Good Meat
Ezra Klein makes the case for meat reform. Which is to say reform of the set of policies — notably grain subsidies, FDA approval of feeding cattle a solid diet of antibiotics, and lax regulatory treatment of feedlot waste — that make the current American diet of cheap, plentiful, crappy beef economically reasonable. I heartily agree.
I’m a little bit less sure that such reform would, on its own, actually produce a dramatic decline in the overall quantity of meat people eat. The thing about grass-fed beef (for example) as opposed to the conventional stuff is that it’s really good. The only difference between subsidized corn and unsubsidized corn is that the latter costs more. But the difference between feedlot beef and the traditional product is price and quality. Indeed, thanks to the quality gap, there’s a viable market in quality meat even with the competitor in the field and receiving subsidies. If we shifted all of our meat to a different point on the price/quality spectrum, people would obviously need to make some adjustments to their consumption habits. But along with reduced meat consumption, there are various other options — including switching from beef to pork, switching from pricier to cheaper cuts of meat, and just sucking it up and paying more money — all of which are made more palatable by the product’s quality improving.
Now, obviously, part of the disagreement here stems from the fact that Ezra has tofu recipes whereas I went to the farmer’s market to buy free range pork sausage from Truck Patch Farms yesterday (and tomatoes, about which more later).
53 Responses to “Good Meat”
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October 13th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Maybe if people bought the better quality beef in smaller quantities to offset the price difference, they would get less obese, too. Win win!!
October 13th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Have you ever seen what free range sausages eat? Cook them well.
October 13th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
I thought Yglesias was Jewish….what is he doing buying pork sausages??
October 13th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Nope, changing those policies leads to more beef consumption. The price revolution hit pork and poultry not beef. Chicken and turkey used to be more expensive than beef.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
I doubt the pig thinks that their meat is “good,” except as it sustains her life.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
It’s kind of a matter of opinion; grass-fed beef tastes different, not everyone thinks it tastes better.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I’m with Sean. I do prefer grass-fed beef, but I wouldn’t say it’s “better.” You can have high-quality beef that isn’t grass-fed.
Damn, those steaks look tasty. All that needs is a cast-iron skillet or a hot grill, and some salt and pepper.
OK, Yglesias, you win, I’m cooking a steak tonight.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
What are you talking about, Matt? Corn-fed beef is obviously superior even for the least refined consumer. Eat a roughly equivalent steak to what you typically eat in the US next time you’re in London (i.e. if you normally eat super-premium dry aged, get the same), where it’s all grass-fed beef.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Jesus Matt, this is going way way way too far! Anything else you want the government to regulate?? Sure, foods become a race-to-the-bottom in many respects – what with high-fructose-corn-syrup taking up 50+lbs of our yearly diet – but whose fault is that again?? Oh yeah, I forgot.. THE GOVERNMENT WHO SUBSIDIZES THE SHIT OUT OF CORN.
You’ve been really objective on a lot of topics these past few months man – Please don’t turn into a Tree > Forest talking head now. You and Sullivan are all I’ve got!
October 13th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I gave up buying beef altogether several years ago when the mad cow tainted beef was sold at my local supermarkets in the Bellevue area of Washington. There is a strong likelihood that I ate beef from the contaminated batch, ironically sold at a store called the Quality Food Center (QFC), though a miniscule likelihood that I actually ate any prions, and an even smaller likelihood that I will contract new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Anyway, my all out ban on beef has softened somewhat, but I still don’t eat nearly as much as I did before the mad cow incident. I also eat many fewer bagged salads and spinach since the various produce incidents. I only buy certain brands of dog food since the melamine incidents.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
My local butcher here in the Bay Area switched to grass-fed beef several years ago, but the customers hated it, so they switched back to corn-fed. Just telling everyone that grass-fed is better, whether they think so not, would probably not go over well.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Do people still eat red meat? Reduce your carbon footprint, become a flexiaterian. Not as hard as you think.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
This is cute and counter-intuitive, but probably wrong. I think reducing farm subsidies would drastically reduce beef consumption. We shop at a food co-op that only stocks organic grass-fed beef. It is incredibly expensive, so expensive that we only occasionally buy cheaper cuts (hamburger, stew meat, shank (which is great for pasta sauce, BTW)). The price difference for conventional vs. “natural” chicken is not nearly as dramatic.
It’s also not true that grass-fed meat is universally better-tasting.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Before the days of monster feedlots, corn-fed beef was often considered superior because it produces more marbling than grass-fed beef.
