As I have spent the last twelve years of my life growing up in Vermont, I have come to think of it as home. Until I was eleven years old, I lived in Los Angeles. I love to visit California whenever I can. I have an older brother who lives there, and in my mind, you can’t beat the weather. I will shamelessly purchase and devour a pound of soft-serve (not including toppings) at a self-serve frozen yogurt place. I don’t enjoy the change of seasons. I do not ski or snowboard. I am however, undoubtedly a Vermonter.
Since I have lived here, I have tasted many Vermont made products. With the development of my interest in food, locally made and produced food has come to mean something special to me. Nobody produces maple syrup like Vermont. One of my earliest Vermont memories is a visit to my friend’s house in middle school collecting sap from the trees in his backyard. Vermont makes some good cheese, mostly cheddar, and the state has a surprising number of small breweries. Recently, I even tried something called mead, a honey wine made from fermented honey and water that soldiers at war used to drink. For such a small state, it seemed to me that Vermont had so many people doing things right.
With my new job working for a butcher at the local co-op, I began to further understand what phrases like pasture-raised and grass-fed meant. Most of the meat we carry is local, and we aim to provide the highest quality meat possible to our clientele. This has even included taking trips to local farms to witness the slaughtering of animals. To take a quote from our department’s web page, “Locally raised meat and poultry are the bedrock of this department. We have been working with local farmers for over 20 years and are honored to offer the finest meat products we’ve ever eaten! Vermont can be very, very proud of its farmers who’ve risen to the occasion to provide a steady stream of fantastic meat products.”
This recent experience of mine makes the news I heard today of the Grand Isle Slaughterhouse that much more upsetting. I saw a headline this morning on Twitter, and got a call from a customer asking if we carried meat from “the slaughterhouse with the inhumane treatment of calves.” My coworker and I were distraught to say the least. I immediately sent contributor DBR a message to post a link to the Burlington Free Press article.
When I got home from work, I read the whole article, and followed a link to the Humane Society website that included a detailed story as well as the video footage taken by someone working undercover at the slaughterhouse. The video shows young calves being repeatedly prodded, kicked, and knocked to the floor. In addition to this, there are scenes of cows being stunned for slaughter in large groups rather than being restrained individually. There is complete disregard for the proper treatment of the calves. Where the stun gun is placed is payed little attention, and when this is done in large groups, some calves return to consciousness before they are killed. On hsus.org you can read the facts, as well as see video footage. Many of these images are difficult to watch, and it made me very uncomfortable knowing that this was taking place locally.
I am grateful to be able to say that we are not selling this meat, and I did not have to pull it off the shelves this morning. However, it does speak to the likely fact that this is taking place elsewhere. There are regulations put in place, and there are people in charge of making sure that farms and processing plants follow them. This is very difficult to do. To this point, people going undercover has perhaps proven to be the most effective way to uncover treatment like this.
It is so easy to overlook the meat industry and just think of your dinner as going from the package to the plate. This is something that I have made a conscious effort not to do as I discover more and more about the food world. I want to know as much as possible about the food I consume. Local is something that is important to me, but this is true because it is easier to know what you are getting. Just last week, my boss watched firsthand the slaughter of a cow by one of our meat suppliers. This is something that is comforting to me—to know that the meat we provide to the community has been raised properly and slaughtered humanely. I look forward to when I may be able to witness this myself. This will likely be soon, and I am sure that it will be an unpleasant experience. I am not someone who believes that witnessing the slaughter of an animal makes it more okay to eat the animal, but I look to take away some comfort in knowing that things are being done right. I want to go to a Vermont farm, and I want to be proud of what I see. My ideas of what being “Vermont raised” means have been shaken a little bit today, but I think and hope that what was going on just 30 minutes north of my house is not the Vermont standard. There is much to be proud of in the world of Vermont local products, and I think that it may take some time and a little research before my faith is restored in our local slaughterhouses, as well as those throughout the country.
Posted by guiltygourmet 
