Having recently been enlightened about how the American food industry operates, I have in the past few weeks decided to be more conscious about what type of food I am purchasing at the grocery store. Because I realize that my lack of self-control will prevent me from becoming a full-time vegetarian, I would like to atone for this flaw by trying to purchase humanely grown, free from inorganic chemical, local animal products.
Bos primigenius (Pt. Reyes National Seashore)
Walking around in Safeway tonight, I saw the sole grass-fed beef product in the meat aisle, so I decided to check it out. It was a pound of ground beef, labeled with the usual “green” labels such as USDA organic and no antibiotics used. Curious to learn about where this potential dinner originated from, I quickly glanced at the back where I noticed a familiar two letter initials of a state quite distant from California. I had an internal debate with myself whether choosing to purchase from farms that provided their beeves with less torturous living condition is worth the environmental cost of shipping the product from thousands of miles away; however, my interest in tasting grass-fed beef won over in the end. Still feeling a little guilty, I read the back of the package while waiting in line at the cash register and noticed that the city and state I thought the item came from had the words “distributed by” in front of it. Strange, I thought, does that mean this meat came from elsewhere? Lo and behold, at the bottom of the product information, it lists Australia as the product’s country of origin.
Australia.
I had to read that again. I honestly thought I must have misread it somehow.
Australia.
And I thought the carbon footprint I created for myself by buying this product was huge before.
Now I can understand that the United States do not produce enough of certain food item that it is necessary to bring them in from other countries around the world (coffee bean is a good example considering the addiction Americans seem to have with coffee). Yet, this is beef. Even if I have not been to a beef factory farm, I know I have seen quite a few cows in the decade I spent in California alone. And this is simply meat from grass-fed cows. Do we not have grass in America? Is American corn subsidized to an extent that it would be cheaper than feeding the cows grass? Or is it because the American food industry is dominated by too few companies that oppose feeding the cows what they were evolved to eat? Whatever the reason, I cannot comprehend why we need to go across the Pacific Ocean, tens of thousands miles away, just to acquire grass-fed beef. So if anyone out there knows where I can get my hands on local grass-fed beef, please let everybody know, because I sure am interested in learning about them.
