A week of visits to slaughterhouses and butcher shops led to nights filled with carnivorous dreams. We may not have envisioned pigs twirling on a spit, but there were buttery soft lamb thymus sweetbreads smothered with warm tehina and monumental cuts of entrecote for asado. And Moshe, the son of Zalman the butcher from Jaffa, whispering some advice: "The meat of the females is always better than that of the males." The path to the perfect steak is not simple. The quality of the meat derives from a variety of factors: the origin of the beef, the gender, the conditions in which the animal was bred, its feed, the manner in which it was slaughtered, how the carcass is cut up and how the meat is improved, or aged. And that's all before we get to the person in charge of the grill, and the grill itself. Nor have we mentioned minor issues like the mood of the sensitive cows. After all, we're talking about a living creature, and even cows have their bleak moments.

With Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day, just around the corner, we visited seven veteran and professional butchers. It is no big surprise that purchases made there usually guarantee good meat.

In the refrigerated meat locker at Moo and Moo in Rehovot, choice cuts of meat hang from heavy iron hooks. The meat is kept here for three weeks while it ages, a natural process in which enzymes break down the muscle fibers, making the meat more tender and giving it a wonderful dark-red color. Tamir Levy expanded the 20-year-old family butcher shop founded by his father, Haim, and opened a restaurant next door that serves meat prepared on the grill. The shop sells no frozen products; everything is fresh. The signature offering is beautiful veal steaks. Unfortunately, the delicious veal kebabs and homemade sausages are currently being produced for the restaurant only.

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Moo and Moo, 177 Herzl St., Rehovot, 08-9462690, 08-9473073

The prohibition in Judaism and Islam against the consumption of pork continues to fuel countless studies. Those who are not content with explaining the ban as a divine imperative, or who do not agree that the pig is a dirty animal, claim instead that the Mediterranean environment is not suitable for breeding pigs. Others note that pigs need to be fed with wheat and other grains, which made them competitors with humans for scarce food supplies, instead of an animal to be bred for meat.

Whatever the explanation, the prohibition has left Jews and Muslims far behind in the art of charcouterie, which for many years dealt mainly with pork. Until the end of the 19th century, even in France, charcouterie was considered part of simple regional cuisine, but then the prestigious restaurants began serving sausages and all kinds of pickled and smoked meats, pates and terrines.

Chef Alan Talmor of Rishon Letzion produces about a dozen varieties of marvelous fresh sausages, including: Mexican-style chorizo with a special aroma imparted by smoked chipotle chiles; a North African-style merguez with plenty of garlic and hot paprika and a light touch of fennel; wurst that blends milk-fed veal and pork, speckled with fat, porcini mushrooms and parsley. There is no shop on the premises, but the products can be ordered for delivery within the central region.

Alan's Sausages, Rishon Letzion 03-7286677

The screen saver on the cell phone of Motti Hai, Zalman's father-in-law, shows a picture of a splendid piece of asado that he and his friends just barbecued a few days ago. Shoemakers may go barefoot but, as their paunches testify, butchers keep their finest merchandise in their stomachs. Motti and Moshe were among the first who thought of turning the small family butcher shop into a combination meat shop and deli that also sells wines, sauces and other products to complement the meat. Behind the display window, they tempt customers with bright red cuts of beef, milk-fed veal and marbled entrecotes. The professional, friendly service provided to every customer by the trio of Zalman, Moshe and Motti is unbeatable.

Zalman's Meats, 20 Jerusalem Blvd., Jaffa, 03-6829671, 03-6819325; www.zalman.meat.co.il

On the shelves of one of the refrigerators at Limousin are dozens of bright red fillets. It seems like a huge quantity, but at this thriving butcher shop-restaurant, they are only enough for one Saturday. Five years after the restaurant opened next door to the butcher shop, it is often hard to find a seat, and the once-deserted industrial zone is packed with other businesses. This butcher shop originated with the Charolais and Limousin cattle of Amir Talmor and Rami Ginat, ranchers from Moshav Tamrat. Now that the herd is too small to meet the needs of the restaurant and the butcher shop, they continue to sell only fine, carefully selected and expertly aged cuts of meat, along with pullet chickens, beef kebabs seasoned with baharat, and spicy merguez sausages.

