I encourage people to look for alternative sources for their meat, for all food, really. Local food systems get you a better product, and nowadays they can also be quite cheaper with all of the profit taking and fuel/energy cost driven inflation in the industrial food supply chain.

We are blessed to be in Vermont, which has strong local food systems. We can get nearly all our produce and meat from local farms. We have been purchasing grass fed, pastured beef from Squier Family Farm, in Wallingford VT for years. We can get lamb and pork from the Bur-Ger family farm or any of a half dozen other families that show up at the local farmers market or sell in the coop.

We recently had some Omaha steaks, claiming to be grass fed, shipped to us by a family member. They absolutely sucked in comparison. I have had Butcher Box steaks that were comparable, but also much more expensive, and way more material in packaging.

For produce, we have a half dozen farms to choose from. It means eating more seasonally, but the quality of the veg is just so much greater.

Now you can see this as privilege, but it's also the result of hundreds of neighbors making the conscious decision to support their local food system. While everyone was complaining about food price increases, the local food systems were WAY more stable in their pricing, and we even saw the price of grass fed ground beef drop around here. It requires more thought and planning, but it really pays off, IMO.