The Meat We Eat

I complain a lot about Peruvian food and my resulting stomach aches and more ample thighs, but there are redeeming characteristics about my campo diet.  There are some delicious dishes (mmm alpaca) and other wider systemic benefits.

Peru recently passed country-wide ban on all GMO foods.  This is incredible.  Most modern agriculture development is based on GMOs and a lot of the produce and food-products coming out of the United States are GMO.  The U.S. failed to pass a law that would make labeling of GMO foods mandatory in grocery stores.  And here´s Peru, which is often ridiculous and backward, taking a very brave step in agricultural policy.

The way Peru raises animals has made my transition to carnivory much easier.  Sadly, the country has largely industrialized chicken and egg production, with soccer-field sized sheds lining up in the deserts outside Lima.  But in the campo, meat and milk production is largely un-industrialized.  In Junin, cows, sheep, and alpacas wander the pampa all day tended by shepherds and live what largely seem to be happy bovine, ovine, and camelid lives.  They eat grass and never encounter corn or a feedlot.  They are slaughtered by owners and then sold to butchers down the street who, in turn, sell to the señoras.

There´s also a much more transparent relationship with the meat we eat in Peru.  There are no boneless skinless chicken breasts shrink wrapped and ready to go.  When I wanted chicken breast for Thanksgiving, I went to the butcher and watched her graphically dismember a chicken with a cleaver and lots of bicep strength.  When I got the meat home, I had to separate it from ribs, organ bits, ans sinew.  I had chicken juice up to my unskilled forearms before I was done.

Meat at the market looks like the animal it came from.  Featherless chickens, still in possession of heads and feet, lie on blocks of wood.

Sheep and alpacas are skinned and headless, but otherwise intact.  And the heads are usually in a pile a few feet away.



There is very little waste.  Señoras are constantly knitting socks from the wool of their deceased sheep and alpacas.  I can attest from personal experience that we eat all the parts.  I´ve gnawed on gristly clumps of meat hanging off of spinal columns and gratefully transferred testicles and eyeballs to someone else´s soup bowl.  The parts that are unappetizing to humans go to some underfed dog.

I feel much better about eating meat in the Peruvian campo that I would going to Guenardi´s in Pennsylvania and picking up a rotisserie chicken.  I´ve often met the animal or one of it´s friends and have seen it´s peaceful daily lifestyle.  I haven´t worked up the guts to kill anything myself, but I feel much closer to the animals I eat.  The campo life lends a transparency and responsibility to animal eating that would greatly beneifit human and animal health and well-being if we had more of it in the States.