Every year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg takes on a personal challenge. Last year, it was to learn Chinese. This year, Zuckerberg has taken on a meatier task: Any animal he eats must die by his own hand.
Palo Alto resident Zuckerberg has joined the growing ranks of people learning to slaughter their own meat, according to a Fortune blog post that Facebook confirmed Thursday.
"This year, my personal challenge is around being thankful for the food I have to eat," Zuckerberg, 27, told the magazine. "I think many people forget that a living being has to die for you to eat meat, so my goal revolves around not letting myself forget that and being thankful for what I have. This year I've basically become a vegetarian since the only meat I'm eating is from animals I've killed myself. So far, this has been a good experience. I'm eating a lot healthier foods and I've learned a lot about sustainable farming and raising of animals."
Zuckerberg, according to Fortune, was baptized into the practice of slaughtering his own food, including lobsters, chickens and goats, by prominent Bay Area foodie and neighbor Jesse Ziff Cool, the owner of the Menlo Park restaurant Flea Street Cafe.
"He cut the throat of the goat with a knife, which is the most kind way to do it," Cool told Fortune.
According to several Bay Area butchers licensed by the state to "break" or cut up beef, pigs and other animals for customers, including one who thinks a Zuckerberg-slaughtered hog arrived at her business stuffed in the back of a luxury sedan, the kill-your-own-supper movement has become increasingly popular among Silicon Valley's high-tech crowd.
Dave Peterson of Corralitos Market & Sausage Co. near Santa Cruz, one of only a few area butchers licensed by the state to cut up carcasses for individuals, said he's seeing more and more rich young entrepreneurs "coming in from over the hill" from Silicon Valley.
"They all want to learn how to do it; they want to come in and watch us cut it up, because I think these days people who have the means to kill their own food want to see exactly what they're eating," he said.
Zuckerberg told Fortune that he started thinking about slaughtering his own meat after he held a pig roast at his home last year and was troubled when others said they didn't want to think about the pig being alive. "That just seemed irresponsible to me,'' he said. As part of his new regimen, he said, he now only goes to restaurants where he can eat vegetarian.
Karl Wada, sous chef and part-time butcher at Berkeley's Café Rouge, which has offered butchering classes in the past and plans to do so again, says the appeal for carnivores is the same as for vegetarians who frequent organic farmers markets to buy their produce.
"I think people just want to fill in the gaps of what they didn't know about what's on their plate," Wada said. "It's not for everybody. It's kind of an elitist thing. "
Sarah Lewis, whose family has owned Freedom Meat Lockers & Sausage Co. outside Watsonville for three generations, suspects it was Zuckerberg's hog that arrived at her business about a month ago.
"We'd had a conference call about a month ago with these rich Silicon Valley types who'd never killed their own meat before and they were asking me a million and one questions,'' Lewis said. "It was like they were interviewing us, asking how things are processed here, and why should they pick us.''
The following weekend, several young men showed up at the shop. One of them opened the trunk of his luxury car, and there was the byproduct of the conference call.
After a call from this newspaper, Lewis said one of her butchers googled Zuckerberg's picture, and felt a shock of recognition. "He said he recognizes Zuckerberg as the guy who came in with the pig in back of the Lexus."
Contact Mike Swift at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/swiftstories.
OneBuckeye
Senior Member
5,888
posts
OneBuckeye
Senior Member
5,888
posts
Fri, May 27, 2011 7:48 AM
May 27, 2011 7:48 AM
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_18149799?nclick_check=1
May 27, 2011 7:48am
