Welcome to the BAMCSA Wiki
The Bay Area Meat CSA (BAMCSA), a project of Slow Food Berkeley, is made up of over 100 consumers who have joined forces to support local meat ranchers and farmers. The group has grown so quickly that we have decided to develop a formal mechanism for getting the kind of meat we feel good about — from locally, ethically, sustainably, humanely raised and slaughtered animals — onto more tables in our community.
What's a CSA?: Members of a Community Supported Agriculture program support local farms by buying "shares" of future harvests — in this case, meat animals. By paying for shares up front, CSA members guarantee farmers the capital they need to bring their animals from field to market. In return, members will receive monthly boxes containing steaks, roasts, and if desired, sausage, eggs, and so on, pending availability.
What does being a BAMCSA member mean?: While there are many produce CSAs in America, meat CSAs are few and far between, due to complex regulations and logistics. At the moment, BAMCSA membership means you are subscribed to our BAMCSA email list-serv on Google Groups and have the opportunity, on a month-to-month basis, to order one of three mixed boxes. We will likely rotate suppliers, and prices may fluctuate depending on suppliers and box makeup. We will also contact the list when we have extra or a la carte cuts of meat and offal that members can buy on a first-come, first-served basis.
What's in a box?: See the May 29 box breakdown for a rough guide to what you can expect. (Previously the BAMCSA group has done several bulk orders and whole-animal shares.) Future boxes may contain variations — a pork roast instead of a lamb roast, for instance. We might also change the makeup in response to comments after the first box. With luck and availability, future months' shares will contain whole chickens, but our featured farmers are still waiting for their chicks to finish pecking at the spring dirt and won't have them ready for a month or two yet. We also intend to have more pork in the box but were "hamstrung" this time by availability.
Prices: Conventionally raised meat is artificially cheap in America. Small farmers who raise animals on pasture have much higher costs than those who raise thousands of animals in confinement, which pass on these hidden costs (of cheap feed composed of god knows what, of antibiotics- and hormone-laced animal waste that causes soil and air pollution, of unhealthy meat) to society. Animals that are raised primarily on grass take longer to fatten, and most of the farmers we work with use certified organic feed, which can cost up to three times as much as coventional. Often they do not have access to or opt out of the large slaughterhouses (which is a good thing, to us) and also adds to their costs. Which is to say that often the meat we buy will cost more than the grocery store, sometimes more than Whole Foods, but will likely be comparable to what you would pay for similar meat at a farmers market.
Team Meat: Find out who's running this and how you can join, or become a supplier
Active pages on this wiki
- The Meat Diaries: What have you done with your share?
- Ask the Chefs: We're lucky enough to have quite a few professional cooks on this list to ask about cooking unfamiliar cuts, etc.
- Recipes: Recipes, suggestions, favorite meat cookbooks, etc
- Ranchers: A list of current and possible providers for our CSA
- Resources: Research, other CSAs, anything we want to keep track of for group reference.
- Summary and results of May membership survey
Never used a wiki before? It's a website we can all collaborate on. Anyone who has the password can add to it and edit it. Good wiki etiquette means no deleting other people's entries, and not "stealing" an edit lock when someone else is editing the page (you'll get a message). More here. Also, if you're writing something long, save often so that others know you haven't just forgotten and walked away from your computer while editing.
Learn more about wikis:
Archived old pages:
- News: Updates, edicts, etc. archived by date
- Meat-eating preferences: Please visit this page to indicate your interest in types of meat.
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.