Posts Tagged Ethical food
Clear Gold
Michigan is proposing build a pipeline to drain 322 million litres of water from Lake Huron. Ontario hasn’t agreed to it yet, because the proposal doesn’t contain assurance that the water “will stay in the Great Lakes basin and be used efficiently.” Since moving water from the Great Lakes sounds a lot like the plan for solving Lake Mead’s problems without addressing the issues of wasted water.
The people murmuring about Water Wars are starting to look less and less crazy as time goes on.
Sarnia solved the issue of water conservation. They raised water prices and imposed watering restrictions, and a miraculous thing happened. “The water is so bloody expensive, that’s why people are not using it,” according to Coun. Anne Marie Gillis. They cut their water down to 81,000 cubic metres/day from the 181,000 it’s licensed to sell. So, to celebrate, they are begging people to waste more water, because the loss of revenue is putting them in the red.
Water is more valuable a resource than coal, oil, or gold. Three days without it and you die. Period. And as we start to watch folks around the world try to deal with their water shortages, it’s probably a good idea to look at our relationship to it. The average American uses 4500 litres of water per day (and I can’t imagine the Canadian numbers are much different—but if you know your food consumption in kilograms, you can calculate your water footprint). It’s not so surprising when you realize that it takes 200 litres to make 1kg of plastic, or that it requires 2-4 barrels of water to extract a barrel of oil from the tar sands. And then, of course, there’s food.
1 comment August 1, 2009
Food Standards, eh?
The Food Standards Agency wants to help you make an “informed choice” about your food. They’ve put together a study, comparing the nutritional value of organic versus non-organic food. Of course, calling it a study is a little misleading. They’ve read other people’s studies, and have parsed out the answer: there’s little nutritional benefit to organic food. Of course, “The review rejected almost all of the existing studies of comparisons between organic and non-organic nutritional differences,” so it’s easy to see how they came to that conclusion.
Oh, and they didn’t think it was important to consider the effects of eating pesticides, many of which are carcinogenic. Thanks, Food Standards Agency; I could have made a terrible environmentally conscious decision if you hadn’t opened my eyes (again)! Eat on…
Via BBC
Add comment July 31, 2009
Is informed eating traumatic for children?
The Thames Park community garden is right next to the playground. This is a wonderful thing, because it gives kids the opportunity to learn about where their food comes from. I let many a child pick tomatoes or beets from my plot for this reason.
I think it’s important for kids to know that their food comes from somewhere beyond the grocery store. They get really excited when they see what a growing melon looks like. That’s why things like this scandal are very troubling to me:
Children help to raise pigs to learn about ethically, organically raised food. The pigs are taken to a slaughterhouse, and the pigs are turned into food available for sale to the families. The parents flip out, saying it is insensitive, and that the children are too young to learn about where their food comes from.
These animals weren’t raised ‘as pets’, they were raised as food; they weren’t in ‘pets corner’, they were in a farm. The children appear to have taken the difference in their stride and as a result will probably end up being either informed meat-eaters or informed vegetarians. But to the parents, this is a challenge to their curious, teetering balance of sentimentality and unthinking consumption of meat. If you think your children would be traumatised by the idea of eating pigs, why are you feeding them bacon sandwiches?
I was at a friend’s house one evening, where roast beef was served that was once a cow called Buttercup. I talked to the kids about this. One of them said to me, “Buttercup was a mean cow. And she’s tasty. I won’t eat the nice cow.” That is informed eating, and I think it’s as important that children have the same opportunity to make informed decisions about ethical eating as the rest of us. Thoughts?
Add comment May 16, 2009
