[persiphone]

Originally Posted by ruffryder

Easier said than done, shop local. Do not shop Wal-Mart or go to McDonald's. You can only shop local if there is local farmers. There are not a lot! I went to a local grocery store, but guess what, it gets it's food from the same place Wal-Mart does and it was more expensive. Farmers sell their product to Wal-Mart and other major grocery stores because there is money in it for them. Why sit outside at a farmer's market all day and hope for someone to buy their stuff when a grocery chain will buy in bulk and take all the crop. I worked wholesale meat and produce for 8 years. We bought bulk from farmers and sold to grocery stores, restaurants, and schools. So farmers stuff does actually make it into stores and around town and stays in the U.S. McDonalds buys their beef from local farmers. . . I also worked 6 years in beef production. We got our cattle from local feed lots, slaughtered them, cleaned them up and distributed the meat to McDonalds and other major restaurants and grocery chains. We even shipped to Japan and handled organic meat for the customers that wanted it. I worked Quality Assurance so I know what is in the meat and how safe it is when it comes out of a meat plant. I have taken many tours from where the cattle comes from to how it is slaughtered, packaged, and shipped. You may not want to shop Wal-Mart or McDonalds, however you should research where they actually get their product from because some of it is from local farmers and from the U.S. We may not like McDonalds and Wal-Mart but they do provide many jobs for people in the U.S. Just a thought..

i see what you're saying. it's gonna take me a minute to deconstruct all your points carefully, but i'll try to break it down. first lemme say that i agree....not all places in America have the basic option of buying from someplace OTHER than Walmart and to be honest, i think that is exactly the point of Walmart. they certainly didn't want to make buying from anyone else easier on the consumer and Walmart has basically monopolized many food markets, and that, in itself, goes against what we, as consumers, deserve as a liberty in America. corporate monopolies used to be regulated and now they are wildly out of control and taking over, which leaves us with....no choices as consumers.

also, farmers are not making money selling to Walmart. they are just as trapped in that system as the consumer is. when a business like Walmart drives the prices down on everything, it's the farmer that eats that cut, not Walmart. so they end up getting caught in the grow more treadmill rather than the grow better sustainable life cycle because they have to grow more to make ends meet, if they can even do that. and they end up cutting corners, like migrant labor (which is a whole other discussion) that will work those thousands of acres of fields for well below minimum wage illegally. adding onto this...it's corporations like Walmart that have pushed, and got approved, the kinds of visas that allow people from other countries to come and work in agriculture that leads to illegals staying here after those visas have expired. it's actually NOT coming from hordes of people running across the border in the middle of the night. so there are huge impacts that institutions like Walmart represent that are grossly negative on the well being of the country as a whole, from immigration, to agriculture, to food laws, to economic depression and the list goes on and on.

now farming organically is about 3 times as expensive (and that's a conservative number) as farming commercially. AND....out of season produce, i garauntee you, comes from other countries. the in season products that come from other countries are there because it's literally impossible for American farmers to produce those products for cheaper. their hands are tied. you can only drop the prices so much before you're out of business. which leads me to farm subsidies. what alot of people don't understand is that farming has become ONLY profitable IF it is subsidized. it's a hidden cost that most people aren't aware of. so when you get you paycheck, taxes taken out of your check go to subsidizing agriculture. the consumer is paying for that. THEN.....when you go to the store and you get an orange from Florida.... you're paying for that orange. again! but you're not complaining because that orange was only 50 cents. but how much have you already paid for that orange in the form of tax dollars? so what we have is this illusion of "cheap food" that really, isn't cheap at all. and we have no say in the matter....that's the real kick. AND....it's corps like Walmart that push for those ag subsidies, btw. they practically wrote them. so basically, corps like Walmart are deciding how our tax dollars are being spent for us. i dunno about you, but i kinda have a problem with that.

oohhhh where do i start about the beef? *deep sigh* sooooooo.....once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there were some cows that became steak. i'm just kidding. this stuff depresses me. i need some humor. so what if it wasn't funny. so a couple decades ago there were roughly 5 meat corporations that owned somewhere around 20% of the beef supply...the remaining percentage was privately owned, ie cattle ranchers. today there are 4 that own 80 or 85% of that supply and there are less than six slaughter houses in the country that handles all of the nations commercial beef supply. during this time, monopolies (it's a theme here) emerged in the meat industry and in the name of driving prices down, we now have feedlots, injections, subsidized commercial corn (means it's not fit for human consumption) being fed to cows, and all kinds of shady dealings like cutting labor corners (insert illegal immigrant here) so that Walmart can sell beef at a certain price. see where i'm going with this? production in slaughterhouses have tripled because the beef industry, like the farmers, have to now produce in bulk to turn a profit. they're not making a whole lot of money either, or else they wouldn't need to produce in bulk. feedlots are a nightmare to the environment, as well. it creates a host of disease problems, a host of environmental problems, and it's a system entirely dependent on oil to work. all of which are bad and not sustainable forever.

can i talk about McDonalds for a sec? the "beef" that makes up a McDs patty is actually the bits that are sent to a factory that (is also entirely dependent on oil) specializes in grinding them all up and then spraying it all with ammonia, wrapping it in plastic and shipping it out to your neighborhood drive thru. mmmm delish. a McD's burger bun has a grotesque amount of ingredients in it (like 80 i'm not kidding). i'm using the bun as an example, but that's basically the theme for the entire menu. it's not actually food. it's ....something ...else.....that is designed to taste and look like food. colleges offer degrees in this stuff. you can get a bachelor's in "food sciences" and then go to work for Kraft for 100 grand a year trying to make cheese that will never mold. or a bun that looks like bread but actually isn't. but no one offers a bachelors in sustainable agriculture. coincidence? i think not.

ok what's next. oohhh quality assurance. i love this one. i cannot count how many times there has been a meat (of sort) recall in the past ten years there has been that many. and they've been huge, too...like in the millions of pounds kind of thing....not like oops we dropped a side of beef on the floor and it contaminated 300 pounds of beef, no. millions of pounds. millions! that's an astounding number to me. i think the most recent one was ground turkey. the one that sticks out, though, was the one that woke me up and that was 2 million pounds of ground beef that was recalled and it stopped me cold from buying commercial ground beef and i took my son off the school lunch program. children have died eating commercial beef in america. DIED. so please tell me about quality assurance. i would looooovvveeee to know more and i'm not being sarcastic at all. on side note, the beef industry had legislation passed that actually permits slaughterhouses that keep having "issues" from shutting down while also keeping the public from being able to sue them. i gotta say, i'm not feeling super confident about any quality assurances that might be in place, as you say. cuz....the proof is in the pudding, man. you can't deny that massive and commonly occuring meat recalls in this nation is a good example of quality nor is it very assuring.