knowing what the questions are - part two
Labels are necessary in a grocery store. They’re all we got. Without them, we understand that what we’re buying is raised as any commodity is raised - with an eye to profits. There’s an anonymity there, an endless chain of middlemen and profiteers looking to imagine new, “value-added” products through processing and cutting corners. A bag of organic oats isn’t as valuable as a bag of dry, sugary cereal with multiple ingredients and processing costs. How is that? People will pay more for convenience and the desires of their tastebuds.
But when we leave the anonymous exchange of the grocery store behind and find our farmers, we can have conversations instead of relying on manipulated, dishonest labels. We can look around. We can use our senses to smell and look and feel the energy of the place. We can look into the eyes of the person growing or raising our food and ask questions that are important to us. What’s important to you? In general, we are a people separated from how our food is produced so we just don’t know. We don’t know industry practices around fertilizers, rodenticides, herbicides, vaccines, breeding, medications etc.. So let’s discuss a few of these.
Let’s start with vaccines. Some animals come to the farmer already vaccinated. Others, born on their farm, will be vaccinated as well. What they’re vaccinated with is up to the farmer. There’s a slew of vaccines on the market for common ailments in any given animal to specific diseases seen in specific areas. There’s now a growing awareness of mRNA vaccine development for farm animals. But vaccinations as a