Labels: The Double-Edged Sword of Farming
I’m going to be real honest here for a moment.
I’ve been meaning to sit down and put my thoughts on paper for sometime, and well, now is a good of time as any. We have prided ourselves on selling pasture raised meat and eggs, and we go the extra mile by feeding corn and soy free transitional organic feed. Why do we do this? Well, because we as a family try to eat organic and avoid soy, so it just makes sense that the animals we raise fall under those categories. It’s no secret (although perhaps not well known or appreciated) that raising animals in such a way is much, much more costly than commercial methods and therefore fetches a premium price. This is why you see, for example, pastured pigs/chickens/beef/turkey/eggs at a much higher price point than their counterparts. Labels are great, how else would you know the difference between commercial eggs and pastured eggs if they weren't labeled as such? But unfortunately, as we’ve learned, you can’t simply hold labels at face value.
It has been SO disheartening to see pigs labeled as “pastured” and living in dirt lots without an ounce of green, or labeled as “beyond organic” and fed gallons of processed liquid nacho cheese (true story, see below). It’s downright frustrating to be working so hard to produce a quality product and to see another product that uses all the fancy buzzwords, regardless if they’re actually true or not; people start thinking a little crazy when money is the driving force.
Recently, on a pastured pork producer forum, a fellow producer was inquiring whether he should feed his pigs some processed liquid nacho cheese he was offered by his local food bank, where he takes the excess produce. The overwhelming majority of producers (who weighed in) said that YES, they would feed their pigs this processed, liquid nacho cheese. These farmers had beautiful websites, many claimed to adhere to organic standards, and they all charged premium prices. It was absolutely appalling.
All of this to say, because of this, we are trying to get away from labels. While we can’t COMPLETELY leave them behind, we don’t want the labels themselves to sell our products, we want our products to speak for themselves, which is why we always invite you to check out how we raise our animals, we encourage you to ask what we feed our animals, we want to answer any question you can think of, even the hard ones. On the other hand, we don’t believe you should HAVE to know what to ask (I mean, I wouldn’t know or even think to ask if a pastured pig was fed nacho cheese…) that's okay, because we are not going to sell you a product that is not 100% honest. Especially as small farms are increasing and buzz words like "pastured" and "organic" are more prevalent, it's never been more important to KNOW YOUR FARMER.
So what does this mean going forward? Well, you won’t see the “pastured, non-GMO, corn free, soy free, transitional organic” before every product, because at this point our eyes start to glaze over too when we read all of that. Our website will be getting rid of these to some degree in the near future (that’s a big undertaking that’ll happen little by little). If you can’t trust the farmer you’re getting your meat and eggs from, all of the labels in the world don’t mean anything.