Ruminations on the State of Butchery

Kidney has been something I've been rolling around with for a little while now-- experimenting on the prep involved from various types of specimens more than anything. The final dishes have been lack-luster, but as yet not quite inedible.

What I have been finding most alarming is the various states of prep level they can be bought at through your local mega-mart. I have seen kidneys of various beasts being sold with and without suet, membrane removed, cored or not, sliced or not... there seems to be no normalcy involved here.

Which brings me to my next rhetorical query: should I be trusting those organs from unattributable sources? Should I be trusting any such food item for that matter? The preparation and consumption of offal is rife with such riddles, and I think I have finally come to the conclusion that no, I don't think this is wise in any case.

My reasoning here is more in regards to potential degradation in quality rather than the possibility of illness, etc. It seems to me that, if I buy a piece of meat from , it is unlikely that anyone will be able to tell me about that meat's origins aside from, potentially, the beast from which it is derived. Go to a good butcher, though (and I do stress that the butcher should be good), and you can field such questions as kill date, hang-time, level of industrialization, etc.

At this point it occurs to me (and not for the first time): why the hell does it take so much effort to find a decent butcher these days? It took me no less than 2 and a half years to find one in my neck of the woods. Many butchers seem to be meaty middle-men. They get their pre-portioned chunks of sub-primals and so on from their favourite provider and sub-cut from there. This seems especially prevalent in Toronto's organic meats market, where most retailers get their cuts from Baretta Farms. Try asking most of these guys for something out of the normal product lineup and you're sure to get a quick and flat 'no.'

Has good old fashioned butchery-- the one where you can walk into a shop and ask cuts off the beaten track and not be regarded with confusion-- gone the way of the way of the white rhino? Surely this type of service is not to be considered 'artisenal', is it?