What exact do we mean by the term "meat"? That's important when you're defining meat labels.
What exact do we mean by the term "meat"? That's important when you're defining meat labels.

seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States

seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia

seen from United States

seen from Germany
seen from Ireland
seen from China
seen from China

seen from United States
seen from China
seen from France

seen from Malaysia

seen from Türkiye
seen from Indonesia
seen from China
seen from Germany
seen from Russia
What exact do we mean by the term "meat"? That's important when you're defining meat labels.
What exact do we mean by the term "meat"? That's important when you're defining meat labels.
They're Made Out of Meat Labels
Back in the caveman days, meat labels were pretty straightforward and didn't have anything to do with paper, though sight was an issue. So was smell. If you could see it, you could pretty much tell what it was and, depending on the number of flies and larvae, how long since it died, Smell was also a dead-giveaway (so to speak). Claiming it as food was up to whether you minded a little extra protein in your diet, or you minded holding your nose while you cooked.
There was nothing glamorous about acquiring food back then, you see. You took what you could chase down, and if you couldn't chase something down, you took from another hungry critter, or you took whatever happened to be lying around. So what if your meat was a little green? A good fire could take care of that in a jiffy! And those wolves and lions? They never eat everything. If you were at the head of the clean-up line when they finished, you could still get some good cuts of meat and a lot of soup bones. Yum! Vultures had nothing on our caveman ancestors.
As for cavewomen, they had better taste. They were the ones who dug up or collected the wholesome vegetables and picked the berries that made up most of our ancestral diets.
Drying, smoking, salting, and other meat preservation techniques improved the human recipe book, and probably extended our lifespans as well, since there was less food poisoning to fight off. Meat labels weren't much yet, though. Usually you could still tell what something was by looking and using the sniff test, though forward-thinking dieticians were working toward meat labels by say, putting the bison jerky in a different colored bag that the smoked fish, and the buzzard strips in yet another. Color-coding is a great memory enhancer.
Starting a couple of centuries ago, people figured out how to can, wrap, and otherwise prepare meat for sale, especially in cities, where most people only kept a few cows and pigs at best. The first food labels started appearing that time, with meat labels basically paper-and-glue markers that told you what was in the can. Of course, you had to take their word on that. In time, as the government caught on to the fact that some of the "chipped beef" they were buying tasted an awful lot like floor-scrapings, they started forcing meat packers to tell the truth and include all the meat sources for the stuff in their tins. After that, all the leftovers started going into sausages, especially frankfurters and bologna. That's why the ingredient lists on the meat labels for those products are longer than your hand.
After 1913, meat packers started introducing products intended to be refrigerated and frozen, since the first commercial and home freezers and fridges appeared right about then. Freezer labels and refrigerator labels of all kinds showed up, actually. It took a while for label makers to formulate the right materials for these new freezer stickers and such, since they had to deal with really cold temperatures, ice, and moisture and still stay stuck on the right products. These days, the right meat labels (the ones we make at Freezer-Labels.com) can handle temperatures down to -60 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as all forms of moisture, without detaching or turning to mush.
Modern freezer stickers and refrigerator food labels also tend to include showy logos, government mandated nutritional listings, origins of the meat (especially sustainability info for seafood labels), and even markers indicating whether or not the meat products meet the dietary laws for popular religions. Kosher Jewish meats cannot share refrigerators with dairy products, cannot contain pork, shellfish, and a few other types of meat, and the animals from which they come must be slaughtered a certain way. Often, a rabbi oversees the processing and blesses the meat. Halal Islamic foods must be prepared in similar but different ways. Halal and Kosher foods typically have a mark indicating that they are acceptable in a prominent place on the meat label.
Add it all up, and you've got the modern, rather crowded meat label. Most other freezer labels are similar, although popsicle labels, ice cream labels, pizza labels, frozen fruit labels and frozen vegetable labels usually contain fewer words and more room for pictures. After all, an apple is an apple, though popsicles might contain all kinds of tasty chemicals and vitamins that scientists hide by using their scientific names, so the kids won't know. (Ascorbic acid = Vitamin C. Aha!).
Need a bunch of meat labels? Contact us and we'll make them for you for a great price with quick turnaround. Meat labels are among our bread-and-butter products, and no one beats ours for quality and speed.
what kinds of freezer sheet labels you need and what you plan to use them for, ask us.
what kinds of freezer sheet labels you need and what you plan to use them for, ask us.
Custom food labels are among the most common labels used in manufacturing—one might say they're the "bread and butter" of every busy label printer, if you'll pardon the word play. They're constantly needed, and so endlessly variable that they represent both a challenge and a source of fascinating, fulfilling work for those of us who make labels for a living.One of the primary uses of custom printed food labels is...
One of the greatest challenges of providing decent custom food labels is their great variety, not just of uses but of types. To a certain extent, food labels of all types have to be sturdy, so they'll remain on the packaging until removed by the customers after the point of sale
Sad! New U.S. Meat Labels Will Say Where the Animals Were Killed
Donkey Meat Mixed In Food In South Africa
JOHANNESBURG – While Europe is dealing with its scandal of cow meat being substituted or mixed with horse meat without reporting that fact, South Africa is facing its own “meat scandal” that includes donkeys, water buffaloes and goats. An investigation conducted by the...
What they really mean by -
natural
organic
grass-fed
pasture-raised
certified angus beef
rBGH-free or rBST-free
grass or grain?
Great post from the Fooducate Blog. Knowing where your meat comes from and how to make a healthy choice with all those facinating labels can be tough. Fooducate breaks it down for you here!
Side note: I love that whole foods has a rating system on their meat. You know how it was raised, etc. Makes me feel better about the world! (cheesy I know!)