To briefly sum up, O’Reilly’s rationale is:

1. Non-factory farms provide a better life for the animals (well, up until they are slaughtered).
2. You tend to put dollars straight into the pockets of your neighbors, not goliath corporations.
3. You’re promoting the environmental welfare of your community.
4. You eat healthier when these animals are given organic feed and kept off of growth hormone and antibiotics.

If you read my recent piece on meat transparency, those points should sound familiar.

Though each thought is distinct, they all relate to the higher concept of health. When buying meat products from a local, sustainable farm, you are contributing to the health of your neighbors, your community, and even your self.

Factory farms use economies of scale to turn a profit. Sure, you save a few dollars at the grocery store checkout, but that cheap price is offset by hidden societal costs.

If you’re reading this, you’re already avoiding factory farm meat. Or you’re thinking about it. Or you’re a vegetarian/vegan. For you, the personal choice to eat healthier is a simple one to make. Convincing others, however, is a challenge.

I skip meat at these places because I don’t know where it’s from.

My own kitchen only serves up meat from humanely-raised animals (or wild-caught). It’s nice knowing that the pig behind my bacon had an opportunity to enjoy a nice pig life, or the cow behind my hamburger could graze in a pasture (like cows used to do).

Transparency is missing in the grocery store.

When we buy meat and food from the grocery store, we don’t know how it got there. Ignorance is bliss. We trade transparency for cheap, convenient food.

Unless I know where the meat came from and what kind of environment the animals were raised, I simply choose not to take the chance.

Is industrially-produced meat less healthy than meat from humanely-treated animals? Maybe. Research suggests that meat from pasture-raised cows contains proper Omega-3/Omega-6 balance and less fat. The literature isn’t overflowing on the topic, however.

Personally, though, I think pasture-raised meat tastes way better.

While it’s great that society does care about what food we eat, we also need to think about what our food eats. Treat our food well, and it will treat us well.

Hidden from the view of Americans is where a lot of grocery store and restaurant food gets its start. That de-boned chicken breast was at one point part of a chicken; it was not born in the cooler of your neighborhood Walmart. Similarly, your ground beef patty was (hopefully) part of a real cow in the not too distant past.

An opaque veil obscures the origin of food in an industry effort to commoditize it. Huge, cost-efficient factory farms want consumers to believe that there’s no difference between a chicken confined to a 60 cubic inch pen for the duration of its short life and a chicken raised on a pasture, free to peck away at grubs and revitalize the soil.

Yeah, there’s a big difference, and if you don’t know where to look it can be REALLY hard to find an alternative. Heck, I spent six weeks going vegetarian while sorting through my options.

There are two easy places to start:

1. A local food co-operative (the kind that sells mostly organic products and has a few employees who could easily be described as “new age-y”).
2. Farmers markets (just open the coolers scattered around).

But be ready to pay a little more! Prices at co-ops and farmers markets tend to run about 50-200% higher than grocery store meat.

For me, it’s a huge comfort to meet the farmer who raised my hamburger patty and know the kind of environment the originating cow grew up  in. Also, it tastes WAY better.