Steve's Meat

Reader Contribution by Staff
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It’s a challenge to describe the place where I take my livestock when it’s time for them to cease being my companions, and to become my product instead. I call Steve’s Meats in DeSoto, Kansas, the “packer.” And, indeed, when I stopped off there this morning they had about 800 pounds of beef frozen and packed, ready for me to take home. It filled the freezer to the rim.

The beef was originally “Julia,” a 2-year-old black angus heifer who didn’t bear a calf this year and was therefore not a good candidate to be a member of our breeding herd. And the “packer” is the place known variously as the abbatoir, the meat market or the slaughterhouse.

I choose to grow my own meat in part because I like animals. I enjoy sharing my life with them. And I don’t like the way industrial agriculture treats them — confining them in unhygienic conditions and loading them up with unnecessary drugs and unhealthy feed. I believe that many of industrial agriculture’s practices are cruel. I enjoy seeing my small herds of cattle, sheep and goats carrying out their natural lives on our pastures, which are also charming wildlife sanctuaries where the domestic animals share space with a rich variety of wild things.

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