How Much Do You Want to Know About How Your Meat Gets to Your Plate?

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Anneli Rufus

Butchery Classes and Parties: How Much Do You Want to Know About How Your Meat Gets to Your Plate?
Watching chefs' glistening blades slash fat, muscle and bone is the grotesque new fad in high cuisine.

October 23, 2010 |


As big as a sofa, the beast lay slit up the front, haunches jerking, ribs gleaming, as quick knives sheared away its meat. As part of a program on futurism last fall at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, seven female butchers were invited to carve a 600-pound steer. Watching their glistening blades slash fat, muscle and bone, the audience began to scream.

"It was a frenzy," says Angela Wilson, who was one of the butchers. With her partners Tia Harrison and Dave Budworth -- better known in foodie circles as "Dave the Butcher" -- Wilson opened Avedano's, a traditional butcher shop, three years ago in San Francisco. Every week, the trio cuts up a grass-fed, hormone- and antibiotic-free lamb, pig and side of beef -- all locally and responsibly raised on small farms. They do this the old-fashioned way, with a handsaw, boning knife and scimitar. It's part of a new revival signaled by the whoosh and crunch of flesh departing bone.

Over the last 20 years, American butcher shops have nearly vanished, vanquished by cheap, neat, bandsaw-cut, prepackaged supermarket meat. The butchering of animals by hand became a dying art. But now it's back. "These days, people want to know again where their meat is coming from, just like they want to know where the rest of their food is coming from," says Wilson, who finds the three-hour experience of butchering a lamb "meditative and relaxing. It's one of my favorite times."

As a crashed economy coalesces with the food revolution and the DIY revolution, a new generation of conscientious consumers "don't want anything to go to waste, so they're starting to care again about what happens to the whole animal -- even the cheaper, less-desired cuts." ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/food/148586/butchery_classes_and_parties%3A_how_much_do_you_want_to_know_about_how_your_meat_gets_to_your_plate/

[MineralMan]

1. I wish everyone knew more about where their food comes from

and how it's processed. It would be a valuable lesson. It was not always as it is today. I remember a 6th grade field trip my class too in 1956. We went to a slaughterhouse & butchering plant in a nearby town. We got to see the entire process. Nobody barfed. Nobody screamed. We just watched as whole steers were turned into the meat we all ate.

Later, with my father, I learned how to process a deer for myself, from field dressing and skinning to turning the carcase into the cuts I'd be eating. I learned the anatomy of a mammal, and understood that it was pretty much the same as my own anatomy. I also learned how to dress small game for the table. I don't hunt any more, but I could still reduce a critter into food without any difficulty.

Knowing the details of this process adds something to the human diet. It adds a certain reverence for the animals we eat. It did for me, at least.

[awoke_in_2003]

3. i have to agree...

it also gives you survival skills- one day the grocery store may not be there.

[awoke_in_2003]

2. this is a good thing...

I would trust my local butcher over some huge processing plant any day. I still remember going to the butcher shop with my grandmother, then going to the grocery store. The butcher took pride in his work, and was careful with what he gave his customers. It doesn't take very much bad "word of mouth" to ruin a butcher.