What we see now is sort of a reverse snobbery, where grass-fed beef is considered higher quality because it is more expensive than mass produced beef.
Did you know that lobster used to be called “poor man’s chicken”?
October 13th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Now Matt has me thinking about swinging by Whole Foods for a nice porterhouse.
John
October 13th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
and tomatoes, about which more later
Oh, good. I’d hate to see you buy tomatoes without an accompanying blog post.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I thought Yglesias was Jewish….what is he doing buying pork sausages??
He’s Jewish, Fake Crusader: not the whole hog.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
I think you also have to look at Tony Bourdain’s ‘No Reservations’, and note the combination of non-industrial livestock and the use of cuts and bits that don’t look so good on styrofoam trays.
Did you know that lobster used to be called “poor man’s chicken”?
That’s because chicken was rich man’s chicken until very recently. My parents grew up towards the tail-end of rationing, and a roast chicken was a rare treat for them.
And it’s hardly reverse snobbery to suggest that the appropriate way to farm cows might not involve feed them corn, then feed them antibiotics because cows are built to eat grass. As for Americans turning their noses up at beef that’s not corn-fed? When you’re stuck in the equivalent of a corn feedlot, you get a taste for corn whether you like it or not.
October 13th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
You know, on further reflection, I realized the good steaks I buy are corn-fed beef. Just stay away from beef-fed beef.
October 13th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Mmmm…those steaks look yummy!
October 13th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I don’t mind you eating pork, as long as you feel really, really guilty about it.
October 13th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
I lived in East Africa for a couple of years where all the cattle were grass-fed and traditionally raised. The beef was awful. Absolutely terrible. It was often so tough it was barely edible. Granted often the cows were scrawny, but over two years I only got one decent steak. I longed so much for American corn-fed beef.
Grass-fed goat meat, however, is delicious.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
well, matt might be jewish in identity, but the pork stuff really shows his spanish cultural cards
October 13th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
My feeling on the issue has long been that we should switch from a beef and pork nation to a chicken nation. Chicken doesn’t have the health concerns of red meat but still provides ample protein. And chicken requires much less water, feed, and overall energy per ounce of product, and there’s great potential for genetic engineering to reduce the antibiotics problem.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
worst steak i ever had was grass fed – ive had some good ones too – the quality really varies as as one might suspect from a home spun unsciencey new industry
October 13th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Re: I lived in East Africa for a couple of years where all the cattle were grass-fed and traditionally raised.
African chickens are damn tasty though. They forage for food, at least where I lived, instead of being fed on corn, and for whatever reason are a lot tastier.
Bush pig is also really tasty…a lot more flavorful than pork.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
J1mmy,
There’s nothing ‘unsciency’ about it…..it’s a fairly new type of livestock husbandry, true, but there is a lot of research being done on forage-raised cattle right now. Naturally the quality varies, as they are still figuring out what works.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
What I’m curious about, after flexing his Rosh Hashanah cred & being sure to acknowledge virtually all Jewish holidays (expect of course the really arcane quirks of the Orthodox calendar), is why Iglesias goes out of his way to mention purchasing traif sausages.
I mean, wouldn’t simply “free range sausages” make his point about chemical-free crammed flesh more succinct? I personally don’t care a crabcake whether or not he keeps Kosher, but does it matter at all what species of critter innards go into his sausages of choice?
Tomatoes! now there is a topic that excites me.
BTW, did anyone else read that blogpost–I don’t know whose, one of the usual suspects–about farm subsidies prohibiting, say, soybean farmers from growing anything but soybeans? No fresh fruits and veggies allowed! Your tax dollars serving your best interests, yet again.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
We already are. Poultry consumption passed beef a few years ago, although I’ve now exhausted 5 minutes looking for the right cite from the USDA or someplace, and I give up. All I can find is data from 1999 that said they were about tied, with chicken gaining fast.
There’s also the fact that steak just tastes better than chicken, and real burgers taste better than turkeyburgers, etc. Part of the reason is that American chickens (and pigs) are bred for size and lean-ness. They’re bred all the fat out of them, and the fat is where you get the deliciousness. That hasn’t happened with beef, because everybody knows a steak with no fat is inedible.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:25 am
As a vegetarian, I don’t care how expensive meat gets. We waste a lot of resources producing it. I hope it goes through the roof.
“But it tastes SOOOO good!”
Boo fucking hoo. Animals never done me no wrong. People, though — they deserve it.
Go to an Outback steakhouse. More marbling in the booths than in the freezers.
