THE TROUBLE WITH SMALL FARMERS
The meat I want to eat comes from small producers like Amanda and Anthony Kumnick. But it is bloody hard to get and it is costly. You can buy supermarket bacon for $7 a kilo. This is made in Australia from frozen pork from pigs raised in industrial farms in Denmark or Canada. It is greasy, watery, and when chewed reminds me of the sad, grey, joyless food George Orwell described in 1984. The Kumnicks’s bacon is wonderfully dense, flavoursome, meaty and has a buttery smoothness. It costs $32 a kilo. It is costly because of the inefficiencies in their farming systems, as agronomists would say. The farmers would say that the reason the food they produce costs more than the stuff in the supermarket is that it reflects the true cost of farming, when all the labour and the ethical methods of farming are taken into account. There are higher labour costs. Instead of premix pig pellets being sent via a pipe into the feed troughs of pigs, as it would be in a shed, there are people hand-mixing the feed and tipping it into their feed troughs. There are people on the farm who move the pigs from paddock to paddock. There are people on the farm who move the sheds in which the pigs shelter. There is not only more labour but fewer opportunities to gain economies of scale. Instead of one truck filled with hundreds of pigs, the animals are ‘turned off’ (sent away from the farm) by the dozen, if not fewer. The animals are slaughtered and butchered in small lots, which again presents administrative costs. This system is replicated for many small producers across the nation. There is a nascent movement to have on-farm slaughtering and butchery, which reduces transport and administration costs. It will be at least a decade, if ever, before we see on-farm slaughtering, but on-farm butchery has already started. In a nutshell, the above reasons are why the hams produced by farmers like the Kumnicks cost $200. You can have cheap ham from Canadian factory pigs for $50.
One of the biggest barriers to lowering the cost of ethical meat is the demands placed on farmers by state government regulators, such as PrimeSafe in Victoria, which enforces the Meat Industry Act. In New South Wales this work is done by the NSW Food Authority. The work done by this state body is similar to that of the authorities around the nation. The red tape, onerous testing regime funded by the food producer and negative attitude to small-scale butchery and processing is also to be found in all other states and territories. These government bodies have done a sterling job of protecting Australian consumers from a tragic situation that killed a 4-year-old in South Australia in 1995 after she ate defective salami. The measures put in place by these organisations mean our meat and smallgoods are free from harmful microbes. But in doing so they have created a culture that is aggressive towards small meat producers. In Victoria the environment created by regulation is so toxic to artisan meat production that many of that state’s best small producers send their meat to New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia to be made into smallgoods. There, meat production is still safe but much more conducive to small producers, and the smallgoods are fermented and sent back to Victoria to be labelled as local produce. This should be a warning to the rest of the country that a state authority is acting like a frontier sheriff, without the necessary ministerial oversight to keep it in check. Sometimes the situation seems Kafkaesque.
PrimeSafe oversees abattoirs, butchers, fish and poultry processors and meat delivery in Victoria. Most beef in Victoria is sold through the big two supermarkets, which buy meat from animals raised in feedlots, and, at the time of writing, Woolworths was still using hormone growth promotants in its cattle. Because meat is not their main businesses, however, supermarkets don’t fall under the jurisdiction of PrimeSafe. Instead they come under the much less fearsome realm of local council health departments. PrimeSafe has developed a reputation for destroying meat, breaking open prepared salamis, and threatening a farrago of legal consequences when, without evidence or proper testing, they so much as suspect a butcher of making unlicensed salami. Inspectors have been known to pour bottles of a butcher’s own cleaning fluid over meat or fish they thought, but had not proved, had breached their regulations. I have spoken with several butchers who tell the same story. I have been told butchers are instructed to sign documents declaring that they are guilty of transgressing the act and that they will not transgress again. This is a contract signed, it would seem, under duress and without access to legal counsel.
The way the state of Victoria has set up its meat industry regulator could not be more antagonistic to small producers if it tried. I have inter-viewed butchers who have wept at the unfair treatment that PrimeSafe dealt to them. One former butcher who was known nationally for his smallgoods recently closed his doors. I received a sad text from him: ‘Richard. I can’t take the BS and pressure from PS [PrimeSafe] anymore. It is killing me. I have to get out and do something else. M’.
PrimeSafe officers have worked against people who used to produce the best goods. There was a Spaniard, from Galicia, living near Geelong in regional Victoria ten years ago, who was making superb Spanish-style hams. They were close to Spanish jamón. He knew how to salt the hams, how to dry the hams; he knew how to manipulate the hams around the drying room to get the best result. His name was Angel Cardoso. Everyone who had been overseas and tasted jamón had lauded his jamón as being the real thing. But he was producing it outside PrimeSafe’s regulations. PrimeSafe inspected him close to Christmastime one year and took away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of his jamóns, disposing of the hams.
A recent guideline released by PrimeSafe saw the traditional practice of dry ageing meat in low-turnover butcheries virtually wiped out overnight. This is a process in which meat, almost universally beef, is hung in very cold storage for around thirty to sixty days, sometimes longer. During this period, enzymes in the meat break down the protein in the muscle tissues, making the meat tender. This is the process I’ve explained previously, when muscle sugar called glycogen is transformed by lactic enzymes into lactic acid. The result is a rich tasting and beefy piece of meat with a clean lactic finish. Traditional beef. The new PrimeSafe guidelines mean that this cannot be done unless there is frequent and costly testing, and unless the dry ageing occurs in specially created dry-ageing chambers, costing tens of thousands of dollars each; other states are not as draconian. These are regulations placed upon an industry that is struggling to survive in the wake of the supermarket juggernauts that regularly lower the public’s expectations about the price and value of meat, by covering their advertising with massive pictures of $10 rump steaks. That is the marketing that is being forced on us: we expect meat to be cheap.
I watched one of Australia’s best wagyu farmers struggle under this ham-fisted regime. Neil Prentice raises purebred wagyu on his farm in the hills above the Latrobe Valley in Gippsland. He farms using biodynamic practices, and his cattle are mostly pasture fed, with some additional grain mix towards the end of their three years. He used to make a wagyu salami. The testing became too expensive. He used to make wagyu bresaola. The testing became too expensive. He used to make the best dry-aged beef in Australia. His butcher couldn’t afford the dry-ageing room. He still grows what I consider to be the best free-range wagyu in Australia.
The ridiculous approach taken to the interpretation of laws that are meant to protect our health has even more bizarre unintended consequences. One of the best free-range poultry producers I know has been forced into a farcical situation. They run their birds in large outdoor cages that are moved daily onto new pasture. The pigs follow the chickens several months later and turn over the new growth flourishing on the manure. The family have transformed a barren block of land, denuded by over a century of mining, and what was in places bare rock into arable land. What was ochre rock is now deep-green pasture. What was brown stubble is now flourishing multi-species pasture. The chickens act like real birds, and scratch and peck and spread their wings and do the occasional little fun run. Slaughtered at almost double the number of days the standard supermarket chook is knocked on the head, these are really tasty birds. They are so
large, you can feed a family of four three times on one of them. Twice the weight of a supermarket chook, twice the price, but you get twice as many meals.
For the farmer in question, however, there is something very disconcerting about the bureaucracy surrounding their slaughter. Because they are so small there is no prescribed procedure that fits them. The farmer has to sign a document stating his birds are legally owned by the processor. The processor can then slaughter them, process the birds and hand them back to the farmer, who sells them at farmers’ markets. It is bizarre. This is the way governments treat the people who feed us. People who practise some of the most sustainable farming techniques we have.
Some Australian farmers have taken a stand. There are small producers, like Tammi Jonas from Jonai Farms, who are fair farming advocates. She has a vision for a small on-farm abattoir and farm-gate butchery and shop. For her it’s two steps forward, one step, sometimes two steps, back. An instance of this was connected to a salami education programme she held on her small free-range and ethical farm near Daylesford. She advertised the event and put up photos on social media. Shortly afterwards, inspectors came to her farm unannounced, and destroyed not only her own salamis made for her family, but all the salamis belonging to the other participants in the class.
