Farm Buzzwords and Euphemisms

Once upon a time I was an English major at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. I'm not sure I learned much about English, but I did develop a bordering-on-obsessive fascination with the meaning of words. I find that words get all too often thrown around in a causal, sloppy way. This post is mainly just for fun and to vent my somewhat irrational frustration, but there is a smidgeon of seriousness here as well. Note that I've definitely been guilty of carelessly (and sometimes carefully) using most of these words.

Relating to slaughter

• Harvest. I see this word getting used all the time for the slaughtering of animals for meat. It hate it. You harvest wheat, and you slaughter lambs. To me, it's just an attempt to make the violent act of killing an animal seem a little friendlier. You can't replant a pig like you can a tomato.

• Processing. This term seems to be most often applied to small animals like chickens. As in, "I processed 50 chickens today!" This isn't as annoying as harvest, but suffers from the same issues in trying to move away from the violent imagery of slaughter. It also makes the slaughter act seem more like factory behavior. It seems appropriate that Smuckers processes several tons of fruit into jam, but not so much that I processed a living animal into meat.

Relating to Restaurants

• Fresh. This adjective seems to be showing up on all the local restaurants that offer some sort of food sourced from a local farm. Fresh beef, fresh pork, fresh vegetables, fresh bread, etc. When it comes to meat, there are no suppliers in the area that could provide a constant supply of freshly slaughtered, never frozen pork and beef, so the "fresh" just becomes a meaningless adjective bordering on misinformation. I'd much prefer the restaurant put the specific source of the meat or vegetables on the menu.

• Natural. I could rant on this forever, as it's one of my least favorite words. It has zero meaning. Have you ever heard of anyone serving unnatural food? What would that even mean? This is just a word to make food seem better without actually describing it in anyway. Again, give me specifics, not gobbly gook.

• Local. This one is meaningless unless you define the specific geographical area. Are we talking Washington State? Skagit Valley? USA? Also, if one ingredient is local and the rest isn't, are you still calling it local?  What if it is a local distributor of food grown on the other side of the planet? Just give me the provenance of my food and let me do the interpretation.

In general

• Sustainable. There are entire University departments devoted to the study of this word (which I find ridiculous). It's one of those words that seems like it's really simple and straightforward, until you dig in and realize that it can never be defined (or achieved). I'm definitely guilty of using this one from time to time myself, as it's become so pervasive. I'd much rather be more precise than use this ambiguous word.

• Green. Meaningless. The term green-washing says it all.

• Family-owned/family farm. Wal-mart is technically family owned. The Waltons probably own some farm land too, but I bet they're not getting their hands dirty.I think I've been guilty of this one too.

• Heritage/Heirloom. I use heritage all the time, but I don't really like it. Again, it's very ambiguous--at what point in history did a plant variety or livestock breed change from being heritage/heirloom to non-heritage. I'll probably keep using this word, but I like to explain what I mean by it (for instance, with pigs, I define it as more of a lard-type pig--it has a different flavor because it has a higher fat content. I also point out that they should (but not always will) have good mothering instincts.

And some words I like

Humane. I think this has a fairly clear meaning. It has the potential for misuse, but I don't often see it misused.

Slaughter. As you probably already guessed, I like this one. It has a very clear meaning and doesn't sugarcoat the very necessary act of killing an animal. It can sometimes get muddled up with butcher--I'm never quite sure at what point the slaughter ends and the butchering begins.

Certified Organic. A few years ago I wouldn't have put this in the good column, but I like that it has a very clear meaning (even if the execution is flawed).


There's probably other words I'm missing as well. In general, there's not that much harm that gets done by using these words, but it can make communication more difficult at times. If you think I'm missing any, please add them to the comments!