Besides, I love to cook, and I love to eat. If you've ever had the opportunity to try meat grown with more traditional methods, the difference in flavor is amazing. Try a pork chop from the Niman Ranch sometime, and see if you're happy buying the stuff from the local supermarket anymore.

Perhaps Jabz, Burdell1 and friends can chime in more on this, but I was in New Zealand recently for a friend's wedding, and I was amazed at the quality of ordinary meat bought inexpensively from ordinary supermarkets. I guess it's hard to tell how much of that is due to valuing good-quality preparation as opposed to valuing good-quality farming, but I suspect both play their part. New Zealanders, as far as I can see, have an obsession with healthy eating that borders on the unhealthy -- and if a whole nation demands meat of that quality, all the supermarkets are going to be supplying it. So it doesn't have to be the way PETA describe, although I guess NZ has a much better pasture-to-population ratio than the US, which must make things easier.

The big beef joint at the wedding-reception buffet was so good that I asked one of the caterers what they'd done to make it taste that good. "This is New Zealand", he said, with a sympathetic grin, "it just comes that way here."

Peter