American consumers often forget the undeniable truth: they are in charge.
They control which businesses succeed and which ones fail. With the power of their money, it’s American consumers who decide if cheap, low quality goods will become the standard, or if they’re willing to pay a little bit more to get something they’re proud to have.
Nowhere is this concept more prevalent than in the rightfully maligned food industry. We’ve mostly moved past the days when people raised their own meat or at the very least, bought it from the butcher down the road.
Now the process has become highly commercialized with most shoppers mindlessly strolling fluorescent-lit grocery store aisles with no idea where all that food came from. Some of us have watched behind-the-scenes exposés depicting the inhumane treatment of animals, especially in overseas meat plants where regulations may be lax.
Nobody wants to stop eating hamburgers; they’re just too delicious. But we also feel a little icky picking up that clearance package of ground beef knowing what we know. And the butcher down the street? He’s long since sold the business to some warehouse developer.
And it gets worse. While meat shoppers may pride themselves for selecting a steak with a big “Product of the U.S.A.” sticker on it, the fact is that a nice T-bone is most likely imported. That’s because around 85% of grass fed beef is shipped in from other countries. Bloomberg reported that meat products can be labeled as a “Product of the U.S.A.” if they’re “processed” here, which could be as simple as trimming the already butchered animal into a different cut.
Grass fed may also be a misnomer. Unlike the word “organic,” which must meet strict requirements by the USDA, “grass-fed” can be left up to interpretation. That means your pricier grass fed beef could come from an animal that was confined in a pen and fed grass pellets. The majority of this meat is shipped from Australia and New Zealand, where a more temperate climate means cheaper costs for raising cattle.
But because of the internet and investigative reporting such as this, people are waking up to the fact that they can’t trust the packaging. Instead, many shoppers are choosing to buy in bulk and source their meat from local farms instead.
The internet has made that process much, much easier. Now there’s online meat delivery that connects consumers with chemical free, American-bred, affordably priced meat that was actually raised and slaughtered on American soil. It’s about as close to that pickup truck commercial as you can get.
Online retailers like Good Ranchers are leading the charge on this front, changing meat shopping habits one hamburger patty at a time. And while most people assume these meat delivery services are super expensive, it’s actually the opposite in most cases.
Buying meat that’s flash frozen at the peak of freshness cuts down on food waste. That means no more chicken you forgot to make getting thrown out at the end of the week. Plus, with around 20 million Americans going the extra step to prep for a potential natural disaster, keeping a backstock of protein-packed, energy rich grass fed meat just seems like a good idea.
We all want the world to change but often wonder how to do it. With this one small alteration, the average American family can make a difference by telling the meat industry they’re fed up with shady business practices and misleading meat imported from other countries. We probably can’t go back to local butcher shops on every corner. But, regular people who care about the quality of their food can pick something better to put on the table.