Considerations in the meat market

Slow Meat is based on these principles and encourages consumers to know where their meat is coming from.

Founding member, Caroline McCann, of Braeside Butchery in Johannesburg, explained: “With increased demand, industrial farming has turned food production into a machine that puts profit and efficiency ahead of health and sustainability. It is a short-sighted approach that comes at a cost to our health, our environment, animal welfare, the nutritional value of the meat we consume and even its taste.”

For the consumer, sitting in front of that juicy steak it’s about what that animal was fed, medicated with, how it lived, where it was kept and how it was killed.

McCann said: “We want grass-fed beef because it has a higher healthy fat content (omega 3, 6 and 9) and we want them to walk freely, so their muscle fibres are well developed and it’s as though they’ve been to the gym.”

“Farmers are in a tight spot,” he explained. “They sell young cattle to feed-lots because they often don’t have enough land to keep them all.

“Some farmers go to the trouble to grass feed and grow their animals by allowing them to roam free only to sell them to abattoirs that are allowed to give them growth hormones.”

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