hehe, yours truly included. I cut way back on meat (having worked in the industry does that to ya) but I refuse to live on carrots and lettuce.
In some towns you can still buy locally produced beef,etc, but it's getting harder. In most places the meat in all of your grocery stores comes from the same 3-4 plants in the midwest. It's cut by illegals and a few Americans and then it's trucked halfway across the country.
Given the economies of scale, this system has replaced the old local producer-local consumer market.
In fact, I switched all my meat buying to Whole Foods a couple of months ago for the same reason ... or almost. Local grocers pre-pack most of the meat at the plants.
I noticed the difference (decline) in flavor and asked. They told me about the plant thing and I switched.