Buy Local! Buy Fresh! Your Guide to Eating Locally on the Avalon

The Northeast Avalon Regional Economic Development Board has just created a wonderful map and guide to eating locally on the Avalon Peninsula. Here's a list of all the places you can get the map. You'll notice there is a paucity of fruit here, save for berries and bakeapples, and that means we'll just have to keep getting most of our fruit from off the rock.

Though I am horrified by today's industrial farming methods and how most livestock are cruelly treated and injected with all kinds of drugs to keep the bottom line pumping, if you are going to eat meat, please make an effort to support our local farms. When my mom was in town, we went to the St. John's Farmers Market and got some eggs and hamburger from Oliver's Farm. This is a much better option than buying Maple Leaf or Country Ribbon. "It's fresh because it's made right here?" Just because it's "made" here doesn't mean it's fresh. A guy I know said that if anyone were to ever take a tour in there, they'd never eat chicken again. I'm pretty sure he's right.

Speaking of horror, scientists are saying that pigs have the intelligence and awareness of 3 year-old children. That shouldn't be too surprising since their DNA is so similar to our own. When the other pigs see their friends getting impaled on sharp hooks over the conveyor belts, the pigs in line squeal in terror because they know they are next. In 1999, when Hurricane Floyd hit North Carolina, an estimated 100,000-400,000 hogs were drowned because they were trapped in their CAFOs. Since they didn't know what to do with all the freshly-killed pink carcasses, they ground up the dead pigs and fed them to the live ones. Very efficient, I must say.

Please support your local farms. Big Agriculture is big trouble, and the small farmers get inevitably squeezed out because they simply can't compete with the big boys.

Here's an example of what happened to small Vermont dairies who tried to market rBGH-free milk. In order to increase milk production, cows got treated with rBGH, Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone. Monsanto called theirs Posilac. This is so the cows will lactate 15% longer than usual, thus increasing milk production by about 30%. Vermont wanted all milk that was made from Posilac-injected cows to be labelled. When Monsanto heard this, they fiercely lobbied the FDA to prevent the label. Bad for business, you see. And when dairies tried to advertise that their milk was rBGH-free, Monsanto threatened to sue them.

rBGH-treated milk was banned in the European Union in 1993, and Canada banned the practice because they were concerned about the health of the cows. Dairy cows can live up to 15 years, but when treated with rBGH, they only survive 1-2 years. Go Canada! My choice? Don't drink milk at all. There is no reason to and every reason not to.