While observing the world and latest trends around me, it struck me that there is a movement that is shifting, and I myself am perhaps in the center of this latest shift. A couple years ago, veganism really rose to the surface as the way to go. Not only do you obviously save the animals that are being killed to be on your plate, you yourself become healthier and the world becomes greener too. An all-winning proposition. Or is it?
Increasingly I see people moving away from a strict vegan lifestyle. Of course the keto carnivores were always there, but now they might be gaining ground. Studies on women’s health and hormonal health have shown the benefits of eating fats, and animal fats more specifically. It is very difficult to get these fats from other sources. All the while we thought the French had a heart-attack diet cooking potatoes in goose fat (if you haven’t tried this, please do) and eating fatty patés, it turns out it can actually be quite beneficial for your health. Of course, everything in moderation. Anyway, the trend is to eat meat again. However, this meat has to come from a quality source. In Amsterdam, vegan spots are closing, and new restaurants are opening and serving organ meats from organic and local farms. It makes my biodynamic heart happy that people at least care where their meat is coming from. Still, the meal in front of you had legs one day, was born as a baby and hopefully enjoyed some sunshine on a nice breezy sunny day.
My own journey with eating meat has had its ups and downs. As a child, my favorite sandwich meat was smoked horsemeat, I still remember the dark texture and savory flavor combined with a fat slice of bread with butter. I don’t think stores even sell horsemeat nowadays anymore, also an interesting trend on the meat market. Maybe horses were lucky enough to get the cute stamp from society and it protected them from being eaten, at least in Holland. In my early teens I read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer and that shifted me into vegetarianism. Thirteen years later, after I had parted ways with my academic career and decided to become a goat farmer, my teacher at farm school told us: “If you raise animals, you will also have to kill them.” What? I wasn’t going into farming to kill animals. I was going into farming because I loved them and wanted to cuddle and kiss them. After studying and ruminating (…) on this matter I began to understand that animals are part of a healthy ecosystem and natural cycle. On a farm, the animals provide the manure for the soil you grow vegetables on, while the vegetables feed us, and yes, sometimes the animals themselves. It is all part of a beautifully connected system.
While I believe this is true, it is also incredibly hard to kill cows. Cows are the hardest to bring to slaughter, then goats, then pigs and then chickens, for me at least. Cows are soft and they have sweet eyes. There is a macro and microlevel in which to view the world, and in this case they contradict each other. The micro is hard, and in the macro it is more okay. After farming for some years, I started to eat meat again. Always from our own farm. The cows were selected to go to the butcher because they had gotten older, or mostly got sent out because of their gender; they were steers. The harmony of the herd is what the farmer helps to maintain, and one way to do this, is by sending the younger males to slaughter. When they return to the farm after being butchered, they serve as food for the farmers who help care for the rest of the herd, and for many others as well. One animal can feed a family of 4 for about a year, or more. Same with pigs, for chicken it’s more challenging.
Me with the new batch of hens we kept for eggs and roosters destined for the butcher.
One of the interesting voices in my research on eating animals is the founder of biodynamic farming, Rudolf Steiner. He says that eating animal products helps us create a connection with the earth spiritually, and if we return to veganism we would become floating objects and lose connection with the earth. On the animal’s side, he argues that animals are more connected with the cosmos and etheric realms, and are therefore less disturbed to die. He also says not to take anything he says as absolute gospel, and that you have to decide for yourself what works best for you…
This week I wondered why God created our bodies as omnivores. There is something about humans and animals and how closely their lives are lived and connected—maybe that’s why we love them so much. Look at the Massai, they love their cows undoubtedly, but they also sometimes kill one and milk them and make blood/milkshakes (yes really). I know all farmers and ranchers love their animals, of course.
While living on the farm, eating vegetables, fruits, beef, pork and chicken all from my own farm, I became passionate in investigating the process of slaughter. I felt responsible to get to know the butchers and talk to them about the process. Our animals always went to small slaughterhouses, and after they were killed they would be going to another butcher, the not-killing butcher but the person who would do the processing for cows and goats. I learned about all the different cuts and what you can and cannot make out of a specific cut, something that proved to be handy when I met my future husband who operated a packing house and ranch in Arizona. In English, cuts obviously have different names, which was the hardest to relearn… What was similar for Arizonan ranchers and small chicken processors in a little Dutch town, was the P-A-P-E-R-W-O-R-K and R-E-G-U-L-A-T-I-O-N-S. Sigh. I hate to bring it up but it is an important thing to know. Our small chicken processor who processed our 24 roosters quit their processing because the rules changed so many times, and the rules for filling in the paperwork changed weekly. For every ‘batch’ of roosters that I brought in, I had to fill in paperwork that had to be checked by the Food and Safety inspectors. One inspector would say A) and D) are filled in wrong, and the following week it was all fine, and the week after it was all different again. Every comma and number had to be changed by the applicant themself, so the processing place had to contact every customer every time for nitty bitty details before each processing day. They got sick of it and it’s not worth their time. As a consequence, the only chicken processor in the country who would ‘only’ process 25 chickens at a time would be 2.5 hours away from me, (which is cross-country if you’re Dutch) something that was not cost effective nor worthwhile. Even worse, our project of using roosters for meat, instead of throwing them away as baby chicks got shot down. (Read about the egg industry if this causes you to think why). So now, mostly large slaughterhouses who CAN deal with all the annoying paperwork remain. And as you may guess this is often not beneficial for the animals involved. In the United States, it is exactly the same scenario. So animal wellfare groups protest the processes in packing houses, as a consequence the rules tighten and the small players are kicked out of the field. It’s a vicious cycle which ends up hurting those it’s designed to help—including the animals.
