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Underground > Head Shop >

Ethical eating: the human element.

19:00 / 25.04.02

In a not-so-distant thread on vegetarianism, Flyboy said: I just wanted to ask a question that I don't think has been raised so far - to what extent do the vegetarians on this thread who are thus for reasons of principle, also go to the trouble of ensuring that the food (and other items) that they buy has been produced without an unnecessary degree of human suffering?

At first, I thought, well, hey, I mean, there's a big difference between a sweatshop for sneakers and a farm. For one thing, sweatshops just aren't up to picky first world hygiene requirements. And tomatoes go bad if you have to ship them from Thailand.

But then I thought, whoa, wait. The white busses.

Las migras.

In my home, there's a nasty history with Big sugar. (So I try to use honey as often as possible at home. Not always, but often.)

There's some stuff out on the web, but I'd like to know more.

Ethical grocery shopping?

19:18 / 25.04.02

Hmmm...I tend to buy stuff at the Farmer's Markets in various places around town (Union Square in Manhattan, Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn...there are others I'm sure, those are the two I frequent the most) because you tend to be dealing with the actual people responsible for growing what you buy.

I also shop in bodegas (Are they cornershops in the UK?) a lot; they tend to often be family owned and less expensive in certain things.

19:36 / 25.04.02

I live just beside a strip of shops and try to shop in them most of the time. I can get just about everything I'd get at the supermarket - there's a good greengrocers, a health food shop, a chemist, etc, and all independant. I also go to the farmer's market that's started nearby, but then the greengrocer pointed out to me that it's damaging his business. He stocks a decent range of organic stuff too. So that's a tricky one.

I tend to take my lunch to work when I can but otherwise it gets tricky. There's an organic supermarket near the office but it's a bit too big and expensive and off-putting somehow. There are independent sandwich shops but I don't like their food much - they all seem to buy in big industrial buckets of "egg mayo" and the like to slap on bread. And then there's Pret a Manger, which does the most gorgeous sandwiches but got bought out by McD's last year and so I won't go. So now, I take my lunch most days.

I try. I can afford to buy organic and free trade stuff so I choose it if it's about.

19:37 / 25.04.02

Does this really help, though?

19:44 / 25.04.02

Well, help what exactly? If you can avoid supermarkets, that helps the growers to fight for decent prices, and helps the local shops to survive.

19:54 / 25.04.02

Sorry, and I should have added that, in all this, I am trying to buy local stuff and products that have been made by small scale businesses. Now, it's true that I don't know how ethical they all are, but I do my best to avoid the culprits I do know about.
And then I get drunk on fish-fining cleared beer and go for chips. But I still don't go to McD's, I promise!
I think ... it's hard but you do what you can, fnd out what you're buying and so on. I'm a loooong way from perfect in this and can be lazy and end up cadging a lift to Waitrose (a supermarket). But not often.

20:01 / 25.04.02

Does this really help, though? – grant

That's a vague question – help who?

Does shopping at the local bodega help? I say yes because I'm helping out a family – that means the husband and wife are both working, the kids help out after school, Grandma's making coffee. (Who's to say my continued business won't help send those kids to college?) I get a variety of beverages & foodstuffs – often from the Caribbean or Central America – that the supermarket doesn't carry. A smaller store means less overhead, so the prices are reasonable. It's community-based – if we want certain products, the bodega owner will find those products and stock them, provided that enough people in the neighborhood buy these products as to turn a profit for the bodega. (Example: my bodega has Spaten beer, which you don't find everywhere. But obviously I'm not the only one buying it because they've had it consistently for over 6 months!)

Does it help the migrants? I don't know. I do know that there is a migrant community in my immediate neighborhood, and the bodega is a far more comfortable and affordable choice for them to purchase food than the supermarket. The fact that the family at the Bodega are Spanish-speaking is a definite plus for the migrants (mostly Latino), and they find a lot of foodstuff from their native countries.

If this wasn't where you wanted the thread to go, give us a wee bit of direction

14:57 / 26.04.02

Well, I'm wondering about the actual stuff sold in the bodega. I mean, I've got one in my neighborhood, but have no idea who picks the produce or what the canning facilities are like for the beans. I know they sell Florida sugar, just like everyone, dig?

