Interning, Butchering and Hope

The final step in becoming a registered dietitian (RD) - aside from passing the RD exam - involves completing an 11-month internship. I like to describe the internship as a 'residency for dietitians.' I suppose it's an apt comparison; we rotate our way through a variety of practice areas: clinical nutrition, community nutrition education, food service and an elective of our choosing.

Since September 2009, I've interned at seven locations:

• NY State Psychiatric Institute
• City Dialysis Center
• Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center
• Cornell University Cooperative Extension
• FreshDirect
• Food Bank for NYC
• The Cleaver Company and The Green Table

I'm in the final days of my food service rotation at The Cleaver Company, a locally-sourced, sustainably-focused catering company located in NYC's Chelsea Market. As a supplement to our experience in Mary Cleaver's kitchen, my classmate and I spent some time two doors down at Dickson's Farmstand Meats helping to vacuum package the locally-raised, feedlot-free meat carved by Adam Tiberio, Dickson's butcher. Sounds ok, right?

Wrong. It was absolutely, totally, completely fascinating. We watched silently as Adam carried out an entire hindquarter of a cow, hung it on a hook and proceeded to carve it so quickly and precisely it took all the concentration I had to keep moving - following his packaging instructions - and not dumbly stare (in veneration mostly, but with a drop of horror too). I'll never say, "I butchered the job" to refer to a mistake again.

Good thing I'm not at all squeamish. As the first hindquarter was hooked, we noticed an organ hanging down. "What's that?" we asked. "Oh, a kidney..." My grandfather was a USDA meat inspector in the 1940s and 50s, and then a meat salesman in NYC's Meat Packing District through the early 1970s. Dickson's gave me a morsel of family history as well.

The NY Times recently mentioned Dickson's in this story on local meat. 

Yesterday (my second time at Dickson's), I got to vacuum package goat while The Boston Beer Company (aka Sam Adams) filmed Adam carving beef (too bad I didn't get to see the goat carving, for comparison's sake). Apparently there is a partnership-to-be between Dickson's and Sam Adams. I signed a release since they filmed me packaging, though I think my back was mostly to the camera. My identifying feature? A Christmasy combination of a light green headscarf and red clogs.

All of the above is a dreadfully superficial description of what is really going on here.  The food system is changing. The resurgence of butchering, the staring customers, the filming - it all gives me hope. In the future, maybe we won't give 70% of our antibiotics to animals in feedlots. Maybe we'll have fewer strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and fewer cases of foodborne illnesses. Maybe the Mississippi River won't be so polluted by CAFO* runoff and maybe the deoygenated "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico will shrink (if the oil spill is ever contained). Maybe our great-grandkids won't know what the global warming fuss was all about.

That's what's going on.

*CAFO = Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation