I've always asked myself: If all animals were raised humanely, would there be enough meat and animal products for each person on Earth to eat it every day? There certainly would not be enough to maintain the absurd consumption of wealthier wasteful societies such as ours.

I've long noticed that "peasant food" - simple, wholesome foods from around the world, contain bits of animal products that plague aspiring poor vegans: a bone in Hungarian soup, bits of tantalizing bacon in pierogis, animal broths flavouring Vietanemese pho and wild meat in big corn soups at Pow Wows. I partake and would not argue against the healthy, humane raising of animals! But I am raising a problem.

First and foremost, I believe in local sustainable food production. I blame the giant industrial forces like the seed companies Monsanto and Cargill, corn and petroleum subsidies, the starvation of the world's poor by forcing the sale of food grown to pay off national debts, and the wasting of 1/3 or more of the world's food production to keep prices up, for the mess we are in now. And I blame us for losing sight of the things that matter most in life - a safe home, wholesome food, healthy children and elders, thriving caring community. It seems we are, or were, willing to give all that up for cheap carrots and mystery meat from the other side of the planet.

I would like to see us taking care of our fruit trees here in the city, and allowing people to keep hens like my friends in Tacoma, Washington, and small food animals like rabbits like my Portuguese neighbours used to do. I've been primarily vegetarian, (vegan even!) since I was a teenager for ethical and ecological reasons. I can't stomach the idea that I would be taking resources away from others, though, exercising a privilege that is impossible for most. I can't wrap my mind around the idea of the necessity of eating animals. I am taking a course Real Food Nutrition & Health e-course http://www.foodrenegade.com/nutritioncourse, that argues that the traditional human diet naturally and necessarily includes animal products. Participating is SOOO challenging for me because of this! I believe the teacher, and the Weston Price study - but it worked a hundred years ago - can it
work for all 6 billion of us on our poisoned bedraggled planet?

Shouldn't we in our ferver for local sustainable food be cooking squirrels instead of organic lah-dee-dah beef? http://www.chow.com/food-news/62148/how-to-cook-a-squirrel/

The course had me determine how many grams of protein I need to eat daily. The result is a shock I am still working through. Ideally, according to the guidelines in Real Food Nutrition & Health by Kristen Michaelis on page 54, I need to eat 54.5 to 136 (mean 68+) grams of protein daily. Based on one typical day last week, I eat +-15 (12.38 today).
I really don’t know what to do about this. I do soak beans every day for soups, make my own organic soymilk every other day and eat eggs, but I know this program doesn’t approve of veganism. It's because vegetable oils provide a high ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 essential fatty acids, and we humans seem to need the reverse. I am going to try to make smoothies with nut butters and pumpkin seed flour to up my kids’ protein intake, but I am in a state of bewilderment to be quite frank.

Here I thought I had a pretty protein-rich day, and I think it ended up being another mineral-rich 15g day. My housemate Pete hand made potato and soy sour cream and onion perogis, and I steamed acorn squash from the garden and made a cashew "cheese" sauce.
The cashew cheese sauce has:
~ 3 tbsp vegan margarine
made from coconut and palm oils
~ 3 tbsp cashew butter
has 2.7g saturated fat, 8.2g monounsaturated fat and 2.3g polyunsaturated fat, but a high ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 EFAs. It has 5g high quality protein eg complete amino acids.
It is high in minerals: Calcium 12.0 mg, Iron 1.4 mg, Magnesium 72.2 mg, Phosphorus 128 mg, Potassium 153 mg, Sodium 4.2 mg, Zinc 1.4 mg, Copper 0.6 mg, Manganese 0.2 mg, Selenium 3.2 mcg, Plus lots of Folate 19.0 mcg
~ 2 tbsp whole wheat flour
~ 3 tbsp farmer's yeast, which is a good source of Protein, Iron and Selenium, and a very good source of Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, B12, Folate, Magnesium and Potassium.
~ water

Read More http://nutritiondata.self.com

Still, there are beautiful revelations in this course - such as learning about pasturing animals and raising them naturally - alternatives to the harm of contemporary animal for meat production. Below is my favourite passage because it speaks respectfully of the cow and of her landscape.

When one of his cows moves into a new paddock, she doesn't just see the color green; she doesn't even see grass. She sees, out of the corner of her eye, this nice tuft of white clover, the emerald-green one over there with the heart-shaped leaves, or, up ahead, that grassy spray of blue fescue tightly cinched at ground level. These two entities are as different in her mind as vanilla ice cream is from cauliflower, two dishes you would never conflate just because they both happen to be white...

~ Chapter 10 of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Joel Salatin wrote a book called Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal and in a video as part of the course, he shows us his farm, his pastures and the way he raises and processes his animals in the open air. I love that we are seeing the very farm that Michael Pollan visits in the passage above. I love the elegance of letting happy cows eat grass and fertilize it at the same time. I remember visiting a farm by chance with my friend Mary and my eldest daughter. The farmer showed us the fruit tress, and a sow nursing, and pigs cavorting gloriously in the woods in the distance behind the barn. I'd never thought there could be "happy pigs!"

