Ethical Meat

Is it possible to be a “conscious omnivore” that cares about animals and the planet, while still including meat in the diet? Meredith Leigh, author of “The Ethical Meat Handbook,” says, “Yes, it is.” A former vegetarian (and vegan), Meredith is profoundly concerned with animal welfare, changing the food system, and healing the earth.

Today, she goes over how we can be responsible global citizens in all of our choices related to sourcing meat, cooking, and eating it. She talks about how to take small steps in the right direction for ethical meat-eating and how to become advocates for systemic change and improved access to real food. She also discusses how her ideas have shifted over time and how she is convinced we can buy differently, cook differently, and eat differently and therefore bring about change not just for our households, but for the world.

Visit Meredith’s website: mereleighfood.com

Order recordings from our WT conference 2022: fleetwoodonsite.com

See our website for more resources: westonaprice.org

Check out our sponsors: Redmond Real Salt, Paleo Valley, Optimal Carnivore

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Listen to the podcast here

Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript, the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Meredith Leigh.

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Ethical Meat

What is ethical meat? Is it possible to be a conscious omnivore that cares about animals and the planet? This is episode 392. Our guest is Meredith Leigh. Meredith is the author of The Ethical Meat Handbook. A former vegetarian and vegan, Meredith is profoundly concerned with animal welfare, changing the food system, and healing the earth. With that said, she does not believe we need to stop eating meat to make this happen. What she does recommend is that we become more intentional about our choices when it comes to buying, cooking and eating meat.

She goes over how each decision we make, whether we’re buying from the convenience store down the block or from a farmer’s market, for example, has an impact on the systems we’ve created. It either supports them or helps establish new ones. She also offers ideas for how to take steps toward a better diet by eating a variety of cuts, for example, or becoming advocates for real food access. Along the way, Meredith tells her own story about how her perspective has changed over time about what really helps us all heal.

Before we dive into the conversation, I have a question for you. Did you miss the Wise Traditions Conference? You don’t have to miss all of the amazing content that was shared there. Go to FleetwoodOnsite.com/wise to find the recordings from each of the speakers who presented on a variety of topics that include mental health, nourishing diets, homeopathy, biofield-tuning, and more.

Here is a shout-out to Redmond Real Salt. They sell single-sourced, unrefined sea salt. It is a wonderful salt that’s rich in trace minerals, just like the kind the Foundation always recommends. It’s delicious and nutritious. Since the Foundation includes as one of its principles increasing our salt intake, going with Redmond is a smart way to go about it. Check out their salt and their other amazing products at Redmond.life. Use the code WISE for 15% off at checkout. You’re tuning in to the show.

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Visit Meredith’s website: MereLeighFood.com

Order recordings from our WT Conference 2022: FleetwoodOnsite.com

See our website for more resources: WestonAPrice.org

Check out our sponsors: Redmond Real Salt, Paleovalley, Optimal Carnivore

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Welcome to the show, Meredith Leigh.

Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

It was so lovely to meet you in Mexico and to learn about your Ethical Meat Handbook. I’ve been flipping through it. I noticed that in the intro, you said something like, “The intention of my book is to heal.” I want you to kick the conversation off by telling us what that means. Why is that your intention with the book?

WT 392 | Ethical Meat — *The Ethical Meat Handbook*

The answer to that is pretty multifaceted. I feel like I didn’t know what the intention of the book was when I first set out to write it. I was asked to write the book. I felt honored to do that, but I had to come to my own conclusions about it. What I realized at the end of writing it was that the intention of it was to heal the land, and to present this front lines from a farmer’s perspective about what is going on in this entire movement to put animals back on land, bring consciousness around what the deal is with eating animals back into the conversation.

To heal land was one aspect, and to heal myself because I had gone through a major divorce. I had also lost my farm and my butcher shop. I was writing through the grief process, and understanding how much this translation that I was trying to do about ecosystems was similar to what was going on for me spiritually and emotionally. There was that.

There’s also the aspect of reframing our consciousness around diets in order to heal ourselves and our bodies. Lastly, it is healing this conversation about meat from one that’s binary. We either have to be vegan or we can shut up about it and go get a Big Mac. It is to say, “There’s this rich middle ground in between. Let’s try to heal the way that we’re thinking, talking, posting, and tweeting about this.” I wanted to try to take the lead on that.

