On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 9:56 AM, Bob Sullivan <[email protected]> wrote: > Frank, > > It's a stupid bill, but...
Yes it is (see, we're agreeing!) ;-) > I enjoy eating animals. Yes, I know that. My post wasn't about whether it's ethical to do so. I know your position, you know mine, and we still like each other despite that. ;-) > I can't taste the difference in organically raised. First of all, because of silly rules and regulations as to what "organic" means, it may be a far cry from what most people think it means. About a year before I went vegetarian (which I was for maybe a year before becoming vegan) I saw grass-fed, pasture-raised steak in my local butcher shop. It was visibly different looking from the "regular" steak right next to it - less brown, more red. It looked good. It was twice the price, but at $10 for the steak I decided to treat myself. I wasn't normally a steak guy in my carnivorous days, but I have to say that was the best steak I ever had. Tasty, succulent, a treat to the palate! I think the issue is more than if something is "organic" - much of what is called organic comes from the same agribusinesses who produce "regular" stuff - they just don't add a few things (chemical fertilizer, replaced by manure or whatever) to allow them to legally call the stuff "organic". Agribusiness has successfully lobbied regulators so that they can, with a minimum of changes to their procedures, jump on the organic bandwagon. > And I prefer the food safety in the Agribusiness food chain. I know you'll disagree with this, but it's huge regional meat processing plants that are the danger here. E-coli or salmonella or any other contaminant that gets into the system of a huge meat processing plant that ships (literally) across the country can spread those contaminants far and wide very quickly and wreak havoc, causing illness and death before sources can be traced. These plants have full-time federal inspectors who simply can't effectively monitor everything that goes on in those huge facilities. One errant cut of an intestine during disembowelment can send poison out to huge areas very quickly. See the Listeria outbreak here in Canada, traced to Maple Leaf foods, one of our largest and most respected agribusinesses: http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2008/08/26/f-meat-recall-timeline.html Smaller abattoirs (which are fast disappearing due to federal laws requiring full-time on-site inspectors to be paid by the slaughterhouse) tend to be under less pressure to "speed things up", so they have fewer mistakes, and if there is an outbreak, it tends to be smaller, more local, and therefore much easier to trace and deal with quickly. cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