It is sheer lunacy that the state government is stifling a huge latent demand for sustainable products that could see hundreds of jobs being created in small, and sometimes regional towns and communities. In this atmosphere, how does small artisanal meat production flourish? Imagine if thirty years ago the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation was going to wineries and smashing barrels if the winemakers were using wild yeast or making wine from non-French varieties. We wouldn’t have the flourishing, diverse wine industry we enjoy now. Even though it is just a handful of jobs in any one place, in a small town a few men or women holding full-time employment can mean the difference between holding onto or losing their schools, doctors, stores and other businesses. The rise of the small-scale farmer could see us eating exceptional meat but much less of it. Which would not be a bad thing.
MEAT SHOCK
In October 2015, twenty-two scientists from ten countries met at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France, to evaluate the carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat and processed meat. They determined that, from reviewing ten different studies, there was a statistically significant dose–response relationship between red meat consumption and colorectal cancer. They found a 17 per cent increased risk per 100 grams per day of red meat and an 18 per cent increase per 50 grams per day of processed meat.
It wasn’t this World Health Organization (WHO) report that meat is linked to colorectal cancer that surprised me. That was old news. It was the public reaction to the report, indicating the issue is the global warming of health. There is a growing and alarming anti-science movement in which people don’t want other people to tell them what to think, about anything. This is the way the anti-science conversation goes:
Scientists: Here is the information. Of the thousand scientists in the room, 999 agree the information is true.
Protagonist: Let the thousandth scientist speak. I wanna hear what he has to say.
Protagonist 2: Yeah. Let’s hear it from the dissenter. He has something important to say that agrees with my well-formed opinion.
Scientists: But your well-formed opinion is not well informed.
Protagonists: But change is bad, and that scientist over there chewing on the charred hot dog looks like he has something important to say that I could possibly agree with.
What the study didn’t say was that eating bacon was like smoking fags. Meat and preserved meat were classified by WHO as a Group 1 car-cinogen, placing it in the same league as tobacco and asbestos. Australia’s Agriculture Minister at the time, Barnaby Joyce, dismissed the report. ‘If you got everything the World Health Organization said was carcinogenic and took it out of your daily requirements, well you are kind of heading back to a cave’, he said. What the report did say was that meat is a dense source of nutrition, but eating too much of it raises your risk of getting colorectal cancer. And Australians eat way too much meat. The WHO report, published in The Lancet Oncology, stated that the global mean intake of meat is around 50 to 100 grams of red meat per person per day. The average Australian eats a whopping 185 grams of red meat a day. Australia also has, unfortunately, the eighth-highest rate of colorectal cancer in the world.
The report pointed the finger at high-temperature cooking, such as pan-frying, grilling or barbecuing, that produces known or suspected carcinogens, such as heterocyclic aromatic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The report also stated that ‘meat processing, such as curing and smoking, can result in formation of carcinogenic chemicals’, which include nitrosamines and nitrosamides (NOCs). These occur when the preservatives that are added to processed meat, to make it safe from deadly bugs like the botulism bacteria, react with other compounds in the meat to create carcinogens. It is important to note that although nitrites and nitrates occur naturally in plants, including leafy greens, these plants also contain compounds that inhibit the transformation of the nitrates and nitrites into the cancer-causing NOCs. Heme iron, found in red meat, can help transform nitrites and nitrates into NOCs in the gut. For this reason, some people are choosing to avoid sausages, hams, bacon, pancetta and other smallgoods preserved with these chemicals, and are reducing their intake of red meat.