Thank you for attempting that. I know it’s a big order. Of all these facets of healing you were talking about, the first one that struck me was the first one you mentioned. It was about healing the land. When most people think of healing the land, they think that what we need to do is to eat less meat. Meat doesn’t even enter into the equation. They see cattle and the mismanagement of livestock as part of the problem.

Mismanagement of livestock is part of the problem. I agree with them to one extent, but there’s a huge part of the conversation that’s missing. I had to start there as well. I was a vegan at one point, thinking that animals were the number one problem with the food system, our health, and land degradation. It took a long journey of education, re-education, reskilling, and becoming reacquainted with my intuition and primal understanding as an animal in the ecosystem in order to develop this whole philosophy that I have, which is about ethical meat, and what is inside of that philosophy.

One aspect of it is that animals can be healing for land if they’re managed properly according to the niche that they play within the ecosystem. Animals have the capacity to convert solar energy into food energy. Plants do this as well, but animals can increase the capacity of plants to capture solar energy through grazing, saliva, dung and urine. This is research-based. We know this through the work of many people. Allan Savory is probably the most prominent.

Animals can be very healing for land if they’re managed properly according to their niche within the ecosystem.

If we’re talking about wise traditions or ancient traditions, indigeneity includes this knowledge too. People have known that herbivore has a role in the ecosystem. Simultaneously, pigs and chickens that aren’t doing that grazing that ruminants do are recycling waste products, disturbing seed banks, and allowing for plant growth.

There’s this dynamic interaction between the animals and the plants. The philosophy of eliminating the animals because they’re problematic is ignoring. We could talk for a long time through the whole episode about how animals can heal the land. The crux of that issue is to not lump all animals into this evil category because you know that there is an industry for raising animals that is detrimental to the land and to health. You can bury the conversation about this. That’s what my work is about. It’s trying to constantly surface the nuance and talk about the ways in which we approach our relationship with animals as a way of healing the land.

I’m going to direct the audience to go back and look for the Allan Savory episode. We did two. It was back-to-back. Cattle or animals are our only hope for regenerating the land. He breaks all that down. I wanted to ask you a bit about education. You said you were a vegan, and then your paradigm shifted as you became educated. Part of it was experiential as well. Talk to us about that moment in Vietnam.

Thanks for asking about that. The moment in Vietnam has continued to teach me throughout my life. You know how you have those experiences where you’re consciously having the experience, but you don’t necessarily internalize all of its meaning right away? It’s like a seed is planted within you and you realize that something transformational is happening. That seed continues to unfold throughout your life and gives you new lessons all the time. I would describe my experience in Vietnam in that way.

I was visiting not for the purpose of understanding the way farming is achieved in Northern Vietnam. I wasn’t there to look at land systems or farming systems, but I ended up working with women in the northern part of Vietnam. I was building a school with these women. They were strongly protective of me in a way that got my attention. These women were like lady bosses. They were in charge. At first, I thought they were being strict and mean to me, but once I understood what their aim was, I realized that they were protecting me. That flipped towards my perspective. It was the first thing that started to capture my attention. The second thing was one of the women sought me out and tried to help me understand more of what they were doing.

Maybe some context would be helpful. We were building a school and mixing mortar for the bricks. A lot of that involved these limestone pits and limestone slurries. The women were inside these limestone pits, putting the limestone into wheelbarrows. I was trying to help them, but they were physically pushing me out of the limestone pits. I was frustrated because they wouldn’t let me help. It was only later that it was explained to me that the limestone would burn my skin if I came into contact with it. They were trying to protect me. That realization was huge, but then also realizing that they themselves were not wearing protection. They were barefoot and had no handkerchiefs over their noses or mouths. It was also pretty stark.

One of the women who adopted me and sought out a translator to try and communicate this with me also took me home to her farm where I was able to see her farming operation. I was a farmer at that time raising vegetables, so I was interested in what she was doing. She was raising vegetables, rice, and water buffalo in this integrated system. Water buffalos were not only pets for her and her children. They were also working animals, draft animals, and food animals. I got to witness this entire cycle on her farm.

The moment that’s famous in my book is when she placed a piece of water buffalo into my bowl one night at dinner. In Vietnam, it’s a gesture of friendship to put food in someone’s bowl. At that moment, as a vegan, when she placed a piece of meat in my bowl, I was faced with this moment where I was like, “I can’t reject this because it wouldn’t just be rejecting food. It would be rejecting a friendship and solidarity with this woman,” so I ate it.

