often refer to in our culture is very different from the red meat that is wildly available from the land and why you may want to think about consuming more of the later.

Industrial mindset

While I’m not here to dunk on anyone’s dietary choices, I am hear to dunk on the dominant societal ethic of industrial production. Despite the conveniences that large-scale production has brought our species, on balance I think the concept and practice of industrial production has been a huge net negative.

It is virtually impossible to produce a large quantity of something, in perpetuity, without a system of exploitation that leads to premature death and suffering. Industrial production requires high levels of strict specialization (a labor force on an assembly line) and an economy anchored in unending growth and capture of market share. Indeed, the industrial human society cannot exist without the destruction (or assimilation, which is essentially destruction) of Indigenous (human and non-human) ways of being.

The way humans began to produce food around 12,000 years ago — the shift to an economy based on sedentary agriculture — altered and continues to alter global environments to this day. In the so called “Old World” humans not only domesticated certain plant species (wheat, barley, rice), but also animal species (goats, cattle, pigs) in an effort to, so they thought, insure a more reliable supply of protein. Several ungulate species were transformed from their wild ancestral forms to live within the confines of ever growing human settlements.

European colonizers brought their domesticated animals with them and in the so called “New World” cattle has had and continues to have devastating impacts on Indigenous ecologies and lifeways as any other transformative aspect of colonization.

The American identity is deeply rooted in cattle husbandry, so much so that the industry is an indispensable part of our economy and sense of self. Just ask Oprah who was sued by Texas cattlemen for saying, in 1996, that she was concerned about the safety of red meat after a mad cow disease outbreak.

If you live in US you can get beef almost anywhere for almost any price. The fast foot industry (doesn’t that term make your skin crawl just a little bit?) is reliant on the heavily subsidized beef industry’s massive production of cattle so that you and I can buy a cheese burger for a dollar. Or, you can splurge on a fancy stake dinner with grass-fed and dry aged fillet mignon. Or perhaps try your luck at eating Texas Roadhouse’s 64oz steak.

This country loves its beef, but the cost of all of this readily available meat is considerable.

The amount of chemical inputs — growth hormone and antibiotics — it takes to produce all of this meat is astronomical and has had wide ranging impacts on human health. The working conditions in US slaughterhouses are notoriously dangerous and preys on the desperation of people immigrating to the country. Every year there are recalls of meat because of contamination concerns as the political battle between regulations and profits intensifies.

And all of these human centered issues are separate from the inhumane living conditions that cattle in this country face in industrial feed lots. If you want grass fed beef you’re going to pay more than the industrially produced stuff and said meat is just as likely to come from New Zealand as the pasture just outside your cozy suburb.

It’s no wonder so many people are swearing off red meat. The industrially produced stuff has some serious baggage.

A Meaty Juxtaposition

What if I told you that there was a source of grass fed, free range, lean, cruelty free red meat walking around you all the time? This meat doesn’t need to be penned in, pumped full of growth hormone, treated with antibiotics, and will reproduce itself so long as you keep forest habitat intact. And what if I told you that you could acquire a full year’s supply of this red meat with 3 weeks of labor or less?

Humanity has largely given up this proposition for the “freedom” of having a dollar meal hamburger full of chemicals that requires nearly half the land we live on.

Dafuq?!

Harvesting wild red meat kept us outside, in shape, and connected to our human and non-human relatives. Hunting kept the relations that sustain our species largely whole, but I guess it’s not so bad because we can all experience the thrill of the hunt via a plethora of hunting videos games and TV shows (by the way, have you watched my deer hunting episodes on YouTube?).

When I looked into how much red meat was being harvested from landscapes in Appalachia, I was shocked at the results. Millions of pounds of wild red meat was being harvested by thousands of people, but this practice was not at all being captured by mainstream foodways research. I had no idea, but neither did the majority of people studying food systems. USian’s haven’t given up on the practice of harvesting wild meat, but this practice is antithetical to the industrial food production machine that defines what it means to be American and what it means to be modern.

Wilderness opposes Anti-Indigenous civilizations. Wild meat cannot be penned in without consequences; just like domesticated livestock. Harvesting and processing wild meat is inconvenient because doing so also requires our time; time we could be spending working in our respective industries.

Dr. Kim TallBear talks about settler colonialism as a process rooted in the severing of relations, and I can’t help think about how industrial food production has severed an essential set of relations that make us human and keep us healthy.

I think human beings are equally nourished by food and by stories. The best food has a story behind it and all the better if that story is shared by others. There’s nothing really nourishing in the story of industrial red meat.

The story of the pre-packaged hamburgers we’re likely to buy for the up coming 4th of July holiday is a saga of exploitation, fear, filth, tourture, death, and poison. How fitting that this is the food we consume when commemorating a nation built using the same principles.

Not All Red Meat

Wild red meat, most of which comes from white-tailed deer species in North America, is red meat we can feel good about. Harvesting deer requires so many things we could all probably practice more of in USian society; patience, respect, environmental literacy, cooperation, empathy, sharing.

When people say, “I don’t eat red meat”, they almost never mean they don’t eat wild red meat. Some do and have specific dietary restrictions that equally apply to grass fed, antibiotic-free, wild game and industrial beef, but most folks, in my experience, don’t make the distinction between the two classes of red meat available to them.

And I use the term “available” very loosely because all people living on these lands don’t have equal access to abundant resources. And as many have talked about, theoretical access is not the same as practical and safe access to spaces where red meat could be harvested.

But that’s why I’ve started to turn this interest of mine into something beyond a hobby. I believe that the dozen or so million pounds of wild game harvested annually in almost every state needs to occupy a larger space in our consciousness and on our plates (for those who chose to eat animal relatives).

The industrial ethic that guides so much of human cultures and societies is killing us and our future chances of survival on this planet. Eating more wild game isn’t a silver bullet that will cure our addiction to turning everything into an industry, but it can be an effective bridge to ways of living that are anchored in more sustainable relations with broadranging benefits to the minority owners of an exploitative system.

My goal this coming hunting season is to harvest enough deer to forgo buying any beef. I figure three large doe and one +2yr old buck (all burger baby) should be enough for our family of four for the year. I didn’t just wake up and decide on this goal and I still have questions about whether or not I can pull this off, but the friendships, experiences, skills, and stories I’ve developed along this journey have enriched my life in so many ways.

Don’t like beef? Cool. I don’t really like it either.

But do me a small favor. When you talk about not eating red meat, just add “industrial” to the front of that statement. And if the person you’re talking to asks you what do you mean, feel free to send them this article.

Cheers!

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New Content

Race and Hunting Part III

I figured it was about time to offer something constructive beyond my critique of MeatEater and their conversation on racism in hunting. So, in the final episode of the miniseries on my channel, I discuss three books that have influenced the way I view and practice hunting. There’s also a bonus recommendation just for white people, so check it out!

Thanks for reading!

-Jonathan