October 14th, 2008 at 2:11 am
All meat is good, but pork is the champion. Think about how many tasty varieties of pork product there are: sausage, pork chops, ham, and…… the king of meat: bacon.
If I was on death row my last meal would have bacon and ham along with a few other items, mostly sea food, plus a fine wine, some escarole or mustard greens, and some flan.
October 14th, 2008 at 3:17 am
http://meat.org
Stop eating animals.
October 14th, 2008 at 4:00 am
Had a filet and seasoned it with some left over rib spice. Not bad.
More meat blogging.
October 14th, 2008 at 4:25 am
The only reason people chose to repopulate Northern Europe after the last ice age is bacon. Simple as that.
/Limagolf
October 14th, 2008 at 6:36 am
That Truck Patch Farms sausage is damned good. I just got through eating some of their bacon.
October 14th, 2008 at 6:48 am
Also, I don’t know if they go to the farmer’s markets in DC, but beef from Springfield Farms north of Baltimore is simply amazing. I got some of their ground beef and made a couple of burgers, and they were some of the best I’ve ever had. No comparison.
Not sure what you have to say about tomatoes this late in the season. I was done with those three weeks ago.
October 14th, 2008 at 7:26 am
After getting used to feed-lot beef over the years, we had some free-range beef last summer, and it tastes too gamy. Free-range chicken simply has more flavor. Free-range beef has more nasty flavor. If the industry switched to free-range beef, I’d switch to poultry. Which I’ve been wanting to do for other reasons anyway.
October 14th, 2008 at 10:52 am
I’m going to Buenos Aires in November for a week or so. The word on the street is that Argentina has some of the best steak/beef in the world.
I noted, though it seems weird and I need to verify, that Argenitine beef is all free-range/grass fed. The cows pretty much wander where they like on the pampas and the gauchos go out and round them up. Something about industrial scale farming going belly up back when Argentina was first settled by Europeans (and cows were imported). Entire herds were left to fend for themselves, so there are huge stocks of cattle wandering the pampas.
Like I said, I could be way wrong there. Please correct me if I am.
But the main point is that the beef is supposed to be awesome, pretty cheap, and all natural.
Has anyone been to Argentina? What’s the word on argentine beef?
October 14th, 2008 at 11:11 am
the problem isn’t an “all antibiotic” diet or whatever, that’s a symptom of the real problem. the most serious problem with beef seems to be that cows are over-fed corn, which they are not equipped to digest in the quantities they are fed it. this is one of the major reasons why they get the antibiotics – the corn gives them ulcers and lesions, which they then need antibiotics to keep from getting infected, and it builds on itself, etc ad nauseum.
really, feeding cows this way is a slow form of torture, it ruptures their stomachs and makes their lives extremely and unnecessarily painful. but hey, corn is cheap and the cows haven’t technically filed an official complaint, so…
really, they need to eat grass. that’s what cows eat. not cornmeal.
October 14th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
It’s also worth knowing that grass-fed beef is far more healthy not just for the environment, but for our bodies too. It has the second-highest content of long-chain Omega 3 fatty acids after oily coldwater fish like mackerel and sardines. As soon as you take the cow off of grass and start feeding it grain, its content of Omega 3 starts to precipitously decline. As research shows more and more of the importance of these compounds (in fighting depression, ADD, sleep disorders, enhancing memory) the value of 100% grass-fed beef skyrockets.
October 14th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Onceler, you are close to the mark but not as close as you think. Cows can consume corn just fine as a part of their normal diet. What causes the problems everyone is bitching about are the “finishing” lots. This is where the cows have reached maturity and the intention is to pack on as much mass as possible before slaughter, usually this is the last hundred days or so of the cows life. The ratio of grain to forage inverts and becomes something like 85% grain (mostly corn silage) and 15% forage, which is not what their digestive systems are used to. If we put you on a diet that was suddenly 85% bran, 85% tempeh, or 85% red meat I am sure your digestive system would complain a bit too.
October 14th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Sorry UJ, but while grass-fed beef does have more omega-3 fatty acids than grain-finished beef, all beef regardless of its diet is vastly inferior to all fish when it comes to getting omega-3s. Even the lowly rainbow trout (down at the bottom of the omega-3 rankings for fish) has around 1.1g of omega-3s per 100g serving while a 100g grass-fed beef steak has less than 100 _milligrams_ of omega-3 fatty acids. That is a 10x difference between one of the worst-ranked fish and the best-ranked beef.
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