Most meat-eaters in America eat from only a small section of each animal. We're familiar with the cuts that we find at the supermarket -- we know what to do with pork chops and chicken breasts, but many of us aren't familiar with cooking pork shoulders and and chicken feet. What about neck bones, hearts, tongues, skin, and suet?

This is a problem for our small sustainable livestock farmers. When they have an animal slaughtered, they can easily sell 30% of it. But what about the remaining 70%?

More and more farmers and others involved in the local foods movement are telling us that to eat meat sustainably, is to eat from the whole animal. This doesn't mean that you have to purchase the whole animal (though some people are doing just that -- whole, half or quarter). What it does mean, is that when you do eat meat, eat it in proportion to how it is on the animal. Eat a variety of cuts, including a few of the less familiar ones. (Check out the article below from the farmers at Sweet Stem Farm.)

Sweet Stem Farm's Cheek to Cheek Campaign

Philip and Dee Horst-Landis raise beef, pork and lamb on 60 intensively managed acres in Lancaster County. We've been purchasing their wonderful pasture-raised meats for years, but they run into the same problem that other small local farmers have with customers only wanting to buy the standard cuts of meat. In an effort to educate people about this issue, they've launched what they're calling their "Cheek to Cheek Campaign." Here's an excerpt from their new website:  

Most people have a sense that there's a lot more to a pig than bacon and chops, but the industrial food system, with all its side chutes and back doors, doesn't stimulate any thought about what happens to the rest of those muscles. For the industrial food system and by extension the consumer, it is out of mouth, out of mind when it comes to the rest of the pig.

The food industry doesn't give anyone the sense that there could ever be a shortage of pork loin and a surplus of ham. It's a perennial issue for us since, unlike the industrial food system, we don't have national or international markets to help consume the less-loved but distinctly underrated end-cuts. That is why we are announcing our Cheek to Cheek campaign.

Our Cheek to Cheek campaign encourages local meat eaters to think about eating pork, or any animal protein for that matter, in proportion to the way it is arranged on the animal. When we eat pork, we are not consuming the cuts proportionately. We are used to routinely eating high on the hog, preferring loin cuts to everything else.

By eating this way, we are missing out on some of the tastier parts of the pig. For instance, shoulder meat and ham have a more robust flavor than most of the middle-meats. Additionally, the center-cuts are usually more expensive than the less popular end-cuts. Eating "Cheek to Cheek" may require a food renaissance of sorts, but the flavor benefits and monetary savings alone make it a worthwhile endeavor. There's also the satisfaction of reviving a kind of meat literacy and cultural awareness as we re-discover the many culinary traditions that make exquisite use of the whole animal.