When it comes to meat, the growing consensus is that many consumers want to buy locally and organically but are often overwhelmed by choice, inconsistent information, and other nuances.
“Fifty-five percent of consumers are overwhelmed by conflicting information,” says Good Meat Project’s executive director Michele Thorne, citing a survey from the National Grocers Association.
For the last decade, Good Meat Project has worked to clarify that overwhelming information and connect farmers, butchers, retailers, restaurants and consumers across the meat supply chain — and possibly even help loosen the grip Big Meat has on farmers and buyers alike.
“The big four producers in the world [Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill, and Marfrig] control and own the vertical integration of 85% to 90% of the market,” Thorne explains to AgFunderNews. “[We’re] providing transparency and educating consumers and helping them understand the benefits of matching their values with their meat.”
The hope is that this also helps increase market share for small, local businesses that “really need and deserve the visibility.”
Catering to ‘Good Meat’ values
The Good Meat Project (not to be confused with the cultivated-meat brand Good Meat) emerged from the Portland Meat Collective in Oregon in 2014.
“The project exists to get consumers closer to where their meat is raised and to provide a clearer understanding of how to use the whole animal to minimize [waste] in parts of the supply chain,” says Thorne.
Programming offered by the Good Meat Project offers is extensive.
For farmers and ranchers, the FARMIN program offers technical assistance, marketing toolkits, peer-to-peer learning opportunities and in-person events, amongst other services.
The BACON program for butchers and chefs helps these groups source local meat raised in line with “Good Meat values” of healthy lands, animals and people, and also provides networking opportunities and other resources.
Consumers can use the Good Meat Project’s resources to find, buy and cook meat that also adheres to those values.
Transparency providing agency for consumers
The organization launched the Good Meat Finder in September of this year, supported in part by the ASPCA’s Fund to End Factory Farming.
“We create a ton of resources, and we realized that, although there are a lot of directories out there, there wasn’t a directory that connected [meat supply chain] stakeholders directly in one place,” explains Thorne, referring to farmers, butchers, restaurants, retailers and consumers.
The Good Meat Finder is a national geo-locating directory designed to help consumers “find buy and cook meat that is aligned with their values,” she adds.
Consumers can view the Good Meat Finder to discover not just farmers, butchers and retailers, but also granular details about each individual business. These details, suggests Thorne, go far beyond simply the type of protein businesses sell or whether they’re using labels like “sustainable” or “regenerative” to describe these products.
“This is what differentiates The Good Meat finder,” she says. “They can choose whether the meat is 100% grass fed. Is it biodynamic [aka regenerative-organic]? Is it a fresh or frozen product? Is it grain fed? Is it grain finished?”
The list goes on: kosher, accepting EBT, local, available online, pasture raised, or verified by an organization like the American Grassfed Association.
Businesses submit all of this information to the Good Meat Project, which makes it available to consumers via the Good Meat Finder. This is how the project conducts due diligence on those participating.
“Our directory is really anchored by one of our core values, which is transparency,” says Thorne. “It also gives consumers agency to choose, which is something that they don’t have when they go to the grocery store. It offers a unique opportunity to connect values-driven consumers with values-driven farmers, ranchers, butchers and retailers that are differentiating themselves in the market.”
Whole-animal utilization: the real way to buy bulk
One area of emphasis for the project is teaching consumers how to make use of the whole animal. Via the Good Meat Project site, the average consumer can learn things like how to choose cuts and how much meat they’re actually getting when purchasing half a pig.
The project also offers extensive instructions on how to use offal (aka organs), bones and other parts of the animal that often go to waste in the mainstream supply chain.
“We do our best to provide these free resources for consumers and also for producers to share with their consumers, so that people understand how much freezer space you need for a quarter cow or a half of a hog or a whole lamb,” says Thorne. “[There] are also some recipes to cook these off cuts, like lamb neck or short ribs, things [consumers are] not really familiar with to help them get comfortable with the process.”
Thorne acknowledges that the average US consumer isn’t used to buying meat this way, and that much at the grocery store is done in the name of convenience. Recent data from Nielsen even listed “convenience” as “king,” and noted that consumers “are looking for ways to save time and make meal prep easier.”
Buying half a lamb then learning how to cook offal is seemingly the opposite of convenience. Nonetheless, Thorne suggests there’s room for change.
“There is some misinformation around buying in bulk,” she says. “People think that it’s really difficult, or that they can’t afford it. We do our best to pull back the curtain on the reality of buying in bulk.”
The Good Meat Project works with farmers and ranchers to communicate advantages to consumers. And, “We have lots of resources that help consumers understand pricing, quality, freezer space and storage, how to get in touch with farmers.”
Ultimately, she says, this type of buying in bulk can be more affordable than buying individual cuts from a local butcher or farm stand.
“Affordability is really a linchpin in, getting people to understand the differentiation between what is being offered at the grocery store versus what is being offered locally.”
Hopes for 2025
Moving into 2025, the Good Meat Project has a number of focus areas, says Thorne. That includes expanding awareness of the Good Meat Finder and launching new educational resources — specifically bilingual resources — for producers and eaters.
As a nonprofit, the Project relies in part on donations, which Thorne says are “instrumental” to the life of its projects and educational reach. The organization plans to do more fundraising in 2025 to further support its efforts.
It will also work with new partners “to create engaging, relevant, and impactful experiences for our program participants so they can focus on centering their work around bringing delicious, healthy meat to tables across the country,” says Thorne.
