Blue Hill PigsI recently had dinner at
Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Blue Hill is unlike any restaurant or farm, it is probably the closest thing to a veritable Garden of Eden. Every pig on Blue Hill Farm has 1/2 acre of land to romp and roll through and 1-2 farmers each to raise them, this is how most of us would wish our livestock was being raised.
In reality, most of the meat consumed in the U.S. are raised in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO). Here animals are confined for more than 45 days in small spaces with no access to pasture or freedom to graze, a far cry from the cleared forests at Blue Hill.
In recent years more attention has been brought to the conditions of industrialized farms. Although chefs and animal advocates have been lobbying for decades to improve the quality of American farms, the recent vegan trend spreading through Hollywood due to writers such as
Jonathan Safran Foer and actresses like Natalie Portman seem to have made a greater impact. Regardless of the reason for the public's sudden concern for livestock, many of the resulting changes in the industry are positive. However, the problem with the public drawing their opinions from PETA propaganda and uneducated actresses is that they may not be ready for the changes they've asked for.
The reason why the American food industry has become heavily dependent on CAFO's is due to the high demand for cheap meat. The prices for meat are set by the market, and the industry will cut any corners to produce meat at that price. In an
Op-ed in The New York Times, a former hog farmer discussed the mixed signals farmers receive from the market. People are demanding more humanly treated meat, but they don't want to pay for it.
CAFO PigsRecently, the
U.S. pork industry began the process to move away from the use of tight cages for pregnant sows. This change is in response to the changing opinion of the market. Moving to group pens means rebuilding barns, hiring more employees, increased veterinary care, and a higher mortality rate. (Sows can become aggressive towards each other) All of this will result in a doubling of the cost for pork, for nothing close to the Eden-like conditions of Blue Hill. Blue Hill can afford to pamper their pigs because of a 30 million dollar donation courtesy of
David Rockefeller and they still charge their diners over $200 for a twelve course tasting with only three ounces of pork.
Due the influences of celebrities and trends, people have blindly begun to demand more humane meat without fully understanding the real cost of meat production. A small change like group pens costs big bucks, a cost ultimately passed along to the consumer. The changes in public opinion are good for the environment and good for the industry, but the question is whether or not the trend can survive the impact on American's pocketbooks.
Will you be willing to pay $10 a pound for a pork chop?
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Comments (4)
That's a tough question that I don't know if I have an answer for. I know I can buy pork chops for as low as $1.99 per pound. To consider buying them for $10 per pound is a staggering increase.
i feel a lot of the content here has a middle-upper middle class vibe. if people want to pay $10/lb of pork for the better conditions, good for them. but others simply can't fork over that price. there's still a large part of america who have no other options because their incomes don't give them that luxury. i should know-- i'm one of them.
I hope so. I have always been aware of the consequences of humanely treated animals on shoppers' wallets. I hope to be able to afford it 100% in the near future. I just wish it was like this all along and there were some way to do it that would be affordable for everyone, because cheap prices should not be at the cost of animals' well being.
I think people these days have become overly dependent on meat (myself included). It's hard to imagine today, but plentiful meat was only available to the rich until fairly recently. Of course, I'm not saying that the price of meat should skyrocket to such a degree that only the wealthy can enjoy it, but perhaps a higher price of meat would result in healthier diets for American people.
The industry argues that consumers want cheap products and that's why they produce low quality meat with low prices. However, if you go to many parts of Europe or certain parts of Asia, such as Japan, the price of meat is much higher, but the quality is also better. The animals are also treated much better. And, perhaps not surprisingly, people are much healthier and less likely to be obese.
Maybe producing quality products that have higher prices is actually a good method of spreading healthy diets. Although it would be disappointing to people with low-income to eat less meat, it could move them towards a more fresh/frozen/canned vegetable-based diet. A higher demand for vegetables could result in an expansion of the vegetable supply and a drop in vegetable prices. This is, of course, a key event that would have to happen. Otherwise, groceries would just become increasingly unaffordable, which is both unfair and not beneficial.
However, if the price of fresh/frozen.canned veggies did drop in conjunction with a price increase in meat, it could be a good thing since low-income populations have the highest rates of obesity. It sounds really socioeconomically unfair, that only upper middle-class or upper-class people could afford plentiful meat, but it's an unfairness that could potentially actually reap social benefits by reducing obesity, which could improve health outcomes of low-income populations, which could then help with upward social mobility. I guess part of this theory would be based on the idea that obesity is a factor that can prevent upwards social mobility and keeps poor people poor.
Before people get all up in arms over my apparent elitism, I've been part of this low-income population for several years now due to the fact that I just got out of college, and my parents couldn't afford to help pay for much while I was studying. I supported myself on loans and several part-time jobs, and I've got a pretty good perspective on how and what you eat when you can't afford much (at least, when you're single, I have no idea how families do it). It's possible to eat relatively healthily on a small budget (frozen/canned veggies ftw!), but many of the people I worked with at my part-time jobs obviously didn't, partially because they didn't know what healthy food was and partially because unhealthy food was so cheap. Making unhealthy food more expensive and healthy food less expensive is key, in my opinion, to reversing the obesity epidemic.