We did that for the first time this year — a lamb. I watched the kids and bid on an animal whose young owner showed good husbandry and handling skills, and I took some care in designating the custom butcher who would pick it up at the end of the fair. It is the best lamb I’ve ever had.

We want to get a bunch of families together next year and do the steer/pig/lamb group buying thing.

The 4H and FFA kids are great; I’d rather be putting my consumer money into their college funds than ADM’s bottom line.

I’m getting most of my dog meat from a local custom butcher who grinds the “other” for dog food. The animals come from small local farmers, and are mostly ones raised for home consumption.

Still hunting for a steady source of local small-farm humanely-raised poultry. The way things look, it may end up being … us.

Third sentence from the end: Was the real
cause told, what was killing our pets?

Katie

Don’t forget 4-H auctions as a source of local, humanely raised meat. They are lovely animals, the meat tastes wonderful, and it’s good for the kids (for some here it means college or not). Several of us get together to buy animals at the 4-H auction at the county fair in the fall, and I end up with a quarter steer, half a pig and a lamb in the freezer to get me (and the Dog) through the year. Watching while they are shown tells you how cosseted most of them have been; they have ribbons in their tails, polish on their hooves and some are tastefully glittered. We have a local custom butcher and get exactly the cuts we want.

Some may find it hard to look at and touch the animal they will be eating, but I’m used to knowing exactly whom I am eating and appreciate it all the more. Although when you buy the 1,000+ pound gorgeous and extraordinarily docile steer trailing a crying kid, it’s hard to know what to say when they come and thank you (they often give you home-made cookies and/or write thank-you notes too).

I too wanted to feed my “kids” humanely raised foods but (obviously) could not find a source for such on the market. This led me to making my own food for my dog and cats (boy did people think me nuts pre-recall!) and then later making it for friends and family once the recall happened. (They don’t think me so crazy anymore. ha!) The demand has grown so naturally that I have started Circle of Life Pet Foods, a division of Pay It Forward Pets, LLC and though we are still very small and local we hope to create a trend in the market that shifts pet foods throughout the country to humanely raised.

I feel confident that this is possible when I see large, public chains such as Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants http://youtube.com/watch?v=YJd8_TYPu5Y and Chipotle’s Gourmet Burrito’s shifting to humanely raised meats. We’re off to a good start and it’s inspiring to know you are helping to spread the word. Thanks for all you do for the animals everyday.

The biggest frustration and headache for many of these small producers is finding local and humane slaughter facilities. Raising meat locally then having to put the animals on a truck and send them hundreds of miles to a mass processing facility is counter-productive and stressful to the animals, a waste of fuel and a big expense to the niche producers raising the sheep, cattle etc…

Unfortunately attempts to build small scale local USDA qualified facilities (vital and required by law if humanely reared and slaughtered and above all local meat is to make it to the mainstream) always meet the NIMBY crowd (silly because in rural counties there are many places to put small facilities well away from residential or tourist areas) and huge opposition from hard core ARs who want all meat, happy or no, off the menu and making it too expensive to process helps their cause.