MEAT THE PRESS

A Goat's Look at Rising Beef Consumption

by Maurice the Goat

The rich bastards eat beef again. In their high-rise apartments, they slice into bloody ribeyes like they breathe air. The young ones too - the same kids who spent years telling everyone how they saved the goddamn planet by eating kale.

Rich pricks disgust me most. They drop fifty bucks on steaks they photograph before eating. "Grass-fed," they say, like the cow enjoyed a Swedish massage before the blade hit its throat. Their hypocrisy makes me want to puke all over their thousand-dollar shoes.

But what the fuck do I know? I'm just a goat with a typewriter and a bottle that empties too fast.

When the pandemic hit, they all ran home like scared rats. Meat plants closed. For a while, humans ate fucking lentils and pretended to give a shit.

Then the restaurants opened again. The fancy ones first - where suits ordered tomahawk steaks bigger than their empty heads. Then the cheap dives where college kids with daddy's credit cards ordered burgers at 2 AM, grease dripping down their privileged chins.

I talked to a butcher last week, an old guy with bloody hands and eyes that had seen every cut of meat.

"Rich folks drive this shit," he said, wiping his blade on a stained apron that hadn't seen soap in years. "They want the premium crap. Wagyu this, grass-fed that. They'll drop a hundred bucks on a steak while some poor bastard stands outside wondering how to feed his kids."

He nailed it. The data shows it. Rich households lead the charge back to beef. The same assholes with their electric cars and recycling bins. Human hypocrisy never stops amazing me.

Last Tuesday I followed some twenty-somethings to a steakhouse. They wore clothes that cost more than my rent and talked about sustainability between bites of blood-red filet. One girl with teeth too perfect said, "I only eat ethical meat now," while blood ran down her chin like a fucking vampire at a blood bank.

Numbers don't lie. Millennials and Gen Z eat beef again after years of plant-based bullshit. But they need stories to justify their hypocrisy. So, they tell themselves "It's grass-fed" or "locally sourced" or some other crap that helps them sleep in their Egyptian cotton sheets.

The rural folks - they kept beef alive while coastal elites fucked around with tofu. I sat in a Nebraska diner last month. The Heartland where they never stopped eating cows. The waitress had empty  eyes and hands cracked from too much living.

"People here never change," she said, pouring coffee that smelled like it died yesterday. "Meat and potatoes. Always been that way. Always will."

The cooking enthusiasts exist in their own world. They watch YouTube videos about "reverse searing" and blow hundreds on Japanese knives. They talk about beef like they're discussing poetry. "You can taste the terroir," one bearded asshole in Brooklyn told me, like beef is wine instead of a dead cow that never asked to be art.

So, beef rules again. Not that it ever left. Just dipped for a minute while humans pretended to care about ethics and animal husbandry.

Meanwhile, industry suits count money with bloody fingers. Their marketing works like a hypnotist's watch. "Beef: It's What's for Dinner" sears into the collective minds of a nation that can't decide if it wants to save the planet or eat every last piece of it.

I finished my whiskey and watched the restaurant across the street. A couple shared a tomahawk steak, taking selfies with the massive bone like they'd butchered it themselves. The woman wore a "Save the Earth" t-shirt that probably cost eighty bucks.

I laughed until my liver hurt. Then I ordered another drink.

What else can a goat do in this world but laugh? Easy answer: get drunk and stay that way.