Press

This was a big announcement - not because anyone cares what Richie Rich is digging into with his gold forks, but because you couldn't have asked for a more mainstream mouthpiece to rebuke factory farming. Thanks to the likes ofFood Inc. and Eating Animals, many members of Generation Y have simply consumed too much media to not yelp OMG at the thought that their morning bacon was some poor, abused pig raised in a "barn" that resembles Castle Grayskull.

"We know what happy cows look like," chuckles chef Diana Kudajarova of Journeyman. She and her husband, chef Tse Wei Lim, have both worked on dairy farms. And when they're not in the kitchen together, they visit the farms across the Northeast that send them animal products, shake hands with the farmers, and make sure they can vouch for the spots' humane standards. Journeyman's identity is synonymous with its commitment to using only locally and responsibly produced food; making exceptions to those criteria is "not an option" for the pair, even if adhering to them drives up their price points. That these relatively young chefs (they're 30 and 31, respectively) have made such a splash in hipster-friendly Somerville with that concept is a testament to the fact that ethical animal eating isn't just for dirty hippies and food snobs anymore.

But here's the hard part: it's often simpler to go veggie than to eat meat ethically. The former route allows for clear-cut dining decisions, whereas the latter requires serious education about the farms that local restaurants use. (When you ask the waiter where the steak is sourced from, you need to know whether "Shady Meadows Farm" really means "dark, scary glue factory.") There are plenty of online resources (Eatwild.com is a great place to start), but we've compiled a handy list of trustworthy farms that source to area restaurants. It's far from a comprehensive guide, but consider this a starting point, a source of names to listen for. But like a good farmer would, please: keep it growing.

Pineland Farms Natural Meats
This provider isn't a single farm, but rather a beef co-op program based out of Pineland Farms in New Gloucester, Maine, a 5,000-acre working farm and "agri-campus" emphasizing sustainable farming education. The collaborative essentially began with Maine's Wolfe's Neck Farm, founded in the mid-1950s as, lore has it, the first organic beef farm in America. But today, Pineland encompasses 250 family farms in the northeast quadrant of the country. The cattle receive no hormones, no antibiotics, and no by-products from other animals, and producers participate in a gradated certification process implemented by Global Animal Partnership, an animal-welfare nonprofit whose board includes a PETA consultant.
Supplies spots like: Rialto (1 Bennett Street, Cambridge, 617.661.5050) and Woodward (1 Court Street, Boston, 617.979.8200).

The full article is here.