NationStates Jolt Archive

Having failed to hijack other people's topics, I figured I may's well create my own. So:

What's your take on issues of organic/ethical foods? Are you even aware of the issues? What're your thoughts on factory farms?

For my own opinion/bias, I'm currently locked in a prolonged battle with myself over the ethical eating issue: I can afford it without changing my basic eating patterns, but it means giving up a lot of things I really enjoy (limits my selection of fine cheeses, for instance, and basically rules out sushi) and I slip up regularily. I find it easy enough to avoid the really heinous offenders (shrimp and bananas, among others), and have basically cut unethical meats (other than the aforementioned sushi) from my diet, however. It all becomes much easier now that farmers' markets are starting to open up again.

I consider factory farms to be an environmental and economic issue as much, if not more, than an issue of ethics. Not that I'm for cruelty to animals, you understand, but I consider some of the other problems more pressing. Of course, with some foods the issues are humanitarian (see shrimp and bananas again), which I naturally feel to be rather pressing as well.

So, what do y'all think? Is this something important to anybody else? Howsabout anyone opposed to the organics/slow food/ethical consumption movements? Got anything to say?

(will have a poll, as soon as I work out how to post it :))

Having failed to hijack other people's topics, I figured I may's well create my own. So:

What's your take on issues of organic/ethical foods? Are you even aware of the issues? What're your thoughts on factory farms?

For my own opinion/bias, I'm currently locked in a prolonged battle with myself over the ethical eating issue: I can afford it without changing my basic eating patterns, but it means giving up a lot of things I really enjoy (limits my selection of fine cheeses, for instance, and basically rules out sushi) and I slip up regularily. I find it easy enough to avoid the really heinous offenders (shrimp and bananas, among others), and have basically cut unethical meats (other than the aforementioned sushi) from my diet, however. It all becomes much easier now that farmers' markets are starting to open up again.

I consider factory farms to be an environmental and economic issue as much, if not more, than an issue of ethics. Not that I'm for cruelty to animals, you understand, but I consider some of the other problems more pressing. Of course, with some foods the issues are humanitarian (see shrimp and bananas again), which I naturally feel to be rather pressing as well.

So, what do y'all think? Is this something important to anybody else? Howsabout anyone opposed to the organics/slow food/ethical consumption movements? Got anything to say?

(will have a poll, as soon as I work out how to post it :))

Whats the deal with shrimp and bananas? Why don't you eat them?

Shrimp, when fished, have a monstrous bycatch (I can pull some figures for you, if you want, but suffice it to say that trawling for prawns nets you all sorts of other stuff as well, most of which dies or is otherwise wasted).

When farmed, they require a mix of salt and fresh water. This is easiest to do on the coasts (which is where most commercially purchased shrimp come from), generally in southeast Asia, where widespread destruction of coastal mangrove forests and the attached ecosystems has resulted.

When farmed inland (often in Central Africa), with artifical salt ponds, a shrimp farm can remain operational for only a very short amount of time before the ground is so saturated with salt that the necessary balance of salty and fresh water is unobtainable, at which point the company running the farm will uproot and move elsewhere, leaving villages in economic ruin and with salted earth where there used to be agriculturally viable land.

Bananas are simpler: they're pretty delicate and need to be soaked in pesticides (life expectancy for banana pickers is shockingly low; in the 30s or 40s, if I recall correctly), and to make matters worse, they're grown in plastic bags (to keep bugs off), which are discarded by the thousands every day, generally in countries where waste disposal laws are lax or nonexistant (I'm sure you can imagine what millions of blue plastic bags soaked in pesticides will do to a waterway).

Yes, it limits you. I avoid bananas most of the time, but sometimes I can't help it...I crave them. I try to buy organic, and from any company but Dole (the old United Fruit Company in its current incarnation). I eat a lot of wild meat rather than the hormone injected crap out there. I won't eat farmed salmon or shrimp because of the environmental damage such intensive farming does. I drink fair trade coffees and teas. I buy locally whenever possible, and I grow my own veggies when I can. Part of it is for health reasons. I want to avoid pesticides, hormones, and the nebulous effects of GM foods. The rest is for ethical reasons. If I know a food product is produced unethically, it's off my shopping list.

I'm not familier with what you're talking about. How is the farming of bananas and shrimp a humanitarian issue? I'd think bananas would be an economic issue just as much as a humanitarian issue if your definition is what I think it is.

