GM Crops? What about our meat?

I just watched a program on BBC called Great British Food Revival.  Continuing in the current saving traditional cooking/food tradition of Hugh, Jamie et. al. (a great initiative in my book btw as it introduces the current generation to real food and reminds the older generations of what they’ve forgotten), tonight’s program featured Clarissa Dickson Wright of Two Fat Ladies fame speaking about pork and what classes as pork in our supermarkets.  Basically, following a report in the mid 50′s which, for the sake of economies of scale, recommended that the diversity of pig breeds in the UK be dramatically cut to a handful of breeds.  Subsequently these breeds have become specialised and bred to suit the requirements of the supermarkets, namely fast growing.  This ensures a pretty tasteless meat when it hits the shelves.  Now you might say that the pork chops you recently purchased at your local supermarket tasted great and the cost was quite reasonable.  Tasted great compared to what though?  Have you ever had a pork chop from a traditionally reared pig (nowadays they’d probably be called organically reared – so they can sell it to you at a serious premium, even though that still doesn’t live up to a traditionally reared animal)?  A pork chop from such an animal simply tastes out of this world.  The supermarket stuff isn’t even in the same general classification.  And it’s not just pork chops.  No no.  Look at chickens – we now have broilers and layers, a distinction which never existed in the past.  I won’t even go in to how they’re reared or selectively bred, again to suit the needs of the supermarkets as opposed to the stomachs of the consumer.  Back in the day (BITD) you didn’t have the broilers/layer distinction.  You simply had a few hens scratching around a patch in your back yard, consuming the food waste from the dinner table.  Probably next to the pig, happily mucking around in it’s pen (if you were very lucky).  The thing is we’ve forgotten these things.  It’s too problematic, doesn’t fit in to our life style.  How difficult would having a few hens make taking two weeks in the sun every year?  There’s no such thing as boarding kennels for hens.  Unless you count the local fox population. They’d certainly look after your few hens for you.  So in the quest for convenient meat which we can have on our dinner table every night, we’ve slowly surrendered the notion of quality, good tasting, healthy food for selectively bred animals which produce the maximum amount of saleable product in the shortest possible time.  And people are worried about GM crops.  The meat you eat tonight has in all probability been manipulated in some fashion, probably through selective breeding, at the very least, to suit the needs of the supermarkets.  It certainly isn’t as tasty or naturally nutricious for you as meat you would have traditionally reared yourself.  In your own backyard.  I’m not going to worry about GM crops for the moment.  That threat is coming to a store near you soon.  I’m more worried about the meat that’s on my plate right now.  Eat less but eat better.  And stay away from monoculture or highly specialised, highly bred items as they haven’t been bred with your best interest at heart.  Only the profit margin of the company that sold it to you.

Again, I think that looking to the past needs to be part of the solution for the way forward.  Just don’t let them sell it to you as something new and amazing.  It’s not.