Steve Burger raises happy pigs. At Winter Hill Farm in Freeport, he feeds them whey from the farm’s cheese-making operation and allows them to forage during the growing season. He has developed a regular customer base of butcher shops, markets and restaurants, and demand is strong – almost too strong. Even though he has grown and winterized his operation so that he now harvests between six and 10 pigs a month, year-round, he can’t fill every request for local pork that comes in.

“Everything about growing meat is harder than growing veggies,” Burger said. “There’s a lot of value in an individual carcass, and you’ve got to move it quick. You have more money invested in animals than you do in veggies.”

Maine produces just 1 percent of pork consumed in the state, and the figure is not much higher for beef, according to the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics. Yet, unquestionably, the demand for local meat is growing.

The conflict between supply and demand means that some meat buyers are forced to be flexible about just what constitutes a local product.

In the last decade or so, many local food advocates have defined a local “foodshed” as anything grown or raised within 100 miles of the plate, or sometimes within a single state’s borders. Applying those definitions to local meat can be tricky because of the inherent challenges in raising and slaughtering animals. Some people argue that anything harvested from within a day’s drive could be considered local. Or, perhaps, any meat from New England should be labeled as local. While buying meat from a Massachusetts farm may seem less ideal than buying carrots or cucumbers from Cape Elizabeth or Camden, the paradigm is different when it comes to meat.

Farmers and other local food experts will tell you that just because meat is local doesn’t mean it was sustainably raised. (Even factory farmed meat is local to someone.) Add in environmental factors like climate change, and things get complicated. The Environmental Working Group in Washington, D.C. released a study last fall that examined the carbon footprint of different kinds of meats and found that it’s more important how an animal is raised than how far it travels. Raising meat can require a lot of water and land, and farm practices and the animals themselves release greenhouse gases, including lots of methane, into the atmosphere. Greenhouses gases released during transportation of the animals to market also plays a role, but not as large a role as production.

“If you are eating a hamburger that was sourced from 100 miles away, the carbon footprint is only 1 percent less than a hamburger that is produced 1,000 miles away across the United States,” said Emily Cassidy, a research analyst for the organization.

The opposite was true for vegetables. The carbon footprint for tomatoes grown in California and sold in New England is much larger than it is for local produce, largely because of transportation, the study found.

For meat, the impacts shift from animal to animal. Chicken, for example, is more climate-friendly than lamb, beef or pork.

“Sometimes it’s not easy to do the right thing when it comes to meat eating,” Cassidy said, “and you just have to eat less and make sure it’s coming from a good source.”

CRITTERS VERSUS CARROTS

Mark Lapping is a professor emeritus of planning and public policy at the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service and a member of Maine Food Strategy, an initiative to create a stronger food system network in Maine. Lapping is “very skeptical” about the local label, whether it’s applied to meat or vegetables. (That day’s drive definition, he points out, could land you somewhere in Pennsylvania or New York.) He views it primarily as a marketing tool.

But he acknowledges that raising local food is “a lot more difficult with live critters than it is with carrots.” Managing disease in animals is more challenging, for one thing, he said.

That’s just one factor that may play a role in limiting meat production in Maine.

Animals require a bigger investment in facilities, said Dave Colson, agricultural services director for the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. And Maine is not a big feed-producing state.

“The fact that Maine is on the end of the pipeline makes our feed costs somewhat higher, especially when you start looking at organic and non-GMO feed,” Colson said.

The 2015 inventory of hogs in Maine, according to Colson, was just 4,500 animals, not including breeding sows. Some Midwest factory farms can process 10,000 hogs a day, he said.

“When you begin to look at those numbers and the demand for meat in Maine, my feeling is that trying to decide whether something from Aroostook County eaten in Cumberland is local or not is kind of splitting hairs,” he said.

Just 15 years ago, the term “local food” applied only to vegetables, said Ben Slayton, co-owner of Farmers’ Gate Market in Wales and The Farm Stand in South Portland. Today, consumers are more educated about why they should buy local meats, but they may not understand how production is different from growing vegetables. Corn is harvested by the bushel, but there are only two loins in a pig and one rack in a lamb.

“Local farmers growing produce can compete a little bit more with the national distribution of carrots, but the local livestock producer really can’t compete with the local Sysco,” Slayton said. “We need restaurants not to expect to get just one item (out of the animal). A lot of them want just one cut.”

IS SUSTAINABLY FARMED ENOUGH?

Jarrod Spangler, the former Rosemont Market butcher who now owns the Maine MEat butcher shop in Kittery, said he’s happy if he can source his animals “within 100 miles or so as the crow flies.” He, too, laughs at the notion of local meat being within a day’s drive.

Spangler said local meat is much more accessible than it used to be, but sourcing it can be time consuming. He occasionally buys animals from farmers who raise just a few at a time and slaughter seasonally, but for the most part he looks for operations large enough to supply him year round – places that raise 40 or 50 pigs at a time. Burger of Winter Hill Farm is among his pork suppliers, and Spangler gets a consistent supply of beef from New Hampshire, too.

“All the farmers I work with, they’re slaughtering once a month and they’re able to stagger their growing stock so they can easily have pigs up to weight every month for me,” he said.

But it takes a lot of planning. “It’s not something where I can pick up a phone and order pigs, and I’ll have two pigs magically appear next week,” he said.

Pete Sueltenfuss, owner of The Otherside Deli in Portland, defines local as all of New England, adding that he still prefers to buy his meat in Maine.

“I’m happy to have it from someone who is a sustainable farmer, even if they’re across the state lines,” he said. “As long as the quality is there, I’m perfectly happy with it.”

Last fall, the Maine turkey farmer who normally supplies Sueltenfuss lost two-thirds of his birds to disease, so Sueltenfuss was forced to buy his Thanksgiving turkeys from a Vermont farmer.

“They were great birds, and people were really happy,” he said. “I was a little bit bummed because I know how much it hurt (the Maine farmer) to not sell those birds, but at this point people aren’t going to be happy if you don’t have their turkey for them at Thanksgiving.”

Sueltenfuss works with whole animals and tries to encourage people to try the less popular cuts, “but if people want a ribeye, they want a ribeye.”

WHAT’S IN A LABEL?

Where does the shifting definition of local meat leave consumers?

Three out of five people think farm products labeled “local” are grown within Maine’s borders, according to a 2014 Maine Food Strategy survey. In New Hampshire, such a definition has been codified into law – it’s not local unless it’s grown in New Hampshire. Lamb meat from North Star Sheep Farm in Windham is sold in the Whole Foods in Nashua, N.H., but it can’t be called local, even though it’s just one state over.

Hannaford’s “Close to Home” line includes only products that have been grown or produced within the same state as the store selling it – although the grocery chain is now conducting consumer research to determine whether that definition should change. After all, meat farmers like Burger are closer to Boston than to some parts of Maine.

Many purveyors of local meats say that what’s most important to them is also good advice for the consumer – know the name of the farmer or the farm where the meat came from.

Some restaurants claim on their menus they serve local meat, but Colson questions how much of it is. He suggests consumers look for the names of local farms that are tied to specific dishes (for instance, “Fried Chicken: L.P. Bisson & Sons chicken thighs, pickled lettuce, parmesan, house made buttermilk ranch,” as noted on the menu of Sur Lie in Portland.)

When it comes to retail markets, Slayton says customers should be able to talk to the person in charge of sourcing. That person should be able to answer questions about where the meat came from, and who the farmer was. Spangler agreed.

“I want my money to stay within those parameters to support my local community,” Spangler said, “whether it’s vegetables or whether it’s meat.”

 

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