1. All natural Black Angus ground beef from the US = $5.99 / lb
2. All natural ground beef from Australia = $4.99 / lb
3. Ground beef (not organic or natural) from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico = $3.29 / lb.
There is also option #4 not at Trader Joe's itself - I know that I can buy grass-fed, organic from a rancher in the SF Bay Area that comes to my local farmer's market for $6.99 / lb (and I go to the farmer's market every Sunday so there is no difference in convenience).
Based on all that I have read about sustainable food systems (and the potential positive impact this can have on the environment vs. the alternative), my preference is to buy sustainable, local, grass-fed, organic ground beef. On top of that, I prefer to buy from locally owned "businesses" (i.e. the local bookstore, farmer, etc.) than a large chain where the money doesn't circulate locally and potentially just lines the pockets of the business owners (or shareholders) who are likely very wealthy. I personally don't mind paying more for this, but I also have to consider my wife's view - she is not opposed to buying sustainable, local, grass-fed, organic but cares A LOT less about that and more about value/price. Especially in a time when we are thinking more about being cost conscious, the value/price factor seems even more important. And the dynamic between my wife around money should not be taken lightly.
So what do I do? I know this choice is very personal to people, but here is my thinking...
- The cheapest option offers a savings of $4 over the most expensive option (farmer's market). If the decision were left to my wife, this would probably be her choice. This is also the least environmentally friendly option (not local, grass-fed or organic), and also the most scary - why does this beef come from the US, Mexico, Canada, New Zealand and Australia? Sorry, babe, but I'm just not down with this beef.
- For less than $2 more than the cheapest option (and $2 less than the farmer's market option), I can buy beef that is natural (marginally better than organic) but very not local (I can't believe we import it from Australia and it's cheaper than the stuff grown here) or grass-fed. My wife probably wouldn't be opposed to this as a compromise.
- For almost $3 more than the cheapest option, I only save $1 over the farmer's market and buy beef that is natural and at least more local than the beef from Australia, but still not necessarily (and probably not) truly local nor grass-fed. I don't think either of us would be happy with this option.
- I could pay a premium (more than twice as much as the cheapest option) to buy beef that meets all of my values: local, organic, grass-fed and from a "local business" vs. national chain. Clearly my choice if I were to make this on my own, but the hardest for my wife to swallow.
I discussed all of this with my wife (who wonders why I make such a fuss over something as simple as ground beef) and she says she is comfortable with whatever I want to do. I don't know that she really is (perhaps she's just trying to be nice while wondering why I recklessly spend our hard-earned money) so I punt the decision and decide that I will come back when we are done with the rest of our shopping. As we walk through TJs, we get to the egg section and my wife asks if it's cool if we buy eggs from TJs (I usually buy them from the farmer's market). The eggs that she picks up are organic and free-range. Probably mass-produced on a huge farm and sold through TJs, but on the product level itself, pretty good on the environmentally sustainability spectrum. And they're $4 / dozen vs. the $6 / dozen I pay for the organic, free-range eggs I buy from a rancher at the farmer's market. I say of course we can pick up these eggs (it's not a bad choice, offers decent value, and I don't want to dictate her chioces and don't want her to feel guilty).
And with that, I think we've just implicitly made our compromise about the beef. We're spending $2 less on eggs at TJs (for a product that is decent, and without the benefits of the local economy / buying from the guy I know), and I can buy the local, organic, grass-fed beef from the farmer's market for $2-4 more.
That's a lot of consideration over 1 lb. of ground beef for hamburgers. I know that people have different values and need to make chioces according to those - and I totally respect that. What would you do?
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This is a tough one, and it highlights the difficulty in trying to be green after spending 30 years of our lives not being very green.
ReplyDeleteI guess what I would say the first choice would be... don't get the meat at all. By now, most people have heard that meat is a leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions and that production of meat is also woefully resource inefficient.
But, this isn't always possible, plausible, or in my case.. desirable. I really enjoy hamburgers every so often, and I don't want to be guilted into giving them up.
So, what to do? Well, I have to be honest - I don't necessarily see the organic, grass-fed, and local being on the same level. There are actually problems with each of these concepts, and they are, in the end, fairly different concepts, that might not all be worth pursuing.
Take grass-fed for example. I'm sure it makes a healthier cow, and healthier meat, but I imagine to produce at the scale that we consume cows at, grass-fed open-range cattle would cause serious damage to natural environments. Issues like desertification and habitat destruction (as can be seen in places like the Amazon where natural rain forest is burned down to create grazing lands) would explode if all of our beef were grass-fed open range.
Likewise with organic. In fact, most of the time I see organic, I don't even really know what it means. I am ASSUMING that it means that whatever I am eating is more healthy for me and because it doesn't use pesticides or chemicals, more healthy for the environment. And in general, this is the case. Yet, where does TJs or Whole Foods get all of their organic produce? You can't supply a national (or international) chain with small farmers growing organic peppers near their farmhouse. The truth is, much of the organic farming is still done on an industrial scale. Which doesn't 100% make it bad, but it does put it at odds with local farming. Further, definitions of organic vary so much, that, without better education, I can't really know what the organic product I just bought means. Some organic certifications allow pesticides and chemicals to a certain point in a plant's life. Better, but there are still chemicals being used.
What is an organic cow anyway? And, out of curiosity, do you think it knows it's organic? Does it make fun of the other, non-organic cows? =)
Okay, so I've been avoiding the question. I think local is probably the best bet, as it allows you to be more connected with the food system that you are a part of. But 6.99/lb for beef is a LOT of money, more than double the bad stuff. I think, to be honest, I would probably buy the bad stuff and justify it to myself by figuring out how to use the savings to do more good out there. It would be easier to justify because I would probably only buy it once in a blue moon. That of course leads to the question - if you only buy it once in a blue moon, why not just spend seven bucks on it? Good point.
I'm just going to not buy beef anymore. It's too damn complicated.