In what has become a summer of struggles no one will forget any time soon, I know there are many you out there trying to take care of your families, navigating the market’s craziness and maybe even a job loss. Our hearts go out to you. We’ve been praying for everyone and how we’re all navigating this pandemic.
We wanted to talk about something we’re worried about, especially as we head into the fall and the holidays. We know you all are probably looking forward to some family time after how rough this summer was and how rocky the start to the school year has been. But as you start planning for get-togethers, cookouts, and family feasts, we want to keep something top of mind.
Our worry in this environment is that as you plan your big feasts or even just your weekly grocery runs to feed your family, you’ll start trimming corners in what you buy. These days, we’re all for trying to save money, but before you reach for that unbranded, unmarked generic ground beef for this week’s tacos or spaghetti, think for just a moment about what’s in it…
With this in mind, we thought we’d go over a few reasons to hesitate when you start to reach for the “bargain buy” section at the deli of your local grocer.
5 Reasons to be Wary at the Supermarket Butcher Counter
1. Your butcher has no idea where your meat came from
Unless you are shopping at a local farmer’s market or co-op, your butcher likely has no idea where the meat he’s cutting comes from—other than maybe the general direction the truck arrived from. Even at the processing factory, they may have no idea. Often looking for the cheapest buy, supermarkets source their meat from all over the world. Not only is their meat usually from a factory farm, but it could also be from a factory farm anywhere in the world and could have been frozen multiple times on its journey to the processing plant and then to the butcher.
2. Supermarket ground beef is usually from hundreds of cows
Have you ever taken one bite of a “perfectly cooked” burger only to frown down at the patty in your hands? Everything in the cooking process went right, but something about the texture is just…wrong.
The reason is that supermarket ground beef—and even the ground beef at some fast-food restaurants and higher-end restaurants—is usually a mashup of more than one cow. It can often be the most random assortment of cuts of hundreds of different cattle packed together more tightly than they were even in their living conditions. This ground beef is usually from any number of muscle tissue types, most likely from retired dairy cows who are often 3–5 years old. They’ve lived for years packed into inhumane quarters, bred only for milking, and once they’ve lived past their prime for delivering dairy, they are shuttled to a plant and all processed as one.
This tendency creates the tough meat that makes you frown at your burger, thinking Something isn’t right…
3. Expiration dates are not regulated
Did you know that it’s legally acceptable for grocery stores to freeze, thaw, and then refreeze their meat several times—up to 14 times!
Freezing fresh meat is the best way to ensure that bacteria don’t grow and that a choice product is delivered to a customer—we flash freeze our meat for this exact reason. But we only freeze it once.
Every time your butcher thaws and refreezes meat, the physical, cellular structure of the meat changes—effecting the texture in negative ways.
This freezing and refreezing process can also foster the growth of harmful strains of bacteria that can make you ill and even send you to the hospital.
Even “fresh, never frozen” meat can be harmful because of the things some factories and stories will do to ensure their meat retains that “fresh-cut” red… Like treating the meat with carbon monoxide to slow the oxidation process that makes meat turn brown. This chemical process keeps meat looking fresh-cut, even if it’s gone bad. The meat sitting in the glass case may have been there for days, but somehow, it’s still bright red, as if the butcher cut it just a couple of minutes ago. If you’ve ever bought a block of “fresh” ground meat from the supermarket only to get home and break it open to find the “fresh” meat was just a ring of red around a big block of brown, stinky meat, you’ve seen this in action.
This habit allows the store to change the expiration date on a package as many times as they need to until it sells. So while you may look at a package of meat in your supermarket or big box store, and think it’s safe to eat, most of the time, expiration dates are nothing more than a figment of some manager’s imagination.
4. The meat is likely contaminated
Factory farms are infamous for tight grounds and even closer quarters. The animals—genetically used to roaming free, or at the very least giving each other the space they need to grow well and grow strong—are forced into smaller areas than humanely acceptable. Most animals can’t actually survive in these kinds of conditions, not without the help of their caretakers. To encourage health among their stock, factory farms’ caretakers inject their animals with any number of steroids and antibiotics. The food they feed their stock isn’t pesticide-free or even grass most of the time—and that’s just while they’re alive.
Once processing has begun, the conditions are poorly organized and regulated. Because of the natural process of what happens when an animal is processed and the following unclean environment, feces are likely to contaminate the meat. That contaminated meat is then ground, packaged, and sold in your local supermarket. And it’s not just ground beef. Any ground meat from a factory farm or factory processor could be contaminated with antibiotics, pesticides, and fecal bacteria. Yuck.
5. Contaminated poultry sickens more than 200,000 Americans per year
Chickens and other poultry also experience the same sick practices in mass production. Industrial farms fill their chickens with antibiotics, but the true concern is that over a million Americans contract illnesses from contaminated poultry and produce per year. A study found that 25% of chicken pieces in grocery stores were contaminated with salmonella. The USDA has new regulations in place that require factories to bring that number down by 25%, but for us, that’s too many people still getting sick.
Final Thoughts
There is an ugly side to the meat industry that is just as industrialized as the name suggests. But at Buck Creek, we believe we have to entirely change the way we do things in the industry if we want to see a difference.
We love our customers and want to make sure you are all keeping your health as high on your list of concerns this year as your budget is. Maybe think about other areas you could cut corners in your budget for the month—but don’t allow your health or your family’s overall to suffer. The only way to be sure you’re feeding your family responsibly-sourced, farm-fresh meat—even safe ground beef—is to source it directly from the farm.
As a family-run farm, we take pride in how attentive we are to our entire process. We care about our customers. We recognize that all of you aren’t just a source of money in our pockets—you’re real people, families trying to eat in a healthy way just like we are.
In the middle of everything going on out there, we’re focusing on the things that matter. To us, you and your family matter, and we spend every day making sure we provide you with a healthy quality product you can trust.