18:51 / 26.04.02

I see what you mean, grant.

There are organizations devoted into checking the labor practices of various companies and gauge their ethicality – they must have lists of who's cool and who's fool in terms of how they treat their workers. (if anyone has links, please post!

)Whether or not the bodega owners keep such things in mind when they choose which products to stock is another story.

It may just be a personal bugbear of mine, but organic/fair trade/health food is very, very expensive, and well out of the financial range of many people. (I know I certainly can't afford it on a regular basis.) It makes me mad that food that actually might be decent is only for those that can afford it – the rest of us eat shit, and then get castigated (ever so gently) for not paying more for the good stuff, which is better for you/better for the environment/better for the migrants/whatever.

If it was cheaper, we'd all be buying it – but it ain't. Is there anything we can do about that?

20:11 / 26.04.02

http://www.ethical-junction.org/ejs/

It may just be a personal bugbear of mine, but organic/fair trade/health food is very, very expensive, and well out of the financial range of many people. (I know I certainly can't afford it on a regular basis.) It makes me mad that food that actually might be decent is only for those that can afford it – the rest of us eat shit, and then get castigated (ever so gently) for not paying more for the good stuff, which is better for you/better for the environment/better for the migrants/whatever.

If it was cheaper, we'd all be buying it – but it ain't. Is there anything we can do about that?

Organic and ethical are in no way the same thing, or even linked. "Organic" produce from supermarkets is basically a con.

The problem I have is that there's no choice at all. If I want to buy onions, I have the choice between "normal" onions and "organic" onions, neither of which have fairtrade guarantees, and if I go to a corner grocer I just have one type of onion which they probably don't know the origins of anyway. Practically the only thing I can buy is fairtrade coffee.

The expense issue would be less of a problem if there was a mandatory requirement (or a tax penalty if not fulfilled) for shops to sell fairly trading goods. Of course, who gets to decide what's fair trade and what's not?

Supermarkets etc will only start selling fairtrade as standard when it becomes unprofitable for them to do so, which requires consumers to demand to know the origins and refuse those with dubious ones. The price of food would not go up significantly, and to be honest imported food is very cheap anyway.

Frankly, the majority of consumers don't seem to give a fuck. They'd rather pay 1p less per pound than take any sort of action.

20:33 / 26.04.02

Frankly, the majority of consumers don't seem to give a fuck. They'd rather pay 1p less per pound than take any sort of action. – fridgemagnet

I think that if the information was more forthcoming, more people would definitely act on it. As for preferring to pay less – well, what's wrong with that? Why should we pay more for "better" food, especially considering that we don't know if it *is*, indeed, actually better.

I apologize if my placing of "organic/fair trade/health food" confused anyone into thinking they were one and the same concept. They are indeed different, although sometimes they overlap and products described as either "organic", or "fair trade", or "health food" are often found in the same establishments and marketed in a similar manner. And – at least here in NYC – they're all bloody expensive.

23:50 / 26.04.02

Here's a couple of URLs (rather UK-centric I notice, hmmmm)

Green Choices a good list of links

Ethical Consumer

Ethical Performance

The Ethical Trading Initiative

Ethical Investors

Ethical Exchange

Goodness Gracious Meme

18:08 / 27.04.02

"And – at least here in NYC – they're all bloody expensive"

Same in the UK. Actually, might start a separate thread, as I've been thinking alot recently about the economics of eating.

16:20 / 29.04.02

Not entirely to the point, but I've noticed over the past few months that the local supermarket chain (Publix) is actually more expensive in some things than the big health food chain (Wild Oats) down the street. Soy milk, especially.

I wonder how one would even start researching this stuff to compile ethical eating lists for US food consumers....

17:16 / 29.04.02

It would be great to have information of some sort, Grant for the UK as well. Though how you'd go about gathering and verifying it, I don't know.

Since this thread started I've been thinking about the issies, and realised it's 100% easier to get information on the animal welfare side than human welfare. Probably because there's been pressure from consumers to provide the animal information, but also because to look at the human issues just opens big ugly cans of worms that the producers, supermarkets and so on don't want us to think about.