In any case most of the non-packaged food that I eat comes from smaller farms in Michigan or elsewhere in the country, though this definitely includes meat. These foods make up over half of the foods that I eat, so I suppose that I do eat organically and ethically quite often. It's not a conscious thing to. It wouldn't exactly hurt me if I did.

Edit: Oh. Very valid points. I don't like bananas much anyway. I'll just have to settle for not buying Asian shrimp. I love my shrimp. Anyway, I voted for option 3 in the poll.

Shrimp, when fished, have a monstrous bycatch (I can pull some figures for you, if you want, but suffice it to say that trawling for prawns nets you all sorts of other stuff as well, most of which dies or is otherwise wasted).

When farmed, they require a mix of salt and fresh water. This is easiest to do on the coasts (which is where most commercially purchased shrimp come from), generally in southeast Asia, where widespread destruction of coastal mangrove forests and the attached ecosystems has resulted.

When farmed inland (often in Central Africa), with artifical salt ponds, a shrimp farm can remain operational for only a very short amount of time before the ground is so saturated with salt that the necessary balance of salty and fresh water is unobtainable, at which point the company running the farm will uproot and move elsewhere, leaving villages in economic ruin and with salted earth where there used to be agriculturally viable land.

Bananas are simpler: they're pretty delicate and need to be soaked in pesticides (life expectancy for banana pickers is shockingly low; in the 30s or 40s, if I recall correctly), and to make matters worse, they're grown in plastic bags (to keep bugs off), which are discarded by the thousands every day, generally in countries where waste disposal laws are lax or nonexistant (I'm sure you can imagine what millions of blue plastic bags soaked in pesticides will do to a waterway).

Interesting, I had no idea.

as long as you dont think that you are getting more nutrition with organic foods, i say go with your conscience.

to feed the whole planet requires scientific farming methods. organic farming just wont do it. but that doesnt mean we need to let factory ruin the land

i bought a new house that was built on farmland. it had been farmed the year before my house was built. the ground was so ruined that it wouldnt grow anything without intensive effort. even lawn grass was hard to grow (in wisconsin no less). the fallow fields that had yet to be built on would barely grow weeds. i dont know what farmers DO but this guy sure wasnt a steward of the land.

Interesting, I had no idea.

To be fair, there're probably other foods that are equally yucky, but those are the two I've heard and read the most about. Bananas particularily seem generally accepted as more or less the worst offender, in practically every sense.

Reliable information is always a problem. So many conflicting agendas, y'know?

there is so much politics in food, especially in imported food, that if you have a social conscience you really should read up on it. the implications of what you buy and eat are enormous.

Where is the option:

No, because I am a lazy bum who gets other people to buy it for him

??

EDIT: Oh wait. Something else. Whoops.

I'm not familier with what you're talking about. How is the farming of bananas and shrimp a humanitarian issue? I'd think bananas would be an economic issue just as much as a humanitarian issue if your definition is what I think it is.

No doubt by now you'll have read the post explaining this.

Let me just say...be careful about researching your food. It's a can of worms you can't close again once you've opened it. You may not WANT to know.

as long as you dont think that you are getting more nutrition with organic foods, i say go with your conscience.

Surely the lack of odd chemicals and hormones in one's food can be seen as a health benefit, though?

to feed the whole planet requires scientific farming methods. organic farming just wont do it. but that doesnt mean we need to let factory ruin the land

There're lots of theories and options there. Things like green spaces (which looks at the agricultural potential of unused space within cities: lawns and backyards) and ecosystem farming (where rather than growing a single crop, you grow all sorts of things all at once, which can also increase total output of even very small plots of land).

Which isn't to say I disagree. Science has its place in agriculture; it simply needs to look at things like sustainability, rather than simply maximizing output (which seems to be the current mainstream ideal).

i bought a new house that was built on farmland. it had been farmed the year before my house was built. the ground was so ruined that it wouldnt grow anything without intensive effort. even lawn grass was hard to grow (in wisconsin no less). the fallow fields that had yet to be built on would barely grow weeds. i dont know what farmers DO but this guy sure wasnt a steward of the land.