What the WHO report did not take into account was the consumption of vegetable fibre, and the time red meat spends in the gut. Good gut health is promoted by eating plenty of fibre-rich vegetables of different types and colours, and pulses and beans, as recommended by the Australian Dietary Guidelines. American food writer Michael Pollan put it best when he wrote in his book In Defense of Food:
Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. Treat meat as a flavouring or special occasion food. Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs, and other mammals].
There was so much teeth gnashing going on around this matter that I simply could not resist the urge to post this on Facebook at the time of the WHO report’s release:
OK meat lovers. Keep your hats on. The final WHO report is not in but speaking to health professionals today my bet is to watch the research on red meat, watch the research come in on the time red meat spends in the gut. If red meat is eaten with loads of good veg then a swift movement through the gut will be healthy. Think a little bit of steak with loads of seasonal veg. Or a braise with, again, loads of veg. It’s not proven yet but wait for the science to come in. I predict the old fashioned diet of seasonal veg and a little bit of meat will be justified. Until then, keep calm and eat a little bit of ethical meat and loads of seasonal veg. You’ll feel better until you are proven right.
Here is an edited selection of comments I received in response to my post:
JH: As a Nutritionist I have to say there goes WHO cred.
HB: I suspect this all has more to do with the chemicals put into the meat rather than eating meat itself. So much crap added to mass produced products it’s the same for other foods too. Processed convenience foods equals bad.
JH: I agree with HB and then there is meat itself (grass-fed, organic grain-fed etc) Point: The ONLY diet to be scientifically proven many times to be of health benefit is the Mediterranean. Which has processed and red meat in it—just how I like it!
CS: Eat more organic, grass fed meat. Ask your butcher if it’s grain fed (organic does not mean grass fed just by the way!). And find a butcher that uses nitrate free, buy direct from the farmer, or from a butcher that does!
XP: https://www.facebook.com/xavimagik?fref=ufi Thanks mate! I’ll have an Angus scotch w asparagus and escalivada tonight at Las Tapas.
DB: Scaremongering.
DM: More bloody scaremongering.
NM: This sort of p
seudo science drives me mad.
JC: I agree entirely with this. Obviously the reference to meat in the WHO report ignores well prepared and assorted meat such as the deliciously healthy Bollito Misto I once ate at a restaurant in Brunswick Street. Yummy and healthy!
JS: One of the WHO meat-cancer panelists is a rampant antimeat vegetarian.
SC: Junk science.
ME: Oh dear God!
THINGS I LEARNED FROM MY YEAR WITHOUT MEAT
I am roasting a saddle of lamb. This is basically the lamb loin chops still on the spine bone. I have opened the cut-out, sprinkled the interior with salt and pepper, and trussed it up with butcher’s twine. I’ve turned the oven on to 260 degrees Celsius and in it goes. For half an hour the fat under the skin will rapidly render into liquid oil and fry the skin. The skin will become parchment crisp and honey golden. Once this happens I turn the heat to 100 degrees and let the meat slowly reach a temperature of around 65 degrees, when the flesh inside will be pink. It weighs 2 kilograms and costs $35 a kilogram. It came from a Suffolk ewe, a black-faced sheep that grazed on land not far from the mouth of the Murray River near Meningie in South Australia. It is possibly the best lamb in the country. We are celebrating with family and friends tonight. After bone is removed and a lot of the fat rendered away, we will be left with 1.5 kilograms of flesh. Between ten of us that is under 150 grams each. Not a lot. But enough for it to look scarce on the plate and make us appreciate every mouthful. Served with exceptional wines and mounds of vegetable dishes, including parboiled potatoes roasted in the lamb fat, the meal will be a celebration of coming together, this book being finished, my partner’s new clothes range and other life matters. Then that will be it for meat-eating for a while. We may have some fish, some egg dishes from the backyard chooks, but it will be a week or more before we have meat again. There could be a little bit of meat in a mostly vegetable curry, or perhaps some lamb in a ragout with lots of veg. We will have lots of mixed-vegetable meals made up from the fail-safe, all-bases-covered recipes shared in the next chapter.
My Year Without Meat Page 20