Limousin, Ramat Yishai Industrial Zone, 04-9533173, 04-9533183

Marwan Hamed is intimately acquainted with sheep. His flock grazes on the green hills above the city of Nazareth, hills that stand as a reminder that once upon a time, this city was surrounded by villages that supplied it with agricultural produce - until they were all joined together in the modern urban continuum. This is where the butcher gets the locally bred lamb.

There is no better place to buy small, light pink lamb ribs with their intoxicating flavor, or meat for kebabs - a combination of beef and lamb ground on the premises and mixed with a generous amount of parsley, onion and pine nuts.

You can often find Duhul Safadi of Nazareth's Diana restaurant here - Marwan is his lamb supplier. If you just want to buy lamb for the barbecue, fine. But we couldn't resist sampling (again) the marvelous things that Duhul creates with this fine local raw material. We just had to return to the restaurant to enjoy the housi, a dish composed of organ meats, along with skewers of tender lamb fillet and liver.

Marwan Hamed, Hamusakim St. (24 Street No. 4060), Nazareth, 04-6554185

The path that curves between the closely-built houses of Dir al-Assad leads to a heavy blue electric gate. This is the entrance to the Dabah family compound, which overlooks the hills of the Lower Galilee. Inside are animal pens, a slaughterhouse, a new meat processing plant and the spacious homes of the Dabah brothers. This family is involved in nearly every stage of the meat business - importing and breeding lambs and calves, fattening and slaughtering the animals, and now a plant for cutting and aging the meat.

The new factory is run by Hovav Ozarad, who until recently ran the fresh meat department at the Tiv Taam chain. This energetic man ships select cuts of meat from the slaughterhouse and the plant to the country's best restaurants and butcher shops. We watched him give the layer of fat on the meat of the baladi lambs a quick, knowledgeable squeeze; take a phone call from an elegant restaurant that was insisting on aged meat from castrated calves; glance at kashrut inspectors who were checking the calves' lungs; and organize an urgent shipment of lamb ribs and necks to another restaurant.

Being close to the entire chain of production makes it possible to isolate the truly excellent cuts of meat and give them proper treatment. The finest cuts find their way to restaurants, not to private customers, or else to Angus, the large meat restaurant the brothers opened next to the main road. In the restaurant you can buy lovely cuts of fresh sirloin, fillet or entrecote, good lamb ribs, prepared skewers and skewers of organ meats - all at low prices. It's worth stopping here on your way to or from the North, to stock up for your next barbecue or picnic.

Angus, Dabah Mall, Dir al-Assad, 04-9983647

Throughout the world, fresh meat from a natural herd is considered to be the finest. Despite the romantic cowboy aura that clings to northern Israel, this is still a small country with limited grazing areas and a brief rainy season. Cows raise their calves until the summer, when pastures dry up, and then the calves are weaned and transferred to fattening facilities for their continued growth. About six months later, the calves are brought to the slaughterhouse.

There are about 50,000 head of grazing cattle and several hundred head of cattle in pens in Israel. This is a very small number, considering the growing consumption of fresh beef here. In recent years, the problem has been solved by breeding and fattening imported calves. Yossi Gillis, who also has his own herd, carefully takes the meat through the entire process.

Yossi Gillis, Nov, 04-6763555

Cooking the goose

"A true gourmand is as indifferent to suffering as a savage conqueror," the French gastronome Brillat-Saverin wrote in the 19th century. Today, more than ever, it is difficult to reconcile the moral contradiction between the love of meat and what animals undergo before they are turned into succulent dishes. The suffering of animals is nothing new, but the attempt to conceal what happens to them on their way to our plates is a trait of the modern Western world. The merest hint that the food originated in a living creature has become taboo.

The Romans used to serve certain dishes while the animals were still flopping about on the table. They had no inhibitions about showing live animals next to pieces of meat from these animals, or producing dishes designed in the shape of the animal's body. One 17th-century cookbook provides instructions on how to pluck geese, grease their bodies with butter and roast them while they are still alive. "Don't be in a rush," it advises readers, and recommends placing saucers of water near the bird so it won't die of thirst before it is properly cooked.

The false belief that the more traumatic the death, the more tender and delicate the meat led to boiling live eels before the diners' eyes, the white-hot skewering of live creatures, and kicking pregnant sows to death, with the aim of sweetening the meat of the fetus, which was then removed and eaten.