Camas Davis is executive director of the Good Meat Project and founder of the Portland Meat Collective. A decade ago, after she apprenticed as a butcher in southwestern France, she returned to her home in Oregon to find that there was a lack of education among consumers about meat—where it comes from, what parts of the animal they’re eating, what’s behind variations in flavor—and so she started the Portland Meat Collective, which educates consumers to understand and prepare meat.
Davis is the author of the book, Killing It: An Education.
photo credit: Cheryl Juetten
6’26 differences between France and the US in terms of food production and food culture
9’20 learning to trust the knowledge of the farmers
11’15 going back to the US and encountering challenges — customers not intersted in “the whole animal” approach to meat
13’18 starting the Portland Meat Collective to teach people about local meat and how to work with it
14’19 how consumers/eaters shift their habits once they have more knowledge
16’54 changing the negative connotation of the word “butcher”
18’40 learning more about meat leads to better cooking
19’55 why does bacon taste so good?
22’09 cooperative structures for meat producers banding together
25’04 how do you scale up small-scale production
28’26 the importance of wages, health care, etc., for the good food movement
29’48 the over-politiciztion of food choices, how to counter that
32’45 the relationship between humane animal treatment and good meat
35’07 more about The Good Meat Project https://goodmeatproject.org
