Confused by meat and egg labeling? Joe Fassler will give his take in a Twitter Q&A this Thursday!

We’re hosting our second Meat Month Q&A this Thursday, featuring The New Food Economy’s own Joe Fassler! Fassler, who recently wrote about how foreign beef legally labeled “Product of U.S.A.” affect America’s grass-fed cattle industry, will be trying to make sense of the labels and certifications we see on meat, milk, and eggs. Send us your questions about labels using the hashtag #CarnivoresDilemma and tag us @newfoodeconomy. We’ll answer them in real time this Thursday, July 19, at 1 p.m., EST.

Joe Fassler is the features editor at The New Food Economy. In 2011, he was a finalist for a James Beard Foundation Award in Journalism for his reporting on how egg mogul Jack DeCoster’s factories polluted neighbouring communities in Iowa and committed multiple safety violations. In 2018, he was nominated for the same award for his reporting on DeCoster’s paltry prison sentence—three months for sickening 56,000 people.

Fassler is a graduate of the University of Iowa MFA program. Beyond his journalistic work with food politics, he also writes fiction, which has appeared in publications like The Boston Review and Electric Literature. He is the editor of the book Light in the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration and the Artistic Process (2017), and edits The Atlantic‘s “By Heart” series, in which authors share their favorite passages in literature.

Take a moment to think about all the terms you see in the meat aisle: “Cage-free,” “grass-fed,” “organic,” “pasture-raised.” Do these terms actually mean what they imply? If you’re having trouble navigating the grocery aisle’s ethics and sustainability claims, tweet your questions at @newfoodeconomy, and Joe Fassler will answer them. Be sure to use the hashtag #CarnivoresDilemma. See you tomorrow!