An alternative to steak? Maybe not. There’s some value in our stubbornness, it seems. (Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash)

Near the little Corn Belt city where I was born, there was a crossroads that was home to stockyards and a meatpacking plant. The stench of bovine offal was so awful as we passed through that we kids would wrinkle up our noses and yell, “Peee-YOU!” My dad, smiling, would reply, “Ah, the smell of money.” Farmers raising cattle, he figured, were better off than our kin, who stuck to corn and soybeans.

Yet for all my farmland bona fides, I didn’t know the word “abattoir” when, as a young man, I found it on my itinerary during a study tour of South Africa aimed at building international understanding. Our little group of Americans was accustomed to being shown the points of pride in one community after another during our visit, but that fine summer morning featured almost three hours in a slaughterhouse — the familiar odor defining “abattoir” for me.

Maybe you know the …