Quote:
Originally Posted by Penn
Recently, the national retail food-marketing platform has undergone a cause and effect transformation, fueled in part, by informed consumer demand for fresher and healthier food options. Arguably, consumer awareness is in response to the 24/7 format of chef /doctor hybrid cooking shows focusing on clued-up healthy food choices. Mediatized to enlist viewers, public concern is apprehensive over the supply chain related to food safety, health, and medical issues as they correlate to the impact of industrialized farming methods maximizing production through genetic engineering and pharmacological processes as both unhealthy for human consumption, and not sustainable.
Supporting factors effecting consumer reaction are the processes employed in the harvest and storage system consequences utilized in the food chain after harvest. In the week ending January 08, 2015 the USDA accounted for the following: http://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/sj_ls711.txt
Just four companies, combined, processed the mean 697.8 million poundage of meat slaughtered. They handled 52% of the beef (321.2lbs), 51% of the pork (373.2lbs), and 50% of the poultry market in just 22 plants, averaging 231K animals per plant, with 57.29 animals per second processed. The USDA inspects less than 1% of all meat products. Sanitation, e-coli, and salmonella bacteria concerns are driving visceral consumer reaction to resource locally. |
Way down here in little 'ole NZ our family has been focused on eating healthy, fresh, and as local as we can for a long time.
Our #1 concern after reading how China(a huge global source of processed, packaged, and canned foods) is going thru Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" meets Bladerunner, we don't knowingly let ANY foodstuffs from China in our house or in our children's stomachs.
You might be surprised at how hard that can be.
Food labeling can be intentionally deceptive and misleading.
We've learned that repeatedly just with peanut butter for our oldest.
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The other thing that gets me is only 22 plants processing half the protein consumed in the US.
I'd be worried not just about USDA, but external threat assessment as well.