No argument there SFL. About my only complaint about the whole organic foods thing is that it’s just not possible to produce enough food using non mechanized means to feed the masses of people in the major cities. I have enough of a back yard that I could make a dent in feeding myself if I were to want to. My yard is an exception, especially with all of the new developments where the homes are as close together as fire codes will allow and the back yards are less than 20 ft deep. Why anyone would buy a $300k home on a lot that’s only 50 x 50 eludes me. The homes are beautiful, but so close together that you have no privacy.

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From my understanding, aside from the health benefits of eating organic, I think that buying LOCAL GROWN FOODS would be more of a positive step towards “fighting global warming”; auto pollution, oil/gas consumption, etc.

Here in San Fran, my wife and her friends go to one of the many LOCAL farmers market once a week.

Why buy something shipped all the way from Peru, when you can buy it or something better from your own area/state?

I also know that our ranchers primarily use corn feed rather than grass, which can create a fattier beef. The corn diets puts the weight on. If I understand the materials, grass is a better diet. I pass a few cattle farms on the way to the lake and I notice that they are all grass fed. As a side note that has nothing to do with a rain forest, the gfarms I pass along the route have changed crops this year. Last year, the majority of the farms were corn, yet this year, it looks like other crops have replaced them!

I might have mixed up two stories here…

The deforestation-for-Beef-grazing goes back to the big “McLibel” suit that was in the news a while back.

There was, more recently, a debate over McDonald’s (and a bunch of other fast-food companies) use of soya feed products that were grown on deforested chunks of Amazonian rainforest. Which is kind of ironic since the enemy turns out to be… SOYBEANS! Of course, these aren’t really the kind being used for meat substitutes; they’re being used to feed chickens (and occasionally to fatten up beef). So I missed a few steps (from amazon trees to soy farms to feed to livestock…). Here’s a link from McDonald’s own corporate resposibility response (in which they say they’re going to refrain from using soya): http://csr.blogs.mcdonalds.com/default.asp?item=189181

A lot of other fast-food restuarants were named as soya users; I haven’t found anyone else taking McDonald’s (impressively principled) stand.

I also didn’t mean to suggest that the U.S. was the sole problem (though I have other difficulties with U.S. agribusiness regarding state’s and town’s rights) — a lot of these disputes are centered on the UK (though McDonalds is multi-national anyway, so maybe the specific locale is of secondary importance).

Sorry if that was a bit rambling…

Rodolphe doesn’t merit such treatment. He offered a new source if his existing one wasn’t sufficient.

I don’t buy your lies. Are you smart enough to understand that?

It’s from a lefty source, so if you don’t buy it I’ll find another when I get back.

The processed foods we eat have a direct link to diabetes, heart disease, bad cholesterol etc., and maintaining a good diet is the best prevention.

I am not sure where you got the information on the rain forests being cut down, as 90% of the beef comes from domestic cattle ranches and the other 10% comes from ranches in Australia and New Zeeland

One of the reasons it’s more expensive is that you have to use other means to keep off pests, keep weeds away, etc. Organic foods also can’t be stored as long, so grocers can’t just leave them on the selves. Twinkies, on the other hand, will outlive us all.