I didn't know about frozen fish. I don't eat seafood of any kind anyway. After everything I've read about Japan (and even California) the last six
months I'd stop, if I had been.
I knew about veal. Hideous.
I knew about duck liver. Also hideous.
One thing that really irritates me is how difficult it is to just find something that is decent.
I will pay more for a cow that had a decent grass-fed life, a chicken with a decent bug-scavenging life, with space and fresh air and a Temple
Grandin-style ethical end. I will pay more for a vegetable that was not part of an agrichem process annihilating whole ecosystems. But there's not a
lot of options in the few stores near me (mostly super walmart. When they moved in, all our other grocery stores died, except a super tiny one that is
now larger).
They did start carrying 'organic chicken.' That was like choirs-of-angels-sing surprising. And just two weeks ago they started carrying kerrygold
butter, OMG, I've had to pay $100 in bulk online to get that stuff for $5.50US per 8oz but now my local SWM sells it for $3/8oz (at least their intro
price), that's awesome. So perhaps they are coming around... very slowly... to having at least something that isn't total crap for sale.
I'm still stuck there with fatfree allegedly-greek yogurt (WTH is that? yes definitely, let's remove natural animal fat and add carageenan and gums
instead) and all dairy thicker than milk with carageenan (the primary ingredient used to give lab animals tumors. I can't find a single source of
half&half, cream, or creamcheese, without it locally). And of course aside from the organic chicken, every meat even whole turkeys and chickens are
"up to 15% solution" (that's a LOT!) by weight.
I actually once calculated, if you accounted for the artificially increased sodium-and-whatever-injection into the chicken, the organic was literally
like 3 cents more per pound. I mean this idea that somehow meat is cheaper if we torture animals horribly in vile conditions, and nearly unaffordable
if we raise them decently and kill them in the most humane fashion, is actually bogus. It isn't that there is no profit in doing it well. It is just
not as MUCH profit. Of course, if we made a major effort to buy the grass-fed stuff and so on, we would support the better industry and that could
change.
But I can't support it toward change if it's not for sale. And the big corps like walmart choose what is for sale. Right now, if WM made a major
effort to provide a line of grass-fed organic beef for example, people would buy it and the people selling it would make a profit and that part of the
industry would grow while the factory-notfarm part would shrink a little. But that would depend on someone with the power to make such decisions
caring.
The produce in the story is rotting now; the topsoil is horrible. Good quality produce does not rot, it just dehydrates. And it doesn't start
dehydrating until it is surprisingly old. I think I'm going to expand my backyard garden next year.
I once drove around 3 cities trying to find a butcher shop or slaughterhouse that had grass-fed -- even some grain in the winter, fine, but I wanted
cows that got to live in the fields (I *see* them when driving), rather than the factory sorts, and couldn't find them. So far what I've found is
farmers who raise cattle like this but it is all sold to people they know, it doesn't even go through commercial routes. So you have to have the cash
up front to buy a side of beef plus have a good sized chest freezer to store it, as opposed to being able to pick up a steak for dinner at a store, of
course.
And the second thing besides availability (the price for online grass-fed beef is actually insane. The people I know who from local farmers get a much
more reasonable price) is what's REAL.
By that I mean, the same vile-ethics that run all these industries also run the agencies (captured eons ago by corporate interests) defining terms,
and labeling laws, and so on.
So "free range" can mean "their profoundly overcrowded pen was outside of shelter, or had a skylight to see the sky" as opposed to "actually had space
to move." And feeding creatures gmo soybeans does not improve anything when that creature is designed to eat a variety of good grains and bugs. And
'organic' can be hacked in a variety of interesting ways, just like most labeling laws can, by those with an intent.
So to a great degree, even if you CAN find decent stuff, even if you CAN pay for it, you can't trust packaging to actually tell you what is real. It's
like you have to go visit whatever place actually sources the food to try and get an idea of the conditions, process, food supply, and more that was
actually the case for whatever you are buying.
A lot of people think that if we are stuck eating mostly only this or that, it's because we vote with our wallet on that so it's our own fault.
But I think if VALID INFORMATION were actually available about things -- no hiding gmos and nasty chems in screwed up labeling laws, no caveats that
make every attempt for words that mean something good be usurped by those doing bad, so it all is blended for the consumer -- and if the stuff were
actually available to buy to begin with --
-- I think enough people would make good decisions to at least start shifting these lousy agrichem and meatchem industries into a better market with
more concern for the input, the process, and the results.
But you can't buy it if it isn't available. And you can't buy "what was raised humanely and fed well" if you can't tell what's what from the
packaging.
edit on 15-12-2013 by RedCairo because: (no reason given)