Start a Buying Club for Quality Local Meat

For decades, efforts have bubbled from the ground up to raise animals with respect for their wellbeing. This includes a conscientiousness for the quality of their deaths as they become food for people, and a regard for them that isn’t wasteful or careless. Usually, these values are accompanied by care for the land and the human workers that make good meat possible. These efforts have gained momentum thanks mostly to farmers and the direct relationships they’ve built with individual customers who desire good food.

Direct sales between farmers and consumers are somewhat removed from the mainstream. These relationships have led to a revival of the art of butchery, a new interest in meat preservation, and smaller economies of scale in meat processing. But these relationships aren’t big enough or affordable enough to serve everyone, nor are they able to exist unencumbered by the challenges ingrained in the industrial food system.

The result is that smaller-scale efforts toward good meat happen on two fronts: wealthy communities, where sales from farmers to buyers tend to be certified, advertised, and taxed; and rural communities, where transactions between hunters or livestock producers and buyers are communal