How to Become a Sustainable Meat Eater

As Brandon Bosworth points out on the Change.org Animals Blog, the UN recently released a report saying that moving to a diet free of animal products will curb climate change and balance the disparity of available food resources worldwide. Many of us have known this for a long time, and it's even become somewhat chic among foodies to eschew meat. Movements like "Meatless Mondays" have been embraced by celebrity chef icons like Mario Batali.

Obviously, the way meat is produced and consumed in the developed world, particularly in the U.S., is grossly unsustainable, not to mention cruel, environmentally hazardous, and unhealthy. I don't disagree with the UN entirely, but I do think sustainable meat production is possible. It may be controversial to say this, but a lot of meat substitutes and vegetarian items are now also highly processed. And they aren't always as environmentally friendly as we imagine, as Change.org blogger Sarah Parsons discovered.

I recently dealt with some allergy issues that caused me to be very restrictive with my diet. Both soy and legumes were out, which left me with very little in the way of protein. As someone who was vegetarian for a long time, I never really figured out how or where to find sustainable meat. Here are a few suggestions—feel free to comment and add your own.

1. Consider the source: Nicolette Hahn Niman has a great piece over at the Huffington Post on where to find sustainable meat. One of her mottoes, "to eat food from places I would want to visit," is a great gauge. The easiest and most reliable bets are CSAs and your local farmers' market. Some beef in the supermarket might be grass-fed, but that doesn't give you much information on how the waste at that farm is handled or how humane the kill floor is. A CSA or farmers' market allows you to ask these questions to the actual meat producers and farmers.

2. Moderation is key. In keeping with the Meatless Mondays idea, it turns out that even though many of us were raised on meat at two out of three meals, the RDA suggests "Two to three servings of meat, poultry, fish, dry beans, eggs & nuts" each day. That's a USDA value, which we can be rightly suspicious of, but even the USDA admits that one serving of meat is around three or four ounces. Most portions are double that—so one serving of a lean meat per day is sufficient, especially when you include your dairy, bean, and nut intake.

3. You get what you pay for. If you're going to be eating less meat, you may as well enjoy it more. Greg Plotkin wrote a great piece last month on the challenges small farmers face against industrial meat Goliaths. Meat that isn't pumped full of hormones is actually quite tasty, but it's the minority, and the ranchers who produce it are fighting a good fight. Katherine Gustafson posted on the resurgence of small slaughterhouses just last week. If you want your meat to come from a sustainable and humane source, you absolutely have to vote with your dollars and support the folks who are working hard to provide an alternative to a very powerful and influential industry.

Photo via WikiMedia Commons.