Conveniently, that became the moment when I started examining relationships with meat and farming, but I would say that it was more the moment I started eating meat again. Over time, it has blossomed not only into this deep inquiry into meat eating, but also into the role of women in these systems and their understanding of animals, work, and what tradition they carry in ancient consciousness that we need in order to heal food systems, bodies, and things like that.

I love that moment. It is like a seed that continues to bear fruit in your life and has different layers of meaning. It’s beautiful. I know that you can’t be encapsulated into one thing, but I do know that you are a butcher. I’m like, “How did she go from vegan to butcher?”

It’s a pretty fascinating journey. I feel like I started out in veganism because I was politically aggravated. As a youth, I empathized with animals because they are very easy to empathize with, particularly mammals that are similar to us. They have cute faces and eyelashes. It was easy for me to project all the fear and dissatisfaction I have about injustice in the world, in general, onto the plight of animals. That is very common. If we opt out of that system, it feels like something we can do in order to affect change

When I got interested in farming, I was living in a city at that point. I was removed from ecosystem processes and what it means to be in a relationship with the land. I didn’t have this consciousness of the herbivore that we talked about earlier. That was its own thing. That evolved over time as I started farming, seeing the systems in North Vietnam that were highly integrated, and understanding the importance of the animals in ecosystems for fertility reasons, solar capture reasons or cycling. It was all the different things.

I started learning to butcher because of some of the complications with farming meat on the small scale. It costs a lot of money for small-scale farmers to get meat processed like slaughtered and butchered and made into sausages. My ex-husband and I who are running the farm realized that we were spending an exorbitant amount of our overhead dollars on processing, so we started doing that ourselves.

I learned butchery as a business necessity. At first, it was very much of a technical skill thing that I had to master in order to make my business succeed. Since then, it has become something different. Technical skills are something that I believe is important to give people as they seek better health or as they seek to reclaim food freedom. There’s a whole bunch of other stuff that goes along with that, having to do with ethics, beliefs, empowerment and spirituality.

There is a lot of understanding that I could not possibly encapsulate in one answer about the significance of the human-animal relationship, the role that butchery plays, and the mindful butchery that uses the entire carcass. It shows an understanding of all the synergistic things that make an animal healthier and healthy. It is the role that plays in that human-animal relationship.

I remember when we were in Mexico and you were giving a demo. You had half a pig in front of you. You were showing us how you could look at it, understand even what kind of life it had lived like if it had some trauma by the strength or weakness of the muscles, and even the different things. It’s like you were a detective as you were butchering it. I like that you weren’t just using technical skills, but explaining so much more even in your understanding of the animal there on the table in front of you.

That’s key. It has become such an important part of my work. Butchery is trendy. There is seam butchery, whole animal butchery, and charcuterie. The dominant conversation is about skill and technical prowess. It’s quite macho. It’s masculinized. It’s important to me that it be accessible to people, first and foremost, that people feel like they can do their own butchery. It’s so essential to system success for more people to be butchering.

We’re not after perfection because we have degraded lands and animal genetics. It’s important for us to see that any participation in this from whatever entry point we have is better than total dependence on other people to make this happen for us. Teaching people to read the meat and understand the system that it came from, but then to not be closed to working with it regardless has become this huge thing that I’m talking about. I realize that as we’re seeking better systems and we’re seeking to be in integrity and ethical, we often fall into the pitfall of trying to be perfect. That is maybe more of an answer than you want into that.

That is amazing. That’s leading us to the next part of the conversation of how as individuals, we can affect change. I want to talk with you about three things you mentioned in your book, how we can buy differently, cook differently, and eat differently. Most folks are interested in affecting change in the systems we have, but they also want to be participants in their own cultivation of health for themselves and for the land.

We know we don’t want to be a part of the CAFO systems or the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. I want to talk to you about these different facets in which we can take some responsibility and affect change. Let’s talk first about buying differently. What do you mean by that, and what are the implications of it?

I mean a lot of things by that, and it depends on where you’re coming from. Certainly, people who have the ability to be in a relationship with a producer of meat or to be producers of meat themselves are one thing that can be meant by buying differently. Get in a relationship with a farmer that you can trust and have conversations with about their values. If the values are aligned and those animals are being treated in a way that you feel is correct where they are able to act out their natural tendencies, and they are not depleting the environment, but being used to regenerate the environment, etc., buy that meat instead of buying the meat that is more readily available or cheaper.

