Even after the age of hunting and gathering, the butchering of animals required a special kind of communal work. Hog killing was an activity that required several hands in most of the country until fairly recently. Neighbors would come together to kill, scald, and butcher each other’s hogs. The reward for helping out was a few pounds of sausage or fresh side meat.

To kill and butcher an animal and divide its meat provides not only the possibility of an authentic meal, but also, inevitably, creates a sort of communal moral responsibility for that meal.

In primitive societies those who took part in the hunt were given their share of meat and allowed to sit for the meal. Our participation has been mostly abstracted through the use of money, but when we hand over our paper representations of work we are providing for the possibility of the kill.

In hunting societies the kill occurred at one moment when the independent life of the animal met the independent life of the hunter. But in a society of domestication, the kill begins from the day an animal is born. To be killed is the steer’s end from the human view, and that end dictates the rest of its life—from what it is fed to how it is handled.

When I sell meat to Jerry and Amy and John and Sydney I am dividing the kill among those who helped make it happen. They can now sit down with their families and eat a proper meal. And they can feel good about it because they know a good deal about the kill and everything that led up to it—that this was a steer raised purely on grass, wandering 80 acres of pasture and woods at his leisure until the one day he took a ride on a trailer and all went black.

But when you buy a steak from the grocery store—plastic wrapped with the USDA’s seal of approval—you are participating in the kill there too. It’s a kill performed by a culture and tribe I am hesitant to eat with. It is a slaughter of machine-like brutality, and when you grill that steak you are admitting your share in it. I want no part of that hunt; I am a member of a different, quickly growing tribe.