Another couple of points -- along the organic vs. ...

2009-06-29T17:35:54.269-04:00

Another couple of points -- along the organic vs. local, etc. I used to buy Shaw Farm milk and still sometimes do. Shaw Farm is just a few miles from where I work (it's in Dracut). They have some beautiful green pastures but the cows, even their "organic herd" remain strangers to them. The cows mostly never leave the barn and they eat a diet of greenhouse fart producing corn -- organic corn in the case of organic cows. Even the small, local, organic dairy is driven by economics to keep the cows in the barn. Additionally, they are attended by Latin American immigrants, mostly working illegally and under who knows what conditions (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5626103 details this this story about Vermont's Mexican dairy workers). Milk is almost always produced under these unsustainable industrial conditions whether or not the cows/farms are organic or local. This leaves aside the issue that what's in milk that's harmful may come from the crap that lands on the food, be it corn or grass, from the atmosphere, not what is sprayed by feed farmers. The problems in the food system are deep, but industrial milk production smells sour to me whether it's local, organic or whatever. Vermont' organic dairy industry is collapsing because it was not sustainable.

The spotlight you shine is helpful, but for me, th...

2009-06-28T14:07:49.367-04:00

The spotlight you shine is helpful, but for me, this is not a story about the American consumer making a poor choice, but of the entire food-production system that is stacked against us -- subsidized by our tax dollars to make it financially inevitable to feed herbivores (grass-eaters) dried soybean and corn instead. This not only necessitates antibiotic use and causes direct health problems (MRSA superbugs, e coli and other pathogens), but many indirect problems ("externalities") such as accelerated petrochemical use, land erosion, greenhouse gas emissions, untreated animal feedlot waste, etc.

Federal subsidies and farm policies, not to mention abuse of human workers and animals, make it possible to buy a value-meal burger for less than the cost of a single head of broccolli. The reverse should be true, and federal policy should be altered to make it so. But the large firms that make their profits from the current system they brought into existence through lobbying would never allow that to happen.

The entire system should be overhauled, and only by informing individual consumers will that ever have a hope of happening.
We need to vote with our dollars. So only buy healthy food, organic food, and in particular food that does not cause environmental damage, human or animal suffering. Industry will follow the dollars wherever we lead them.

It's about much more than some farmers in Vermont.

Comments on Cuisine En Locale: Milk and other conflicts

Another couple of points -- along the organic vs. ...

The spotlight you shine is helpful, but for me, th...