There is a lot of information in my book about why the prices are different. Those are very different systems. There is the CAFO system that’s highly subsidized by the government and economically backward because of industry consolidation and vertical integration. There’s a lot that goes into why a pork chop is not a pork chop or a beef rib eye is not a beef rib eye. Understanding the economics behind it helps you place more value on the local farmer, the regional market system or whatever it is. That is a huge buy differently bucket that we could explore.

There’s another one that I have to call out that has to do with access and choice. A lot of people, specifically when it comes to meat, do not have the ability to afford the higher prices of regionally, locally or ethically produced meats. The vast majority of the meat that’s available to the majority of Americans is CAFO meat. We have to be real about that if we want to heal systems.

When I say, “Buy differently with respect to that,” it is buying in the community, buying cooperatively, or buying different parts that you didn’t know how to eat or cook, but you may be able to get a better price or better value. I do this whole thing about starting meat-buying clubs in mutual aid fashion. Buying differently can mean a few different things.

The other thing that I say is if you look at the whole supply chain across the system, what we know within the movement is that buying more whole is better now because of processing infrastructure issues, those bottlenecks at the slaughter facilities, the cost of processing in general, and the waste associated. You can learn some butchery and buy either a half hog or a quarter cow, or get down into what we call primal or subprimal, which are smaller portions of the whole carcass that you can then butcher. All of this stuff is in my book. We don’t have time to drill down into it, but these are all things that can be in that buy differently bucket.

Buying your meat whole is much better right now because of processing infrastructure issues.

Talk about different. I was thinking about a single mom in the inner city who’s used to getting what she can afford at the nearby Safeway. Having a meat-buying club is different, and butchering or starting to get our hands involved in the processes is a huge paradigm shift.

Also, being sensitive to context is super important to me. For a single mom who’s living in the inner city, she may have several jobs. She may not be able to do anything but buy what she’s buying at Safeway. That’s okay. She’s got to do what she’s got to do to be the best for herself and her kiddos. Maybe for her, it’s talking about those access issues that she faces, raising her voice towards different policies, or participating in a club not by organizing it, which takes an exorbitant amount of time.

Maybe she’s used to buying pig’s feet at Safeway and other people in the buying club don’t know how to use pig’s feet. She gets to buy in with her desire and willingness to eat the lesser used parts. There are lots of different entry points for everybody. It’s important to recognize that there is a graduated way in which people start to change the way they buy and the way that they eat.

Certainly, eating in this microbiome-focused way is at the far end of the spectrum. Maybe at the beginning of the spectrum is replacing highly processed or sugary foods with fresher foods. This is something where Joel Salatin and I say a lot of the same thing. If we want someone to enter into that funnel, we’ll take anything that they can muster. We’re not going to judge whether somebody’s all the way on a microbiome-focused diet. Similarly, as producers, change makers and voices, we have to be creating solutions so that it’s much easier for somebody to move through that graduated pathway.

One change I’ve been encouraged by is I see that a lot of the local farmers’ markets which are throughout the city accept WIC credits, the Women, Infant and Child credits that people of lower incomes can get sometimes. It makes me so happy because it’s one of those small switches that instead of going to Safeway to pile up on whatever things they could get with that, they can come to the farmers’ market and make a fresher choice.

That’s great. Double Up Food Bucks, SNAP, and EBT accessibility is great. There are other issues with that, like, “Is the farmers’ market a welcoming place for these people? What are some of the other issues?” It is also understanding the point that you raise calls to mind. It is remembering that the reasons people choose the foods that they choose and have access to the foods that they choose are based on systemic issues and injustices that are deep and built into our systems.

While everybody, no matter where they are, has some manner of choice and entry point, we also have to recognize that there are things outside of an individual’s control. If you can’t be a butcher and you can’t eat this specific kind of meat-related diet, maybe you can be an advocate. Maybe you can use your voice politically to start dismantling some of these systems that are keeping people away from access and choice.

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We’re talking about getting real food on the table, and there are different hurdles. Talk to us about the cook differently part. How can we cook in such a way that we’re opting out of the systems that are currently in place and the status quo?

First of all, we want to hit that first tier of replacing junk food, processed foods, and sugary foods with fresh whole foods regardless of their source. That is one way that cooking differently can happen. Education around that is super important. How do I deal with a whole foods diet if I’m not used to doing that or if I don’t have a lot of time? That education is important.

