Hacking Meat: How Information Inspired one Consumer to be a Livestock Handler

Hacking Meat is an online conversation exploring how can information and technology be used to hack (or reimagine) a more sustainable, profitable and healthy future of meat. Join the conversation and share your ideas or product requests in the comments, on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC.

Guest Post by Claire Herminjard of Mindful Meats

Let’s start with the basics:

Information is what we need to make an informed decision. Technology is the tool we use to acquire information.

If it weren’t for tech tools like the Internet, computers, iPhones, and, heck, even the Zipcar network, I never would’ve moved from being a meat consumer to a livestock handler.

In becoming obsessed with US food and meat production, I used a number of tools to help me learn about our agricultural industry:

• The USDA database taught me how many cattle we harvest annually, how that translates into sales, and that ~ 20% of our beef supply comes from the dairy industry.
• My iPhone and car let me travel around Marin and Sonoma counties to learn about our Northern California livestock production, while social media and online news publications helped me stay up to date on what is going on right now, in real time.
• The wonderful, largely FREE database that is the internet got me access to research papers like the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s Livestock’s Long Shadow, the Pew Commission’s Antimicrobial Resistance and Human Health, and the Pew’s Industrial Farm Animal Production in America.
• I also learned that the vast majority of the grains grown in the US are now a genetically modified plant, and that livestock is the largest consumer of those crops (though ethanol is increasingly taking that supply).
• I learned that many of our farm animals live in confinement and that the sourcing and distribution of ~ 80% of our favorite meats (beef, pork, and poultry) is controlled by 4 companies…. which feels a lot like too much concentration of buying power.
• Craigslist even helped me find a cottage to move to West Marin…right across the street from my first cattle farmer-suppliers.

This information that I acquired through our ever innovating technological tools led me to become overwhelmed by the need to get involved. To bring more choice to grocery stores where our families shop.

Technology, information, and the Internet are to thank for one more person, here in this case, getting involved in the movement away from industrial food production and towards increased choice in the marketplace. They are to thank for increased transparency for how our food is produced, which helps us, as both consumers and producers, make good, informed decisions.

It’s hard to say whether we’ll ever have perfect information. But thanks to technology enabling us to capture, share, compile, analyze, understand, and verify data points rapidly, we can work together towards doing what is best for all of us, what’s best for our world, at any given point in time.

Cheers to better food!

Join the conversation and share your ideas or product requests in the comments, on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC.

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