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Comment by mfatica | Hacker News Reader

I can "buy" a cow from a local farmer and they will raise it and slaughter it and deliver all the meat butchered from the cow. It provides nearly a year's supply of meat, at much lower cost than buying similar amounts from the grocery store. If more people followed suit of buying local farm direct then the whole thing would be better off.

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You're leaving out the cost of owning and powering a chest freezer which is not insignificant.

A freezer costs about 50 bucks a year in electricity (depending on rates, obv). That's a lot less than a half a beef to fill it will cost.

They're leaving out a lot more than the freezer cost. Not everyone wants frozen meat. Fresh meat tastes better.

There are a lot of other issues with their "buy a cow" idea.

Frozen meat tastes orders of magnitudes better than any of the alternatives

How's that work when you want to use some? Do you have a giant chunk of frozen meat you have to get smaller, more usable pieces from? Do you thaw it enough to cut then put the rest back? I can't picture how this works.

Typically when you buy a large fraction of a cow, the butcher will process it into a bunch of different cuts, I.e. ribeye, flank, chuck, tenderloin, etc. the cuts are usually single-serving, except if you want to keep the tenderloin whole or something. You also get a bunch of hamburger patties or ground beef. Point is, you get all the meat pre-cut before your freeze, so you can use only what you need at any given time.

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