Up from there is talking about how we can seek out foods that are free from drug and chemical inputs. The first tier is, “I’m replacing it with whatever fresh food I can.” The second tier is, “I’m seeking out foods that I know what’s going on in their production or where I’m sourcing it from.” That can be another way. Third is, “I’m thinking about nutrient density in addition to the source of production.” Fourth is, “I’m focusing on microbiome-centered cooking. I’m fermenting and preserving. I’m concerned with what everything is doing to contribute to vitamin balance, gut health, and all those things.” That’s a long trajectory.

When it comes to meat, one of the biggest things where education happens around is whole-animal utilization. If you are going to be seeking out whole meats, you’re going to run into this issue of, “Not everything is a rib eye or a filet mignon. What are these other parts of the animal that typically get ground up or turn into wintertime roasts or aren’t eaten at all? How do I start eating them?” Once we do that, we start to hit some of those other pain points around price and nutrient density. As it turns out, some of the lesser-known parts are nutrient-dense parts like the organs and the feet with a lot of collagen, etc. We’re hitting a lot of these issues at once when we start doing whole animal eating.

With whole meat, some of the lesser-known parts, like the organs or feet, are actually the most nutrient-dense parts.

When you started doing whole animal eating, what part did you start with that was a lesser known cut that you were like, “This is both easy to prepare and nutrient-dense.”

For me, it was starting to use some of the relatively tougher muscle cuts. The middle part of the animal is more highly valued in the market. These are the steaks, bacon, filet mignon, ribs, etc., whereas cuts from the arms, shoulders, and legs are less valued. The way that you need to cook them, which is low and slow with an emphasis on moisture, is less valued because we’re all in a hurry all the time. We want to eat fast and conveniently.

I started there. I was like, “How can I develop a manageable and accessible system in my own kitchen for cooking these tougher, higher activity, and more flavorful cuts from the legs, arms, and shoulders?” I went into, “How can I deal with all these different types of fat that are on the carcass? How can I deal with lymph nodes, organs, blood, and all these other things?” It’s a little bit of a journey there.

I like that your Ethical Meat Handbook has recipes and some guides for folks who a lot of this stuff is foreign to.

I tried. It’s interesting. This is so funny to me that I thought this then. I felt like it would be radical to have a whole section on cooking with organs at that time. I’m like, “It feels like a huge missing piece.” It’s more focused on helping you use lesser-used muscle cuts in an accessible way for people who already cook but want to use those lesser-used cuts. I would say to start there. Working in charcuterie will get you more in touch with using organs, but there’s always more you can do.

You’re going to have probably a 3rd edition, a 4th edition, and 5th edition. On the twelfth edition, you will be like, “We’re still missing this.”

That’s terrifying to think about, but you’re probably right.

Going to eating differently, I imagine you would suggest making some intentional choices so that we’re making time to eat food that nourishes. Is that part of eating differently? What do you refer to when it comes to that?

Some of it goes into cooking differently and buying differently. Eat different things. Eat things that you’re not used to eating, especially if it lends to the whole utilization of animals, as well as plants. The things that we’ve been taught to eat by what I call the dietary industrial complex aren’t necessarily always nourishing.

Where can you find that education? It is in one place. Where can you find an education about what you could eat that is sometimes even the total arch opposite of what you’re seeing in mainstream media that you should be eating? Meat is very much a part of that conversation because we’re always told that red meat or cured meat is going to kill you, or it’s going to kill the planet. There are tons of research to the contrary about it being nourishing and healthy for your body, cells, telomeres, and all these things. That’s another part of eating different things or eating differently.

People always say that red meat will kill you and the planet. On the contrary, it can be nourishing for your body.

Cured meats are in this category for me because a lot of people don’t understand. They think of cured meat as this gourmet food that you get on a fancy platter at a restaurant. It is poor people’s food that came out of the industry where it is required to eat the entire animal. It’s also a way to re-adjust our portion size and get used to eating complex flavors or cold meat products that we may not be used to eating. When I say eat different things, I also mean incorporating some measure of preservation into your meat and dietary practice. Curing, brining, and all these other different ways of cooking also lead to different ways of eating. It’s all connected. It’s hard to pull apart.

It’s so fascinating. What also surprised me when we were in Mexico is when you said something about eating less meat. I was shocked. I was thinking, “This woman wrote the Ethical Meat Handbook. I would think she’d be a carnivore.”

