The idea stems from my recent interview with local rancher Jack Ford about the fact that San Diego doesn’t have a local USDA-approved slaughterhouse.

That means, by and large, we San Diegans can’t eat our own meat. We’re talking ethically raised meat. Hormone- and antibiotic-free meat. Delicious, healthy meat. Animals that were cared for, given a good life, and killed by expert ranchers in the most humane way possible.

And yet we can’t eat it. On a gut level, that seems wrong, doesn’t it?

As someone who cares about food, ecology and local culture, I want to groupthink a solution. It’s one of the action items for the Berry Good Food Foundation, for which I’m an advisor.

In order for meat to be sold at restaurants or retail, the animals must be loaded into trucks and driven hundreds of miles to the nearest USDA-approved slaughterhouse in Riverside, or Modesto. During the drive, the animals get so stressed out that their meat gets tainted from cortisol. Ford reported his pigs would lose 15 percent of their body weight (or more) from the stress.

So most ranchers don’t bother. And that means San Diegans can’t eat local meat. You can, but you have to buy the whole, half or quarter animal live, hire the farmer to kill it for you, then have it professionally butchered or do it yourself. Or you can buy a half-or quarter-animal through a meat co-op like Meat San Diego. Many consider buying whole animals the pinnacle of ethical meat eating: using every part and developing a direct relationship with the farm. But let’s face it: not everyone has the $300 or the freezer room for such bulk buys.

There has to be a better solution, right?

I’ve seen ethical ranchers humanely kill their own animals. I’ve eaten meat from dozens of these animals. I’ve never gotten sick. Not once.

In fact, I’ve studied both USDA-approved slaughterhouses and ethical local ranches. Knowing what I know, I’d rather serve my family meat from an animal that was killed in the dirt at a quality local ranch. Years of my own research points to it being healthier, safer meat.

And the USDA says I can’t eat it.

This is not an anti-USDA screed. It’s a pro-solution screed. The USDA does some things very right. They save lives. But I think we’re being overprotective in regards to local meat. (In fact, my argument is that in their effort to “protect” people, the USDA is actually preventing them from eating the healthier meat).

That brings me to my idea. What about an “At Will Restaurant Program?” The USDA allows restaurants or retailers to buy local meat that was killed directly on the ethical, local ranch. The restaurant would announce to diners that it serves non-USDA meat. Us diners could sign a waiver, absolving the restaurant of any liability.

Can’t I just tell the USDA that I want to eat this meat? Thanks for trying to protect my health, USDA sir. But, as someone who studies food, I’ve concluded that animals raised and killed on responsible local ranches is safer, more environmentally friendly and healthier than what you’re forcing me to eat.

“It wouldn’t work, it’s too political,” says Derek Stephens, a local meat consultant. “I think the health department does a great job. The amount of people we feed and the amount of people who get sick is impressive. Even if you sign a contract, someone’s going to find a way around that contract.”

“I love the romanticism of it all,” says Jeff Jackson, executive chef of A.R. Valentien, one of San Diego’s first champions of local bounty. “But I would be very concerned that people would make people sick. I used to work at restaurants where hunters would come up to the kitchen and drop off a deer or a wild boar that they’d just killed. It was great. But you do not have young chefs who are classically trained anymore. Very few have gone through the rigors of that classical French kitchen and really know the science. I’d worry that they’d start making salumi and people start dropping dead outside of the restaurant.”

That said, A.R. Valentien does occasionally get customers who caught their own fish, and ask Jackson and his chef de cuisine Kelli Crosson to cook it. The restaurant makes the diner sign a legal waiver, and they do. That’s completely legal.

So why can’t we all sign waivers for beef, pork, lamb, goat, chickens—everything?

“I’d totally do it,” says Jeff Rossman, chef-owner of Terra American Bistro. “As a chef I’m going to be all for it. As a restaurant owner, I’ve got to think about people shutting me down. But if there were no repercussions, I’d totally do it.”

Jackson’s notion of inexperienced chefs killing us with their mishandling of meat is a very real concern.

So how about another solution? In cities like San Diego that don’t have a USDA slaughterhouse, how about the USDA sanctions a few of our top, ethical, humane ranches to do on-ranch killings and sell the meat to retail and restaurants?

The problem with slaughterhouses on a small scale is that they’re not profitable. San Diego’s ranching industry isn’t big enough to supply the necessary break-even volume. And figuring we’re short on water and grass in San Diego, we wouldn’t want that many food animals on our local lands. In order for San Diego to eventually get a slaughterhouse—or even a mobile slaughterhouse, like the one the USDA helped fund for the New York ranching community—it would most likely have to be a nonprofit endeavor. A city service of sorts.

Maybe one of our big philanthropic people or organizations—like Conrad Prebys, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Darlene Shiley, Ernest and Evelyn Rady, the Joan Kroc Foundation or the Leichtag Foundation—will see the importance of healthy, local meat and fund the operation.

How phenomenal would it be if the Kroc family—whose fortune came through McDonald’s burgers—funded a route for local, sustainable, progressive meat culture in San Diego?

Here’s the truth. Right now, a lot of San Diego’s top restaurants are serving “illegal” local meats. They are serving “illegal” cheese made in-house. They are serving “illegal” charcuterie. I have not heard of a single person getting sick from these illegal efforts. Why don’t we pave a route to legalizing locally slaughtered meat?

I’ve been trying to navigate the USDA’s hierarchy to find the right person to speak to about this issue. I’ll have an update tomorrow hopefully.

For now, I open this discussion up to San Diego’s food thinkers. What possible solutions are there?

