6 Questions People Don’t Ask When Buying Locally-Raised Meat & Eggs
The advantages of eating locally are becoming increasingly well-known to Canadian families. Those who live in the country and are aware of who has meat or eggs for sale locally have always been in the know. If you’re not a local, finding and then venturing out to visit a farm you don’t know can be an intimidating concept – and if you don’t know what questions to ask when you get there, you may not be rewarded with the quality of product you are looking for.
Thanks to websites that do the screening for you, eating locally is easier to do, making it an even more enjoyable way of life for your family. Buying directly from the farmer who can answer your questions and even give you a short tour, helps connect you with your food sources and appreciating how it comes to your table, and understand exactly what you’re buying. The problem is, when you are shopping for meat and eggs at a local farm, many people don’t know what questions to ask. Here are six most commonly overlooked questions as well as some useful information to help give you a basic understanding of how it all works and ensure that you and your local farmer are on the same page.
#1 Are the animals raised on your farm?
Some locations will claim to sell local meats, but are in fact purchasing them from an auction or a meat processor to resell. If you can’t see animals in the fields as you drive up, or at least see photos that are easy to identify as coming from that farm, you may want to keep looking.
#2 How are the animals housed?
Depending upon your priorities, the housing of animals can tell you a lot. Animals kept in a large, warehouse-size building, versus a small farm providing access to fields and fresh air, should be reflected in the pricing of the meat products. Confinement meats should cost less than free-range or pastured meats and eggs.
#3 What are the animals fed?
There are so many labels on meat these days, it can be overwhelming! Labels provide an important guideline for how the final meat should taste and be priced.
Animals fed a standard soybean and corn diet in a confined setting will have the lowest cost per pound for the meat. The meat will also have a consistent flavour, with no variation.
Organic grains are very expensive to produce, so they result in the highest pricing. Organic usually does not include access to pasture, but the animals must be able to range freely in their barn and have some access to fresh air, so it may be worth inquiring about.
A middle-road approach are non-GMO (genetically modified organism) grains. These are easier to come by for the farmer at a lower cost, and close to organic in quality. Both organic and non-GMO will also produce meats with a consistent flavour.
Finally, “pasture-raised” requires more land to feed the animals on, and produces a nutrient-dense meat thanks to access to a natural diet. Locally-raised meat from animals raised on fresh pasture will have an enhanced flavour; the difference is like comparing Kool-aid to fresh-squeezed orange juice – but be prepared to pay for it. While usually still less than what you’ll pay for organic meat at the store, you will have to pay more for the quality. Confirm animals are physically on fresh, green pasture, instead of a dirt lot with hay fed to them. Dirt lots qualify as free range, so should not be categorized as pastured, no matter how big that space is. Because more land requires more attention and more cost to the farmer, this will be reflected in the price of the meat.
#4 Where are the animals processed?
Farmers cannot legally sell any meat that has been processed on the farm. Meat animals must be processed at a licensed, provincial “abattoir,” which is a plant that makes sure the animals are healthy and then dispatches them quickly and humanely before processing them into meat cuts.
#5 How old are the animals when you start caring for them?
Farms that are breeding their own livestock have complete control over how the animals are cared for and fed. Farms that purchase weaned or older animals are still generating quality products, but may have less insights into how they were raised at an early age.
#6 What do I need to know about the chicken and the egg?
The poultry industry is overseen by a chicken board, which allocates a quota to each farm. Farms holding a quota may raise hundreds of thousands of chickens or eggs each year.
Small farms without a quota may only raise 300 meat birds a year, and keep 100 laying hens. These farms are not allowed to advertise their products anywhere but the end of their driveway, making them very hard to find unless you happen to drive by. You might come across ads for them on Kijiji or Facebook, however, so it is worth doing a search.
A new Ontario program allows smaller farms to raise up to 3,000 meat chickens per year and then legally advertise and sell them off the property. This Artisanal Chicken Program gives a people whose diet consists principally of locally-grown or produced food (locavores) a valuable new source of locally-raised chicken farms that are closely inspected to ensure the chickens are properly cared for and processed. An approved Artisanal Farm must be able to show you their membership card that confirms they meet all of the program’s standards.
Now you have a primer on how to screen local farms. So where can you find them?
Simcoe County is blessed to have an abundance of farmers dedicated to producing the best food products to put on our tables. There are two quick resources to help you find them on the internet.
The best list of area farms can be found at the Simcoe County Farm Fresh website. This allows you to search for farms by the type of meat: http://www.simcoecountyfarmfresh.ca/listing.php
If pasture-raised meats are a priority for you, the Eat Wild website has a comprehensive list of farms in North America. There is no map to accompany it, so use the phone area codes on the farm listing to quickly find farms closest to you: http://www.eatwild.com/products/canada.html
Finally, Kijiji and Facebook are great ways to locate farms close to us. Facebook will list dozens of farms that might not be on the two sites above, by simply typing “Farm” in the search bar at the top of the Facebook page. The same applies to Kijiji, but use the search word “Meats” instead.