R North’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Here at Equal Exchange we've been trying since 1986 to get folks (including retailers, our fellow food companies, and the public) the think & care more about where their food comes from, and especially about the farmers and farm workers.  And over that time there's been a monumental change for the better. And we continue to see this moving in the right direction.

  Tom is right to point out that the survey didn't disentangle people's concerns over health from those over safety, but the reality is that both of those are woven in with many other concerns, including:

  the environmental impact of food production techniques (like how fertilizers run-off is creating dead-zones)

  resource/species depletion

  animal welfare and cruelty

  sustaining rural farming communities

  social justice (think the Immokalee workers in FL, or child labor in cocoa)

  food-miles/CO2

  quality

  preserving/renewing food cultures (eg Slow Food )

  and simple curiousity about the back story of what we put in our mouth and feed to our family and guests.

  At any given time one of these issues might become more or less prominent, but from our accumulated experience we're confident that generally all of these concerns/interests will only continue to increase, both within individuals and across society more generally.

   

  On Consumers no longer want to be kept in the dark about food posted 5 months ago 3 Responses