Depends what type of farm it was. It could be as simple as wasted soil (without crop rotation, the nutrients in the earth get all out of whack before too long), although it could also be an over-high concentration of pesticides or whatnot in the soil as well. Might wanna find out, really, particularily if there's a chance that the ground is poisonous.

as long as you dont think that you are getting more nutrition with organic foods, i say go with your conscience.

to feed the whole planet requires scientific farming methods. organic farming just wont do it. but that doesnt mean we need to let factory ruin the land

i bought a new house that was built on farmland. it had been farmed the year before my house was built. the ground was so ruined that it wouldnt grow anything without intensive effort. even lawn grass was hard to grow (in wisconsin no less). the fallow fields that had yet to be built on would barely grow weeds. i dont know what farmers DO but this guy sure wasnt a steward of the land.

World hunger is caused by so much more than simply a lack of food. Growing enough food to feed us all with the caloric intake that North Americans allot themselves (high above the acutal calories we need) would not solve hunger. There would still be problems with distribution, poverty, lack of access, social divisions that keep food from some, and allow others to eat gluttonously.

Farmers are not automatically stewards of the land. Farmers do not all know what they are doing. However, monocultures and intensive use of chemical fertilizers seriously deplete the soil. Simple and inexpensive composting, rotating of crops, and making sure that staple foods are grown locally rather than imported, do much more to fend off hunger than GM foods (which often require expensive starters, and often do not produce seeds, forcing another expense on farmers).

No doubt by now you'll have read the post explaining this.

Let me just say...be careful about researching your food. It's a can of worms you can't close again once you've opened it. You may not WANT to know.

Not that I don't enjoy being educated, but there's a part of me (not necessarily a part I like, but it's there) which really wishes I could eat at cheap burger places without thinking about bloated, immobile, hormone-crazed cows, fed on a hideous chemical concoction of lord knows what, spewing semi-toxic biological waste into water that eventually comes out of my tap.

Not that I don't enjoy being educated, but there's a part of me (not necessarily a part I like, but it's there) which really wishes I could eat at cheap burger places without thinking about bloated, immobile, hormone-crazed cows, fed on a hideous chemical concoction of lord knows what, spewing semi-toxic biological waste into water that eventually comes out of my tap.
Um, yeah. Me too, actually. But then I picture what you've described, and all hope is lost. Time for a moose burger. Let's just hope it wasn't feeding at a landfill.

Actually, seriously now. There are a lot of things I sometimes wish I was ignorant to. But then I meet people who really are unaware of these things, and I feel bad for them. I don't know why...they're the happier of us two.

You know how they tenderize most meat? By hanging it up in a dark, damp room and letting a green mold cover it.

Misery loves company?

On the (sorta) selfish tack, the consumer choice thing is severely limited in its effectiveness if it's not widespread. Health and food-quality is reason enough, in my book at least, for most of these choices, but everyone you meet who is completely unaware of the issues is someone who's supporting a broken system, yes? Or someone who is, in other words, detracting from the effectiveness of any attempt, via choosing what you buy, to change things.

I feel the somewhat conflicted jealousy for those people who can eat at Dairy Queen without any inconvenient twinges of conscience as well, though. Don't really know what to make of it either.

You know how they tenderize most meat? By hanging it up in a dark, damp room and letting a green mold cover it.
Let me guess. You're a vegetarian.

You have to hang meat for a couple of days to drain it and take away the gamey taste...unless you like the gamey taste. Commercial operations don't have that time. So no, the way MOST meat is tenderized is by using chemicals. Like MSG. Or by slaughtering animals very young.

I'm fairly certainy that diet can be modified to expediate the process as well (keep in mind that most meat animals don't really need to be capable of independant locomotion, which probably simplifies matters).

Having failed to hijack other people's topics, I figured I may's well create my own. So:

What's your take on issues of organic/ethical foods? Are you even aware of the issues? What're your thoughts on factory farms?

For my own opinion/bias, I'm currently locked in a prolonged battle with myself over the ethical eating issue: I can afford it without changing my basic eating patterns, but it means giving up a lot of things I really enjoy (limits my selection of fine cheeses, for instance, and basically rules out sushi) and I slip up regularily. I find it easy enough to avoid the really heinous offenders (shrimp and bananas, among others), and have basically cut unethical meats (other than the aforementioned sushi) from my diet, however. It all becomes much easier now that farmers' markets are starting to open up again.

I consider factory farms to be an environmental and economic issue as much, if not more, than an issue of ethics. Not that I'm for cruelty to animals, you understand, but I consider some of the other problems more pressing. Of course, with some foods the issues are humanitarian (see shrimp and bananas again), which I naturally feel to be rather pressing as well.

So, what do y'all think? Is this something important to anybody else? Howsabout anyone opposed to the organics/slow food/ethical consumption movements? Got anything to say?

