Where does our FOOD come from???

[patandchickens]

it's frustrating when you're doing your best to try to be responsible about what you consume...when you can't even figure out where it's really made

If it's important to you, I would suggest maybe approaching it from the other direction. (The *traditional* direction, in fact )

Rather than "this is what I want, what brand/source shall I buy?", you can instead approach it as "I am looking around and here are the local-sustainable-whateverelseIcareabout things available to me, now how much variety can I generate from those ingredients".

You may well still choose to buy other ingredients from further away or more mysterious sources; but at least you will be buying as MUCH known-origin food as possible.

It may however necessitate cooking according to what you have on hand, rather than the modern habit of cooking according to whim.

Pat

 

[abifae]

Rather than "this is what I want, what brand/source shall I buy?", you can instead approach it as "I am looking around and here are the local-sustainable-whateverelseIcareabout things available to me, now how much variety can I generate from those ingredients".

Pat

That is what I learned too. When I realized how toxic things were and decided to buy local, it changed the entire way that I shopped!!!

 

[Up-the-Creek]

The meat we consume is local,..we raise most of it. The veggies,..I plant and can them or freeze them. The fruit is always bought local. BUT,...as I stated before my kids love PB,..I like oats,..I bake A LOT,...I keep a pretty well stocked pantry and I do COOK everyday sometimes 3 times a day. We have no "speciality" stores where we live,..Walmart and Krogers is about it. I would like to "try" to be responsible about buying any and all of our groceries and make sure it is a product of the USA,...but how can you??? I guess I could grow my own peanuts to make the kids PB and sow me some oats,....grow some wheat and grind my own flour,...make sure I buy heirloom seeds,..not nothing geneticly modified,.... I will do more research on the subject,...there should be a law that they have to put on the label what country of orgin the product is from,...not only who distributes it. :/

 

[i_am2bz]

there should be a law that they have to put on the label what country of orgin the product is from,...not only who distributes it. :/

Yup.

 

[newmochick]

Have you thought about calling them and asking? Yes I know it takes time so do it only for those products you buy often. Their first question will be are you from an organization. Tell them, no, just a concerned consumer wondering what I am eating.

I called the makers of triminic asking them were it was made, wasn't stated on the box or bottle. The customer rep argued with me that it was on the label! Finally she pulled up a label on her computer screen and realized that it wasn't listed. After checking, told me that it was made in the US. I told her that they need to fix the label and state that because next time I won't buy it!

All P&G products state distributed by them, they don't make anything anymore like the good old days .

If more consumers demand the origin of the food, they would put it on the label. They just don't think we care or can read!

 

[patandchickens]

Two big difficulties with any country-of-origin labelling laws for many of hte kinds of products you are describing:

1) oftentimes it changes according to what's cheapest at the moment. So the batch run thru the factory last week may have been from Country A, but what's going thru next week may be from country B or even a mix of several countries of origin. Accurately reflecting these changes on a label would be a challenge to say the least (especially with the mixed-origin situation).

2) would you really TRUST them, anyways? AFAIK the work that has been done on checking origin labelling in seafood -- which being a whole unprocessed thing is relatively (if expensively) easy to check back on its origin -- has shown that "incorrect" (I'll leave it at that, and I'm sure some of it probably just is mistakes/oversights) labelling is RIFE.

I agree it would be nice in a perfect world and all that but I do not think there is any meaningful chance of it ever happening (not during my lifetime anyhow) and so I think it is better to learn to live with the current situation one way or another.

JMHO,

Pat