The Omnivore's Dilemma
Human food is also recalled because of risks of E coli, listeria, salmonella, etc. Are we going to stop eating and only eat certain foods because of the recall of prepared meats, etc.? Even the food we grow ourselves can be contaminated without us knowing it.
The question to ask is WHY? Why are we having these food recalls? Human and Pet? What is causing us to have E Coli, listeria, salmonella and so forth showing up in our food system?
There are facts and there are opinions. Facts are facts and can only be argued to the truth at this moment in time. Opinions are individual.
When this all started with recalls on food, it made us begin to wonder and several other people as well, so we began to search out the truth. And the truth is, all of our food is in question. I have been in the chicken abattoirs in the south and I have seen them first hand. I have been in a CAFO in Texas and seen beef going to slaughter.
The stench, the filth, the inhumanity: That is the meat industry.
It is disgusting and disturbing.
The egg industry is so precarious that they won't even let a visitor in to view their facilities without full sanitation of the human because the chickens are so fragile, a single germ, will wipe out an entire house, 15,000 birds. The stench from a mile away is overwhelming. The conditions these birds live in is appalling. Humans have to wear respirators to go inside, for the air is so toxic, one can die from breathing it. Do you want to eat eggs from this place?
The industrial food processing corporations are a mess as well. How in the #@!! do you get E coli in SPINACH for god sake? E coli is a meat organism.
Is the USDA going to protect you? The corporations are a big part of the government programs and they are calling a lot of the shots here. Follow the human resource trail of executives for the USDA and you will be seriously concerned.
You have to answer these questions for yourself? You have to educate yourself as to what you are putting in your mouth and your childrens' mouths and your dog's mouth and then live by it. Ignorance is not an excuse anymore.
This is why we grow our own food. We eat only local. It isn't easy and it isn't cheap. We can't afford it anymore than the next person, trust me. But we must vote our convictions with our dollars. We shake the hand of the man that raises our eggs and we know how his chickens are treated and we do know what is in that egg. We trust this man. We KNOW what is in our garden down to the soil it grows in. I sleep very lightly in the summer while the garden is growing. I wake in the middle of the night watching for that evil woodchuck who wants to eat my crop. (I seriously try to redirect him to my compost pile where he can eat till his heart's content) We shoveled the manure and we paid for the seed and the bone meal and for the soil analysis.
There is no hidden cost in our food. We are paying for our eggs and their production. There is no big box worker, working for subsistence wages and poor health insurance, offsetting the cost of our food. There is no illegal worker tapping into the government system elsewhere in our food chain. There are no government subsidies in our food chain, however we do continue to pay the taxes for this to happen so others can buy "cheap" food.
Here is the scary part to us. NO we cannot STOP eating food. Humans and animals must eat to survive. Can a society be controlled through their food chain? Are you comfortable with where your food is coming from? If you are, then when the outbreaks occur you must accept them and not cry out because you have either done the research and accepted it OR chose to blindly accept that the USDA will protect you.
We know this isn't an easy feat to overcome. We know the system is broken and it is very hard for people to "opt out" of the convenience and the cheap food system. It is enormously hard. We are living it. Our puppy is now on a Proctor and Gamble product. GGRRRRrrrrrr Not by our choice but through greed and empire building of corporations. This is now another thing we must fix. We thought we had found an option we could trust. Sometimes we do get discouraged when we thought we were opting into a small company and then it is purchased by P & G and now it is part of the food system we are uncomfortable with because can we now trust P & G not to increase their bottom line by decreasing the quality of ingredients, all at the sake of our dear McKinley?
Look, these are all OUR opinions based on the facts at this time. Opinions. Educate yourself, search out the truth, test the truth against the times of society, draw a conclusion and form your conviction.
We all have to make a food decision and live by it.
Remember that you VOTE WITH YOUR DOLLARS.
Again our apologies for the lecture. We live very close to this conviction. Three meals a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, day in and day out. We think about this conviction. (MMM wants me to remind you all that he gets 2 meals a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and that is one less than Ron and Jan!!!
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It concerns us that our friends are not informing themselves and are going to be surprised some day when the food chain is controlling their lives or worse yet, the food chain breaks down and we are all starving.
~~~~~again, we respectfully step down off our soapbox~~~~~~~
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I had plans to stop feeding it when she turned one. In the end the recall didn't have anything to do with my decision, only that it is making me switch sooner.