I get it that without corn and petroleum subsidies, pastured animals on small scale family farms is most efficient. It’s a bit like our fight against nuclear and fossil fuel energy in favour of renewable solar, water and wind. Without petrol and nuclear subsidies, only renewable energy is sustainable and efficient. I appreciate Joe’s comment that he has questioned whether the whole world could be fed this way. It remains my question as well.

From Raw Milk to Almond Milk: Where Did Pasteur Go Wrong?

What's so great about raw cow's milk?
~ Raw cow's milk has all 8 essential amino acids
~ Lactoferrin, an iron-binding protein, improves absorption and assimilation of iron, has anti-cancer properties and anti-microbial and anti-viral action.
~ Lysozyme can actually break apart cell walls of certain undesirable bacteria, while lactoperoxidase teams up with other substances to help knock out unwanted microbes too.
~ The immunoglobulins, an extremely complex class of milk proteins also known as antibodies, provide resistance to many viruses, bacteria and bacterial toxins and may help reduce the severity of asthma symptoms.
~ Raw milk, with its lactose-digesting Lactobacilli bacteria intact, may allow people who traditionally have avoided milk to give it another try.
~ Lactic acid boosts the absorption of calcium, phosphorus and iron, and has been shown to make milk proteins more digestible.
~ CLA, short for conjugated linoleic acid and abundant in milk from grass-fed cows, is a heavily studied, polyunsaturated Omega-6 fatty acid with promising health benefits. Among CLA's many potential benefits: it raises metabolic rate, helps remove abdominal fat, boosts muscle growth, reduces resistance to insulin, strengthens the immune system and lowers food allergy reactions.
~ Whole raw milk has all the water and fat soluble vitamins, and they're completely available for your body to use.
~ Raw milk contains a broad selection of completely available minerals ranging from the familiar calcium and phosphorus on down to trace elements.
~ The 60 plus (known) fully intact and functional enzymes in raw milk have an amazing array of tasks to perform, each one of them essential in facilitating one key reaction or another. When we eat a food that contains enzymes devoted to its own digestion, it's that much less work for our pancreas.
~ With high levels of lactic acid, numerous enzymes and increased vitamin content, 'soured' or fermented dairy products like yogurt and kefir provide a plethora of health benefits.

Here's a great article on raw milk as a perfect food. http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/raw_milk_health_benefits.html

As someone allergic to milk from birth - yes allergic,and yes, to all milk including raw sheep, goat etc - coming from a family allergic to milk, I feel pretty left out of the raw milk benefits here. The members of my family who do eat dairy get sick from it in my opinion - asthma, eczema, auto immune problems etc. Primarily vegan for 25 years, I have escaped health problems largely.

I am happy to hear about benefits and traditions around foods I don't eat, but I especially resent blanket statements about negative childbirth outcomes for vegans. Having 2 children born perfectly well, attended by doctors and midwives, no one ever told me that my birth outcome would be compromised by a vegan diet. In fact, both times they were astounded at my high iron and B12 levels. I believe these were related to my eating home grown produce and farmer's yeast and the like.
I’m very happy to support the availability of raw cow's milk and have fought for the right to sell raw dairy products. I nursed my two children a total of 8.5 years to give them the benefits talked about here. Thankfully, it is illegal in Canada to use BGH bovine growth hormone.

So for us hard line vegans, there are nutritious alternatives to excesses of soymilk. Here are two recipes I've adapted from Food Renegade to closely match what I've always done when I've run out of soymilk:

Coconut Milk
1 can whole coconut milk, preferably organic!
2 1/4 cups boiled hot water water
2 tablespoons maple syrup (or a pinch of stevia)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon kudzu root (for calcium)

Blend!

Homemade Raw Almond Milk
1 1/2 cups of raw almonds, soaked in water overnight
4 cups filtered water
3-5 dates, or a handful of raisins or other dried fruit (optional)

Blend. Strain, or let the almond meal settle on the bottom and use in a veggie burger the same day. In a pinch, pour boiling water over the almonds to soften quickly.

http://www.foodrenegade.com/healthy-milk-substitutes-with-recipes/

If raw milk is so good for us, why do we remove its goodness with pasteurization?

I believe that we made many decisions as a society that we are paying for now because we had such poor sanitation in the early 20th century. We moved birth to hospitals, adopted anti biotic medicines in place of cleanliness, and instituted the killing of foods through heat instead of controlling the hygiene in food production. Industrialized food production requires food-hostile practices because the conditions are grotesquely unnatural and unsanitary. We irradiate foods that cross borders, soak meats in toxic disinfectants and spray pesticides on produce crates. The results can’t be good! We’ve misidentified the problems we started with and now we are entrenched in inhumane and unhealthy practices.

So what are the local grass fed options?

