This past week I was proud to participate in a series of guest blog posts over at the Fait Ici blog. (Fait Ici is a store on the edge of Little Burgundy that focuses on organic and sustainable products. They sell more than just food and a lot of their stuff comes from Quebec.)
My post went up today and it gives some information from a recent UN report that ranked modern agriculture and food production processes as the main source of concern for overall negative effect on the environment, surpassing even fossil fuels. I also offer seven tips for treading lightly with our food choices. Check it out!
Other guest posts this week included:
- Élise Desaulniers from Penser avant d’ouvrir la bouche, who kicked off the series with an introduction to the film “Meat the Truth”, which will be playing at Cinéma du Parc later this month;
- Avid foodie and restaurant reviewer FoodGuyMontreal, who wrote about the importance of buying fresh and local;
- Ariane Carpentier of Épicurbaine, who gave us a humorous look at some foodie stereotypes;
- And locavore Mariève Savaria from Brut’Alimentation, who wrote about community markets and gave us some recipes.
I encourage you to check out their posts and their respective blogs. Enjoy!
Photo credit: Ivan Prole
You wrtote (on Fait ici) :
“Eat lower on the food chain. In a nutshell, this translates into eat more veggies and less (or no) animal products.”
I confess that I’m not how sure cutting meat is supposed to lower my environmental impact.
The beef I eat is fed with grass. In their own damn pasture. Except over winter, when it’s hay from the field next door.
And as a meat-eater who takes responsibility for his food choices, I would appreciate it if mouthy self-righteous vegetarian hypocrites like Peter Singer would THINK before proposing anything as insulting and counterproductive and reactionary and baby-with-the-bathwater as the Meat Tax.
t!
(left out “city-dwelling imperialist”)
You’re already very conscious about what you’re eating and where it comes from; and you’re lucky that you have pasture-raised beef from near by. Most people eat factory-farmed meat that has been fed feed grown with pesticides and fertilizer, and is then shipped in refrigerated trucks across great distances. Plus, many people have a fairly meat-centric diet. For these typical consumers, eating more veggies and less meat should reduce their environmental impact.
There has been some debate–and of course, spin–around the environmental impact of grass-fed beef vs conventional beef or vegetarianism. Because of the spin each interest group puts on the data it is hard to figure out what actually comes out ahead. Most studies I’ve seen are flawed, in that they are selective about which environmental impacts they take into account (for example, there was one recently that looked *only* at greenhouse gas emissions and not other environmental stressors that concluded that grassfeed beef was worse because grassfed cows are slaughtered later and release more methane over their lifespan!)
> you’re lucky that you have pasture-raised beef from near by
I will agree halfway. I am lucky – very lucky – that our financial picture permitted the move to the country. But it was not luck that enabled us to perceive the possibility and advantages of such a change. And then actually doing it was a courageous act, one which tests us daily.
+++
The Wife and I discussed the making of good choices following me writing this, and she made the excellent point that there is no One Answer, that making the choices depends on what your living conditions are and what your personal disposition is.
The idea that solutions can only be brought about on an individual basis is frightening to many people, because they don’t trust individuals to be responsible or perceptive or whatever else is required. I sympathise with them; this mistrust is rooted in an undeniable daily abundance of observable irresponsible behaviours.
But while I symapthise, we do ourselves a disservice when we pretend the solution is easy, and there was too much of that kind of approach in the “Meat The Truth” post you linked to, which is what prompted my last paragraph.
As your own post in the same venue pointed out, it is a question of what a person *can* do, due to internal and external factors. I admit we also have adopted some shortcuts in this house, because we do not find it possible to check and verify everything. We would like to, but trying to put it into practice would drive us crazy.
t!
Amanda! It was a THRILL to have you. So glad the initiative was well received
Really appreciate you writing this post on our series!
JW