I eat a decent amount of meat. Certainly, I go through periods where I eat more than others, but my position on that is that it depends. I hear a lot of people in my wheelhouse who are doing similar work to me, but I am seeing them unequivocally eat more meat. It’s complicated because it’s not a one-size-fits-all situation. There are tons of access issues.

If the reality is that the bulk of your audience can’t access good ethical meat, then it might be a little bit of a slippery slope to say, “Eat more meat.” We know that there’s a huge difference between grass-fed beef and confinement corn-fed beef in terms of its impact on your health, environment, and the animal’s well-being. You have to consider some of these corollary issues. Where is it coming from? How accessible is it?

I’ve read a lot of research about how the impacts of meat on the diet and its beneficial qualities of it are dependent on age and other factors that are unique to an individual. I’m careful about making these broad blanket statements. What I would love to see is conversations becoming much less binary and much more nuanced. If I have an autoimmune condition that requires me to eat a high-carnivore raw diet, that’s fine for me to make a personal decision to eat more meat, but for me to tweet that everyone should eat more meat is maybe not be the best choice. That was the point that I was trying to make in Mexico.

I try to be the middle voice on this. I get a lot of flak for it, but I’m not moving on with it because it is contextual, as are so many things in food, medicine, and health. We run into problems when we start trying to create a one-size-fits-all situation or regulation. In some cases, that one-size-fits-all is when we get into deep trouble.

Dr. Price traveled the world. People had varying amounts of meat and protein in their diet and varying amounts of fat. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all for any indigenous people group either. There’s a lot to take into account when it comes to how much meat or how little we should eat. I loved this conversation. I’m so grateful for the work that you do. I want to ask you the question I like to pose at the end here. If the audience could do one thing to improve their health, and it may be meat related or not, what would you recommend that they do?

I get this question so often and it is almost like it changes every single time. At this moment when Hilda and I are having this conversation, the circumstances of the world are very overwhelming. They’re scary. It feels exhausting to be alive when you feel like you are doing everything you can to make a better choice, have joy or have a better life. It feels like, “Is this even having an impact?”

What I would say is to focus on your three feet of influence. Think about how you can make your world as impactable as possible by zooming in. Create a radical community around you. Take care of yourself in the best way that you can intentionally. Forgive yourself for the things that are outside of that three feet of influence that you can’t change immediately so that you can stay alive, keep your sanity, and keep spreading goodness and healing. If we’re all frantic and off-centered, then it’s going to get worse. That’s my answer now. It is to focus on that three feet of influence and do the best you can.

Thank you so much, Meredith. I loved our conversation.

Thank you so much for having me.

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Our guest was Meredith Leigh. Visit her website, MereLeighFood.com for resources, articles, workshops, and other events that Meredith will be participating in and that you can join in too. You can find me at HolisticHilda.com. Now, for a review from Apple Podcasts. WholeFoodMumma had this to say, “I am not a member of WAPF. I do not agree with everything put forth in this show, but I lose nothing by listening and learning. Our family eats a whole food plant-predominant diet and is firmly planted in this evidence-based lifestyle. We share common ground with many other Wise Traditions listeners in valuing fresh whole foods and minimal chemicals and pharmaceuticals. I have even learned a few things from Sally Fallon Morrell who offers a fervent call to overhaul our collective lifestyles filled with processed franken-food. Health is a long game. If you care about yours, learn from as many different people as possible and pick out the gold. Enjoy this show.”

To WholeFoodMumma, thank you so much for this review. It is fascinating that we can disagree on some things and agree on others and still be friends, and you’re still tuning in. This means a lot to us. You can also leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Tell us frankly what you think as WholeFoodMumma did. Give us as many stars as you like. Know that this information will hopefully, entice others to give this show a try. Thank you so much for tuning in. In the meantime, stay well. Hasta Pronto.

About Meredith Leigh

Meredith Leigh is the award-winning author of The Ethical Meat Handbook and Pure Charcuterie. She has been an activist for sustainable food systems and food justice for over 20 years, and has approached this work from many fronts: as a farmer, a butcher, a chef, a non-profit executive director, a writer, and a mother. She currently works as a consultant and educator, traveling worldwide to advocate for ethical meat, is the co-founder of The Fermentation School, and a partner at Carbon Harvest. She lives with her partner and four children on the ancestral lands of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee people, in present-day Asheville, NC.