Let Us Eat Meat

Photo by Jaime Fritsch of Meat San Diego

The post Let Us Eat Meat appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Local food is a good thing. First, it means our city is tending to its own land and has an idea of its health. Second, it carries on an almost lost tradition (growing your own food) and teaches the basic life skill of getting dinner to the table—especially now that Home Ec has been replaced by Java Scripting in the American curriculum. Third, anytime you spend money in your own community, your community improves. Fourth, food not shipped thousands of miles tastes better. Fifth, it’s easier to ensure the people making your food share your ethics—whether organic, grass-fed, biodynamic, sustainable, fair trade, etc. Sixth, well there are lots of reasons.

The ideal? Create a large, interwoven network of local people who are growing, ranching and creating great-tasting food that treats the environment, animals and people in an ethical manner where they’ll thrive for generations.

Pie, meet sky, right?

Talk is cheap. The hard part is bringing together the people who can really make that happen, or get us closer.

That’s the goal of the Berry Good Food Foundation (BGFF), a nonprofit started this year by Michelle Lerach. A longtime proponent of sustainable food ways in San Diego, Lerach has hosted her “Berry Good Night” dinner series since 2009. Every year, the dinner pulls farmers, ranchers, chefs, eaters, politicians, moneymakers, policy advocates, purveyors and advocates together in her backyard (a massive estate, overlooking Black’s Beach). The idea is to foster relationships that will lead to real, tangible progress. (Disclosure: I’m an advisor to the BGFF board).

Maybe that’s teaching eaters and chefs to use the whole animal (thus reducing waste). Or bringing farmers together to brainstorm ways to improve the lives of farm workers. Or spearheading a local USDA-approved slaughterhouse so that San Diegans are able to buy meat raised in their own backyard.

The latter is a concern of Jack Ford, owner/rancher of Taj Farms and Ranch Coordinator for the BGFF. Over the last 10 years, Ford has raised sheep, goats, poultry, and pigs on his acreage in Valley Center, using food from the farm or his neighbors, and treating his animals with respect. “Every living thing deserves a quality of life and death,” he says.

Ford’s meat is top quality. And San Diegans can’t buy it at any retail outlet. In fact, San Diegans can’t really buy much locally raised meat at all. Why? In order to sell meat retail, ranchers must have their animals slaughtered at a USDA-approved facility. San Diego doesn’t have one. The closest is in Riverside.

San Diego’s last slaughterhouse—Talones in Escondido—shut down last year. Sure, some local ranchers send their animals up north to USDA plants. But most don’t bother.

Ford fills us in on the problem, and a potential solution:

WHERE DO YOU SELL MOST OF YOUR MEAT NOW?

I don’t send any of my animals to USDA plants. Everything is harvested on the farm. Without it going to a government audit, I have to sell the animal live. Technically, the slaughter, cut and wrap of the animal needs to be done by the new owner. My biggest market are individuals who are buying for their community. I sell them the animal whole. These are people who don’t want to ingest any meat from an animal who’s had a bad life. They don’t want to buy anything from China. They’re stewards of the environment. Everything is relationship bound.

WHERE’S THE CLOSEST SLAUGHTERHOUSE?

For ruminants (goat beef and cattle), there’s one in Riverside. There’s Pico Rivera in L.A. But you have to have a minimum number of cattle to be able to use them. There are state places, but you can’t retail anything that goes through state. It has to be USDA to sell retail.

WHY DON’T YOU SEND YOUR ANIMALS THERE?

I used to send them to the USDA plant in Riverside. But then I thought, ‘Why am I working so hard at breeding and raising these animals, giving them a quality of life, and then scaring them to death when I drive them to this place, shoving them into something that smells like a public swimming pool?’ Is what comes out the other side really something I can be proud of? All living things should have a quality of life and a quality of death. During the drive to the slaughterhouse, pigs will lose 15 percent or more of their body mass because of the stress. That’s why you don’t see pig farms south of Porterville.

DOES SAN DIEGO NEED A USDA-APPROVED SLAUGHTERHOUSE?

The food scene needs one. Farm to table then can have a local retail outlet for good, local meat. Ranchers in San Diego can send it there and sell to restaurants and markets. It would open up a whole new market. It would then allow crop farmers to add more biodynamics to their farms.

WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?

I think the Talones location in Escondido will probably work at some point. That’s been inactive for a little over a year, but hasn’t been USDA approved for over 15 years. There are individuals and foundations with the resources to accomplish this problem. I’m currently working on putting these minds together. It would have to be run by a co-op, a foundation and not for profit. The location of Talone’s is perfect. It’s surrounded on one side by railroad tracks and on one side by the freeway. It would be hard for PETA to get in there. It would be easy to defend the castle.

WHY HASN’T ANYONE DONE IT YET?

The community is disjointed. It hasn’t ever been a priority for anybody here because they’re all small producers and worked around it and not taken it seriously. It hasn’t been a priority for consumers yet because people have situational ethics with food. People go into Trader Joe’s to buy tomato sauce that’s certified organic, but it’s grown in a sub equatorial country where women don’t have reproductive rights. We’ve dumbed down home economics and dumbed down food and it’s removed the ritual for our lives. Anytime you spend money in your community, your community gets better.

WHY DOESN’T THE USDA SANCTION MORE LOCAL OPERATIONS?

The government would like to only have three USDA plants for our whole country. They are constantly trying to consolidate the number of USDA-approved plants. They’d rather have these major factory farms where you have the processing plants right there. Who are all of the people who run the USDA? It’s the people who run Monsanto and the drug companies. We’ve gotten into this cycle we take pharmaceuticals to counteract the pharmaceuticals in our food.

Jack Ford of Taj Farms.

The post Slaughterhouse Rules appeared first on San Diego Magazine.