(will have a poll, as soon as I work out how to post it :))
for environmental and personal reasons i would eat 'ethically' if i could afford to, and if it were more convinient.
and by this i mean local, regionally produced food, traceable back to the farm (or preferably sold by the farm itself at a farm shop, farmers' market or box scheme). plus free-range, non-factory meat.
i don't mean organic, cos thats a load of mumbo-jumbo imho - the pesticides used in Europe (it may be different in the US) are stringently tested and designed to break down before the food is ever eaten, whether the plant metablolises the chemical or not. there is nothing better or more healthy about organic food, and it is ridiculously expensive. plus there have been cases whereby food certified as 'organic' (because the farm does not spray with any commonly used pesticides) has, in fact, been sprayed with chemicals far more harmful than standard pesticides... such as sulphur. imho organic food is a big con designed to make a few people a lot of money, with only a very few actually believing in its guiding principles and doing it properly


edit: its taken half an hour to post this... damn Jolt still screwey :mad:

Ive not completly stoped eating at fast food restruants...


HOW COuLD U NOT LIKE SHRIMP !! :O

EEEEVVVVVIIIILLLL!!!!

>_>
<_<

EVIL!!!

>_> >_>...

The ethical/organic distinction is another point of difficulty for me. To many people I know, they're synonomous, but this is sadly not necessarily the case with producers. In Canada, something certified "organic" is ethical, generally speaking, and lacking any sort of certification for "ethical"ness, it tends to be something to go on, initially. But like yourself, I far prefer farmers' markets where I can trace the food back to its origins.

I find myself deeply suspicious of pesticides reputed to be safe, for much the same reason that I'm suspicious of GM foods. There's too much politicking, too many agendas, and there's always statistics and science to prove, well, basically anything. Studies of long-term effects are sadly lacking, largely because most of these things haven't been in existence for particularily long.

Not that I don't enjoy being educated, but there's a part of me (not necessarily a part I like, but it's there) which really wishes I could eat at cheap burger places without thinking about bloated, immobile, hormone-crazed cows, fed on a hideous chemical concoction of lord knows what, spewing semi-toxic biological waste into water that eventually comes out of my tap.
i would like to add,all those growth hormones in the food make the females develope oh so nicely,at an ever increasing younger age.not to mention it makes the sports that more interesting to watch.nothing like a 200lb.high school freshman football player with 0 body fat..lol
damn when i was in high school,maybe 1 or 2 girls had breasts to speak of,the ball players were normal size/weight.now my 16 yr old is as big as me,and i am not small.but i guess it is a double edge sword for the girls...they all want to be maxim looking girls by the time they are 15,maybe thats why breast cancer is going thru the roof?
i think it was the gang of four band that said it,or maybe grace slick said"i don't care if my lettuce has ddt on it..as long as it's crisp"
this was mostly a joke so don't flame me.
actually very informative about the shrimp and bannanas,thanks.
boo for me i am allergic to shellfish,so shrimp won't be on my plate anytime soon :( but i do like bannanas.
keep in mind,africa has historically mismanaged there lands(whether by proxy or on their own)by failing to rotate lands,burning and numerous other counter productive,short sighted technigues.so,bannana producing is kinda de riguer for them(the earlier mentioned technigues that is)
maybe some of the agiie majors should go down and help them with newer more land friendly methods.unfotunately,i think the mthods they employ,as we do in alot of cases as well,are for faster turnover which result in greater and faster profit.that is the real challenge,also mentioned here,to produce enough to meet demand,but in a eco friendly manner,yet attain the volume desired.and never forget,it is a market driven world we live in.the smaller,eco friendly farmer can't compete with the large agribiz corporations.
i personnally don't think changing your eating habits will change that,but for my own health i try to eat organic,but i can afford too.if it bothers u ethically or morally,i support you as well.

Organic nuts suck ass. Stop being schmucks...

If you think you're fighting consumerism and everything that comes with it by spending 2x the normal price for groceries, please, send that money to a starving child in Africa via an infomercial.

At least you'll be doing some good. :rolleyes:

Why not do both? Lowest-bidder culture in developed countries is one of the (admittedly multitudinous) causes of hunger in the undeveleoped world.