Meanwhile in America, my husband Paul took over Double Check Ranch from his parents, and decided to run his own small-scale packing house. Small, as in the most animals we would process in a week would be about 6. This is very, very small potatoes. If you have your own packing house though, the state has to send an inspector to inspect the meat before you are able to sell it. Only one hiccup was that the state didn’t have any one to send out during ‘kill days’ (that’s how we called them…). So, the state tells you to have an inspector, you say okay that’s fine send me one, and then they say ‘ah no we don’t have one’. Seriously. Eventually, with the help of senators and many months later, the state sent an inspector. State inspector Steve came every week and demanded his own office WITH nice office chair. Ah well. The benefit of slaughtering on a small scale for the animals is that there is no rush to go through all the animals. Paul designed the pen and eventually the chute where they got put down, inspired by the works of Temple Grandin, who helped improve slaughterhouses in America greatly. She made the walkways and handling less stressful for animals, and therefore also less stressful for the workers. Grandin is dedicated to help us understand animals for the better, especially cows. As a small packing house, you can see more of what is happening on the floor and keep an eye on the whole process. In a way the process is done with more patience and love.
We’ve now sold the ranch and its packing house, luckily we can still access grassfed beef via my in-laws who still own and operate Cold Creek Ranch. I was pondering on my dietary choices and ran into a new term that resonated with me: The Natural Based diet. Essentially this diet consists of whole foods that are unprocessed, organic and local if possible. Meat and dairy is consumed but from small farmers and ranchers, something I feel truly passionate about. It costs more yes, but with buying it you become healthier yourself, you help sustain healthy agriculture and animals, plants are happier. Moreover, small slaughterhouses stay in business. I’ve heard some people proudly say that meat is meat and that factory farmers also love their animals. That may be so, but if you listen to your heart do you really think it’s okay to tie up mother hogs and cut off their ears and tails? To dehorn cows and goats and clip the beaks off of chickens? Biodynamic farming doesn’t do this, a lot of local farmers do not do this. Talk with them.
Cows on Double Check Ranch
* Not all ranchers and farmers keep the horns on cows (yes, females have horns). Often they are dehorned when they are little, because they supposedly hurt one another or the farmer. There are many reasons to keep the horns on an animal like God intended. When cows ruminate their horns get warm, as there are digestive enzymes moving through the horns. Steiner also argued that through their horns, animals are connected with the cosmos. Something I believe.
As far as trends go, there are maybe thousands of trends and fads to follow. Please let animal welfare not be one, but let it be just a standard in how we decide to treat animals. In the end we are all connected: healthy soil creates healthy plants, healthy plants create healthy animals, healthy animals create healthy humans, healthy humans create a healthy planet. And all of that is important. It determines how we set the tone collectively to live in communion with what is around us.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea91e4ba-af90-4941-8314-e502dcf2c3c2_1170x1533.jpeg)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2e8851fd-a2c6-4951-8798-62154fb330d0_3000x2250.jpeg)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9cd72eb4-5c43-40c1-bb50-3b6a65f80b50_4032x3024.jpeg)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6492f341-944d-475a-a6a9-7da2bca810f0_1440x1790.jpeg)
Adding to respectful slaughter is the saying of a verse before performing the act. Which I feel is a sign of respect and honor. Muslims are known for doing this, their prayer goes:
In the name of Allah and Allah Almighty, O Allah, this sacrifice is from You and for You, accept the sacrifice (pronounce the name of the owner of the sacrificial animal).
It recognizes that the animal was intended to be used for slaughter and it recognizes the sacrifice.
An organic butcher in The Netherlands also uses a saying before each animal is slaughtered. I had this saying framed above our meat fridge in our little farm shop. Translated from Dutch:
You were the form, now you will go into the essential realms.
This is your calling, our nourishment you shall be.
We give thanks to your advance.
It just reminds me that whatever we do, do it with an intention and presence. Live slow, take time, be graceful.
Comment with questions or thoughts if you have them.