Economically, I suspect meat has the "virtue" of a lot of externalized costs (costs which are not paid by the product, but by others). It certainly does have some success in using almost every bit of the animal; that may subsidize the cost of the meat somewhat.
As for farmsteads and such, if I'm not mistaken, meat was a rarity on the table; it's expensive to raise, relative to vegetables, fruit, and the like. But they certainly knew where it came from; most people, I suspect, would answer "the supermarket" if they were asked where their hamburger came from.
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Economically, I suspect meat has the "virtue" of a lot of externalized costs (costs which are not paid by the product, but by others). It certainly does have some success in using almost every bit of the animal; that may subsidize the cost of the meat somewhat.
As for farmsteads and such, if I'm not mistaken, meat was a rarity on the table; it's expensive to raise, relative to vegetables, fruit, and the like. But they certainly knew where it came from; most people, I suspect, would answer "the supermarket" if they were asked where their hamburger came from.