Which "happy meats" are organically grown, grass fed or pastured? I'd never really thought about it! My local pastured happy meat options are:

The Healthy Butcher www.thehealthybutcher.com
416-ORGANIC (416-674-2642) info@thehealthybutcher.com
Our meat has been raised on pastures totally clean of any chemicals, without the use of antibiotics or growth hormones and grown only on certified organic feed. The animals have grazed and foraged for their own feed and have grown at nature’s pace.

Rowe Farms www.rowefarms.ca
416 532 3738 info@rowefarms.ca
All our animals are raised locally in a humane and low stress environment, without the use of antibiotics or growth promoting hormones. They have open access to food and water and eat strictly vegetarian diets... Our beef cattle are pasture raised... Seasonally, we also offer 100% grass-fed beef.

CUMBRAE'S www.cumbraes.com 416.923.5600
TRADITIONALLY RAISED MEAT FROM THE FINEST LOCAL FARMS
Our meats are hand selected from small family farms that meet our exacting standards of breeding, feeding and care. We work closely with farmers to ensure that every animal is raised on the best feeds and within excellent living conditions... The finest beef from animals grazed on fresh grass and alfalfa hay and finished on grains for flavour and marbling... The lambs are milk fed from birth and finished on alfalfa bay, corn and barley...Our exclusive farm partners in Norkfold County raise beautiful Yorkshire Duroc pigs and use 100 percent natural vegetable feed... Our chickens roam freely and are fed grains, corn and soya to promote healthy growth and great taste...

Top Meadow Farms www.topmeadowfarms.com
Buy it at www.highlandfarms.ca
The most environmentally friendly, healthiest and highest quality beef program that you can imagine. Cattle graze on grass meadows and are fed with wholesome ingredients that are minimally processed without artificial ingredients. The only difference is that all pastures and feed are not 100% certified as organic. (Cattle are) raised without antibiotics, growth hormones, animal proteins or bone meal.

This chart compares Artisan versus Organic versus Natural beef with a bias towards Artisan beef:
http://www.topmeadowfarms.com/artisan.cfm

Fresh From the Farm http://freshfromthefarm.ca/
416-422-FARM (3276) info@freshfromthefarm.ca
Our farmers feed the animals with grains and forages that they grow on their own land; or if they buy feed, it’s locally grown by their neighbours. The beef is fed hay, corn, soybean. Pasture grass in summer and little bit of oats & barley when the cattle are very young. The 100% grass fed beef eats hay, hay, and only hay. Pigs are raised on corn and at times a bit of barley... Our farms are not factories, but rather small family farmers who use no hormones, drugs, or chemicals in feeding and growing the meat... The beef cattle are outside on pasture land all summer, and in the winter are in large pens where they have plenty of room and thick straw bedding. Fresh From The Farm has 100% grass fed organic beef starting at $7.50/lb and organ meats from $4.25/lb.

Beretta Farms http://www.berettaorganics.com/
Tel : (416) 674-5609 Email : thefarm@berettaorganics.com
Beretta Organic Farms is a family run farm committed to providing organic meats for people who are concerned not only about what they eat but also about the health and well-being of the earth. On our farm we use no chemicals, genetically modified organisms, or artificial fertilizers in our cropping. No antibiotics or growth promoters are used in raising our livestock. Our logo depicts horses harnessed to the sun. We gratefully and respectfully harvest the fruits of the sun's energy and seek to do so in ways that reduce our dependence upon non-renewable and polluting energy sources.

I like that Baretta Farm talks about the same issues that Pollan discusses:

The principle component in the rearing of our animals is pasture. At present almost 200 acres are used for grazing the cattle, sheep, pigs and even poultry. The fresh air and exercise is an obvious advantage but there are quite a few other reasons for grazing animals. Much of the land here in King Township is rolling, and rolling land is not suitable to cropping because of the potential for land erosion. When kept in hay or pasture however, the plant roots hold the soil in place, and the animals do the work of harvesting.

They also spread their own manure which is vital in maintaining the fertility of the land, particularly on an organic farm, where chemical fertilizers are not permitted.

Our beef cattle herd is out on pasture from early May until November, weather permitting. The cows all calve in May and June out on pasture in a natural setting and this eliminates many of the health hazards associated with herds confined in small areas. http://www.berettaorganics.com/about/?main=12 ... Beretta's "Grass Only Beef" is also certified organic- the difference being it has never been fed grain during its life. Our Grass Only Beef tends to be leaner and smaller sized than its grain-fed counterparts.

Beretta has a page with the Organic Standards spelled out here:
http://www.berettaorganics.com/what-is-certified-organic/?main=20

It looks like most if not all of the farms in the Greater Toronto Area supplement pasture feeding with grains including corn. Beretta Farms explains why here, and talks about the health benefits of "Grass Only Beef": http://www.berettaorganics.com/what-is-certified-organic/?main=25

Well, I am not about to get a chest freezer and order a side of beef, but I am thinking more kindly of pasture farmers and wondering what it will take to get more protein into us around here. In the meantime, maybe I can blame (edited for brevity) on my low protein intake...