We have family in from out of town right now, so I haven’t been updating, but I didn’t want you to think I had fallen off of the face of the earth! I finished The Omnivore’s Dilemma last week and I am so glad that I read it. If you haven’t gotten it yet, I really encourage you to do so! I went to the library today to pick up some books that were on hold for me, including Appetite for Change: How The Counterculture Took on the Food Industry and God and Country: How Evangelicals Have Become America’s New Mainstream. I plan on blogging about one or both of them in the next week 🙂 I’m just not sure which one will be a better fit for my blog yet 😉
I also wanted to share a link that I found this week for dairy industry rankings. This is a study of all the big organic dairy producers, and I think it is something that everyone who buys milk should read. Check it out here:
http://cornucopia.org/dairysurvey/index.html
I was inspired to find the above page after my dh brought home some Safeway Organic “O” Milk. I was less than impressed. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I purchased milk, and I told him that he was encouraging factory farming. He pulled it out of the fridge and showed me the drawing of the cows in the pasture on the front of the carton, which made me seriously roll my eyes. I then decided to prove myself right (very different from proving him wrong, lol.)
Sure enough, I was totally right 😛 He then agreed and sent on this article about Aurora Dairy, which supplies not only Safeway’s “O” brand but also Wild Oats, Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, and a few other of the big names. Please be conscientious about what you buy. It is not fair to choose to be ignorant and thus support factory farms that abuse animals. If you feel you don’t have the time to research it, let me know, and I’ll even research it for you! I want there to be no excuses! I understand that in some areas there are no better options. In that case, if you must drink milk, then I agree that the organic factory farm is better than the non-organic one. I just want to get the word out there that not all farms are created equal though. Just because there is a picture of happy cows on the cover does not mean there are happy cows making your milk.
I hope everyone is having a great weekend 🙂 Thanks for the PMs, emails, and comments over the past week. You guys are the best!
I’ve ordered the book from my library.
One of the reasons I love reading blogs is that none of my real life friends read enough to satiate my thirst for discussing books, and my voracious literary appetite.
do you do anything to support ethical farming (or business) outside of which companies you purchase from?
Do you have any thoughts on how the ethics of food fit in with programs like WIC and food stamps, which in our state can’t be used for organic products. Or say, all of the farmers at our local farmers’ marked who don’t use organic practices?
Thanks for posting that link- I saw that a long time ago and meant to bookmark it.
We love love love my mom’s fresh raw goat’s milk but she dried up her goat in November so we’re back to store-bought milk. We mostly use Organic Valley because the delicious creamline milk ends up being $12.76/gallon and that’s too much even though we don’t go through milk like some people.
Right now I’m torn between the local and Organic choices… sometimes I can get (and afford) both and other times I have to choose based on finances. I hate when that happens.
There’s something weird about buying Organic black beans from China, ya know?