Where's the Beef?

Several months ago, when our supply of free-range, organic meat that we brought with us from Kansas City had run out, I walked into our local, family-owned grocery and asked if they had any organic meat.

The old man behind the meat counter looked at me like I was from Mars.

"No. The meat we have is processed in the regular way," he said.

The 'regular way,' means their meat comes from a factory farm, probably fed an unhealthy diet of whatever and shot up with antibiotics.

Given I didn't have a choice, I bought a pound of hamburger processed the 'regular way' and it made us sick. Our bodies had become so used to the grass fed organic meat I had bought for the past 5 or so years, I guess we couldn't take the chemicals in the meat we bought here.

I found more vegetarian, as well as fish and chicken (we can get free range chicken here) dishes.

My good, longtime friend in PA, Barb, told me this week that her family had decided to go all vegetarian. She had long since quit eating beef and pork, but she was eating poultry and fish. I guess finally convinced her husband and son to quit it all. They already drive a hybrid car and she told me she wanted to do more for the environment.

When I dream of going completely vegetarian, it's mostly a moral issue for me. It didn't take the horrible video from the processing plant in California for me to think of the animal life expended for our eating pleasure.

But I read up a little this morning on the impact of factory farming on the environment. I read one study found that farm animals create most of the carbon dioxide in the environment. Other stories I read lamented on the fact that farming animals takes up more land than plant farming.

There's no doubt factory farming is not only terrible for the animals, but for the environment. But what about buying locally farmed, grass fed and grain fed free range? Better, according to the reports I read this morning.

Since I still haven't found where we can buy this here in the Ozarks, we took two big coolers with us to Kansas City on our trip a couple of weeks ago and stocked up.

I cut beef and pork from my diet several years ago. My resolve last 9 months, but when I had a husband and even my mother, complaining about the lack of meat in my new dishes, my resolve started to waiver. I fell off the wagon over a pork tenderloin.

Now, there's many reasons for us to try to cut back on beef and pork - I usually only serve it at home 2 meals a week. The rest of the week, I use fish and chicken, or prepare completely vegetarian meals. Our favorites are my Chinese stir fry and baked potato skins with a generous topping of cheese and guacamole.

Organic vegetables are just as hard to find here as organic meat, so I dread to think of the environmental impact of the vegetables we're eating, but I've found in the course of going "green," you have to pick your battles.