The widespread and on-going abuse of animals raised for meat production has been widely documented and reported. Outrage over the ammonia-treated meat filler or "pink slime" and the use of "meat glue" in restaurants and hotels, has sparked the rapidly growing Farm-to-Table movement. Chefs and butchers are increasingly buying meats from local farmers, who raise antibiotic-free livestock in a natural environment.

This symbiotic cooperation fosters the economies of small family-run farms and in turn provides consumers with the freshest and healthiest beef, pork, lamb, poultry and wild-game meats.

Butchery Renaissance

Before the advent of mechanical processing and packaging of meat, a family depended on the advice and expertise of their butcher and were confident that the meat they purchased came from a reliable local source. By the mid-20th century, as consumers moved more towards the convenience of supermarkets, the only butchers most people saw were the white-jacketed men behind the meat counter.

Fortunately, due to renewed interest in where and how meat animals are raised and processed, butchery is experiencing a renaissance. A growing number of food industry professionals eliminate the "middle man" — the meat-processing plants — by buying directly from the farmer and butcher the whole animal themselves. It was once standard practice to cut steaks, roasts and chops, and dispose of the remainder or grind it for pet food.

In today's economy, no butcher or chef can afford such waste and must use every part of the animal, whether it be grinding unpopular cuts for sausage, charcuterie and deli meats, or making stocks, soups and terrines from bones, heads and feet.

It Starts With Happy Pigs

Kim Galavan is the Chief Operating Officer of Fiore Fine Foods, where she manages the farm and olive-oil operations in Chiliwack, British Columbia. Kim lived in Italy for 5 years, and along with businessman Frank Giustra produce an award-winning organic extra virgin olive oil from the Domenica Fiore estate (now totaling 10,000 trees) in Umbria. Kim returned to her native Vancouver in 2010 and was frustrated that the conventionally raised meat simply didn't taste as good as meat did in Italy.

Giustra bought acreage an hour east of Vancouver, and Kim began the slow process of transitioning the land into an organic farm. She started by raising heritage poultry, including the blue-egg-laying Ameracauna and four rare turkey breeds. Recognizing the need for pasture-raised livestock, Kim convinced Giustra to expand Fiore Farm to include a variety of heritage breeds. They purchased a registered Berkshire boar and bred him with mixed Tamworth sows, and for the past year Kim has introduced other heritage breeds, including Gloucester Old Spots and Large Blacks, into the stock with the goal of producing the best-tasting pork in Western Canada.

Fiore Farm's pigs are entirely free-roaming and are fed 100-percent organic feed. Kim's pigs are happy pigs, and she ensures that their slaughter is humane and stress-free. Her compassion extends to how her "brood" are butchered, and she entrusted three pigs to Sebastian Cortez of Sebastian & Co., because she knew he honors the animal by butchering the whole animal and leaves nothing to waste. So what's the verdict, do happy pigs make delicious pork? After a recent kill, Kim is encouraged by her dinner guests' gnawing her happy pig down to the bone.

Follow Your Stomach

The artisan butchers at 4505 Meats in San Francisco believe they can change the world by changing how people buy, cook and eat meat. 4505 Meats sources exclusively from local farms, and their Utopian philosophy is that their customers are thus supporting small businesses and building a community that in turn supports them. 4505 Meats emphasizes that they work with farmers who raise hormone- and antibiotic-free animals humanely in an open environment, because high-quality living conditions infuse better flavor into meat.

The zeal for this admirably high-minded mission comes from 4505's co-founder Ryan Farr. Ryan was a chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant, and when he was unable to source the meat cuts he wanted to cook, he began buying whole animals from local farms. While working with high school students, Ryan experienced an epiphany of sorts and committed his energies to community service by teaching professional kitchen skills to people re-entering society from prison and rehab. Good deeds don't always pay the rent, however, and he took to the streets hawking his version of chicharrones to local bars and farmers' markets, thus building the business that grew to be 4505 Meats.

An extension of Ryan's "follow-your-stomach" mission is education, and he and fellow butchers at 4505 Meats conduct frequent classes in whole animal butchery. Students of all ages clamor to break down an entire pig or lamb, and even an all-day class in butchering an entire cow sells out. (The 2011 publication of Ryan's essential handbook Whole Beast Butchery elevated him to rock-star status. (His teaching Martha Stewart how to stuff sausage made him a cult figure.) The foundation of Ryan's new-world order is old-world respect for the animals whose meat we eat, a message he never tires of preaching.

Farm 255

Farm 255 is a restaurant in Athens, Georgia that operates Full Moon Farms, a cooperative of sustainable local farms that provides the restaurant with most of their produce and meats. The cooperative has strict guidelines for ethical husbandry that the pasture-based meat producers must follow, such as the animals must be fed their natural diet (grass, hay, legumes, etc.), are not administered any antibiotics or hormones of any kind, and are never maltreated (no electric prods) in either day-to-day handling or transportation.

Farm 255's Chef Whitney Otawka (Rising Star Chef 2012) leads the charge of reconnecting Americans to the sources of their food and re-establishing a traditional, time-honored relationship between the farmer community and consumers. She defends organic, free-range and locally sourced food as not being specialty or elitist, but as natural, as all the food we ate once was and needs to be again for health reasons and environmental conservation.

Gradually declining are the days when restaurant chefs ordered pre-butchered and pre-packaged meats. (In his book, Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain claimed that when he was the executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles, he couldn't order whole animals because it would remind him that they actually were once living creatures.) Chefs are not trained in butchery, as a rule, but out of economic necessity, many are learning the trade and getting educated for the first time about the animals they cook.

Farms, butchers and restaurants, like Fiore Farms, 4505 Meats and Farm 255, encourage an on-going dialogue about their interconnectedness in the food chain from the farm to the table. This philosophy of engaging patrons both intellectually and emotionally in the farming process could very well be the cornerstone of a revolution in the food industry.