On that subject, and it's not one we've touched upon yet, but consuming ethically is not, in my experience, necessarily more expensive in any case. Buying ethically from supermarkets tends to be an exercise in futility, yes, but exploring alternate avenues of purchase can be very fruitful. Markets, stalls, or even direct from farms. Sinuhue seems to eat a lot of hunted meat (and sustainable hunting is far easier than sustainable farming in this day and age). My eating habits tend to change with the seasons more than they used to (to reflect what's cheaply and locally available), and I probably eat slightly less meat, but my expenses haven't gone up all that much, and the quality of what I eat certainly has.

On that note, what are the ideological objections to ethical foods? I suspect Eichen just alluded to one, but I'd like to hear more :) I put the option in mainly because for completeness' sake, but apparently it's rather popular, and I am curious. So what're the thoughts there?

Shrimp, when fished, have a monstrous bycatch (I can pull some figures for you, if you want, but suffice it to say that trawling for prawns nets you all sorts of other stuff as well, most of which dies or is otherwise wasted).

When farmed, they require a mix of salt and fresh water. This is easiest to do on the coasts (which is where most commercially purchased shrimp come from), generally in southeast Asia, where widespread destruction of coastal mangrove forests and the attached ecosystems has resulted.

When farmed inland (often in Central Africa), with artifical salt ponds, a shrimp farm can remain operational for only a very short amount of time before the ground is so saturated with salt that the necessary balance of salty and fresh water is unobtainable, at which point the company running the farm will uproot and move elsewhere, leaving villages in economic ruin and with salted earth where there used to be agriculturally viable land.

Bananas are simpler: they're pretty delicate and need to be soaked in pesticides (life expectancy for banana pickers is shockingly low; in the 30s or 40s, if I recall correctly), and to make matters worse, they're grown in plastic bags (to keep bugs off), which are discarded by the thousands every day, generally in countries where waste disposal laws are lax or nonexistant (I'm sure you can imagine what millions of blue plastic bags soaked in pesticides will do to a waterway).


sweet Jesus! :eek:
they should make robot banana pickers!!

a poll prob, i eat good food (translates organic, nonGMO) for health benifits, and am a vegan for ethical reasons, yet i can only select one option...

also, it is predicted that embalming fluid will be unneccessary in future generations because of hte massive amounts of preservatives in them

Organic nuts suck ass. Stop being schmucks...

If you think you're fighting consumerism and everything that comes with it by spending 2x the normal price for groceries, please, send that money to a starving child in Africa via an infomercial.

At least you'll be doing some good. :rolleyes:
i buy from local farms and support the economy while fighting commercialism and pay the same if not less than what it costs at the ubermart.

a poll prob, i eat good food (translates organic, nonGMO) for health benifits, and am a vegan for ethical reasons, yet i can only select one option...


Maybe choose the option that is more important to you? P'raps I shoulda let y'all choose more than one option, but I tried to make 'em complementary :)

I'm fairly certainy that diet can be modified to expediate the process as well (keep in mind that most meat animals don't really need to be capable of independant locomotion, which probably simplifies matters).
Yes. Serious feeding in the last few weeks before the slaughter increases fat content and allows for more tender meat.

Organic nuts suck ass. Stop being schmucks...

If you think you're fighting consumerism and everything that comes with it by spending 2x the normal price for groceries, please, send that money to a starving child in Africa via an infomercial.

At least you'll be doing some good. :rolleyes:
You've brought up a good point, albeit in an annoying fashion.

Fair trade foods (bananas and coffees and such) are supposed to be produced both ethically and organically. A living wage is guaranteed. However, fair trade regulations are being stretched to include companies who don't necessarily fit the bill anymore. Those high prices for fair trade goods don't necessarily mean more profits for the producers, but rather a higher profit for the merchants themselves. Merchants in the UK were recently fined for artificially inflating the price of fair trade bananas to almost double their actual worth, and pocketing the money made from people's attempt to change their consumer patterns.

HOWEVER. Buying locally is much more effective and immediate. You can research local growers. You can tell if the price is fair and if the profit is going disproportionately to the vendors. Then you can go straight to the producer. Buying fruits and vegetables in SEASON make it more likely that local growers will profit. Paying attention to your food just makes sense...you need it to live for Christ's sake. Do you really want to pump yourself full of chemicals and preservatives? Do you really want local producers to go out of business competing with below-minimum wage producers in the developing world? This benefits neither the consumer, nor the producer, wherever they may be.

Found some absolutely delicious locally and organically grown beans at a market yesterday which cost me less per-volume than commercially produced canned shit. Life is good :D