Why Choose Brookers?

Local

Eating local is so trendy! In all seriousness, do you REALLY know where your food comes from?  Perhaps you didn’t realize that the red pepper on your salad came from Chili?  That is probably farther than you travelled for your honeymoon!  Our food now travels epic journeys to get to our plates and this is damaging to the environment and takes business away from local family farms.  In addition, the freshness of the food is impacted when it has to travel great lengths and through various distribution centers.  At Brooker’s, all of our products, with the exception of our salmon, are sourced locally from Ontario farmers.  

Sustainable

Here is another buzz word for you, “Sustainable.”  What is sustainable?  Simply put, sustainability means using a farming practice that is not depleting natural resources or damaging the environment.  We achieve this by working with farms who:

• Put cows and other ruminants on pasture where they eat the food they are meant to eat, GRASS.  
• Periodically rotate cows between pastures so that the pastures do not become over-grazed and the animals always have fresh grass.
• Minimize use of insecticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers
• Do not use hormones or antibiotics

These factors support our commitment to using animals that have been raised humanely.  We also work with local, provincially inspected abattoirs in order to keep transporting distances to a minimum.  We believe one of the greatest stresses after crowed confined spaces, are the shipping of livestock to slaughterhouses.  In addition to long distance transportation of animals being inhuman, it is said that stress prior to slaughter is one of the most important influences on ultimate meat tenderness.

Naturally Raised Meat

Raising an animal the way that nature intended is not only more beneficial for the well-being of the animal, but it also plays an integral role in the nutrition profile of the meat, in addition to the taste and texture.  All of our products are hormone free, antibotic free, pesticide free and raised on a diet that is the closest thing to what nature intended.  As Catherine Friend said in The Compassionate Carnivore, “What animals eat, how they live, what drugs they’re given, their stresses, and how they’re killed are all factors that affect their bodies, their muscles.”