Union Stockyards, Chicago, 1947

How did Americans come to regard abundant meat, especially fresh beef, as their right? It started when colonists arrived from a culture of protein privation in Europe to an ecosystem filled with animal protein for the taking, with no societal restrictions on who could eat what type of meat.

At first, the processing of grain into protein via the husbandry of domesticated animals made sense as it was done household-by-remote-household. Land management in the sparsely populated regions of the East Coast was easy, and the virtuous cycle of raising corn, cows, and hogs while naturally replenishing the soil seemed eminently sustainable.

But populations continued to grow. Farmsteads pushed westward, and cities began to congeal. Entire populations and cultures of Native Americans were brutally wiped out. Our desire for beef led to the slaughter of nearly all the bison that had sustained people on the plains for thousands of years. We repurposed the bison habitat to raise beef.

Distance grew between meat and meat eaters. Three major food distribution institutions emerged to bring beef and pork to urban consumers:

1) the cattle drive

2) the national railroad network

3) the pork-packing industry.

While city-dwellers did enjoy freshly slaughtered beef as well as preserved pork, urban infrastructure soon began to buckle under the strain. The blood, filth, and detritus of copious daily slaughter where everyday people worked and lived rapidly grew intolerable. Solutions to the environmental problems caused by our lust for red meat met loggerheads of entrenched interests.

The inefficient meat distribution industry grew ripe for disruption.

Bison skulls c. 1870. These were to be ground into fertilizer. Most bison remains were wasted.