Pasture-Raised

Following up on my food thoughts from earlier, I saw this post from the Feathers Off blog, on their pasture-raised, no-stress chicken "schooner" method. Here are the pictures of the construction and here's the earlier write-up of the philosophy behind it.

As much as I admire the vegetarian discipline, my gut feeling is that it's more environmentally friendly for land to be farmed with animals rotating into the mix to fertilize the land. And everyone knows there are more nerve endings in your gut than in your brain.

The first time I opened Peter Singer's ''Animal Liberation,'' I was dining alone at the Palm, trying to enjoy a rib-eye steak cooked medium-rare. If this sounds like a good recipe for cognitive dissonance (if not indigestion), that was sort of the idea.

Those are the opening lines to Michael Pollan's article, An Animal's Place which discusses society's increasing extension of moral consideration to animals, along with the growing awareness of the cruelty and brutality inflicted upon them in our food supply. (The contents of the article are included as a section in The Omnivore's Dilemma). It's really difficult for me not to gush about Pollan's informal, intelligent, accessible writing style. See, I couldn't even finish the sentence without gushing. Totally worth a read.

Pollan focuses on Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm, which focuses on local marketing, and pasture-based feeding of animals. Here's an article on the Forks Farm's experience with the Salatin model.

Another pasture-raised meat story:
Taste comparison of pasture-raised beef to grocery store Angus beef