Ignorance like this is how biofuels schemes prosper

Food? Farms? No connection at all!

Posted by JMG (Guest Contributor) at 10:24 AM on 11 Jun 2007

Read more about: food | agriculture | United Kingdom

From the BBC:

The Linking Environment And Farming organisation found that 22% of 1,073 adults questioned did not know bacon and sausages originate from farms ... The survey also found four in 10 people did not know yoghurt is made using farm produce, nearly half were unaware the raw ingredients for beer start off in farmers' fields and 23% did not know bread's main ingredients came from the farm.

(I'm not pinging on the Brits; I'm sure the U.S. is even worse.)

For story: Ignorance like this is how biofuels schemes prosper
6 Comments | Post a Comment

Here's another one

How many people know a cow has to have a calf in order to produce milk? In other words, milking cows are also calf-making cows and around half of all calves are male that go to veal... I am not subcribing to a vegan screed but many people don't know this.

Samuel Fromartz Author Organic Inc.

by Samuel Fromartz at 11:59 AM on 11 Jun 2007

I'd post a comment on this ...

... but I have to go milk my chicken.

These are only my personal opinions.

by Ron Steenblik at 12:15 PM on 11 Jun 2007

footprint

Fat Knowledge has been running some interesting posts along the food/fuels them. One is Ecological Footprint of Food Items.

There are some things you might not expect there, like chicken being lower in greenhouse gas (and energy) impact than eggs. There is also reinforcement for the better chicken than beef thing.

That said, I can only think that the poll was a reading comprehension problem, or people answering what they really thought was being asked ... surely they know farms are "upstream" for all foods (but those wild caught, and that one amusing exception to every rule - salt, the only food mined from the earth).

by odograph at 2:04 PM on 11 Jun 2007

oops

i must have read the chicken/eggs thing somewhere else. that one has eggs winning by a nose.

by odograph at 2:07 PM on 11 Jun 2007

Don't worry,

even scientists think this way. If they're paid to.

The South African National Biofuels Study says that diverting substantial amounts of maize into the ethanol market with have a 'negligible' effect on food prices...

I'm waiting to see what happens when the industry really gets going around here - so far we don;t have any large, working maize-ethanol plants, but 8 are in the pipeline. (US ethanol demand doubled our local maize prices in 2006. Maize is southern Africa's staple food. Go figure.)

Whiskerfish

by Whiskerfish at 1:23 AM on 12 Jun 2007

How many consumers know anything about slaughter?

How many people think about the fact that the animals killed for their meat typically get transported thousands of miles by truck without food or water to slaughterhouses, where they are sometimes not even stunned properly and are processed while still conscious. And most people don't even realize that the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1958 which requires that livestock be rendered insensible to pain prior to slaughter exempts poultry and rabbits. So because the USDA does not consider poultry and rabbits to be "livestock," they are routinely killed under cruel conditions in slaughter plants.

So before everybody rushes to go buy chicken instead of other meats because chickens release fewer greenhouse gases, folks should consider the conditions that these animals were raised and killed in. And also consider that greenhouse gases are only part of the environmental equation. Chicken factory farms put tons of manure into local waterways. And lets not forget about avian influenza, which is the result of the intensification of the poultry industry around the world. Though if we do have deadly bird flu outbreak that kills millions or billions of people, that may help the climate change problem somewhat. But we shouldn't have to choose between supporting climate change or bird flu. Try some organic, local legumes, nuts, veggies and whole grains for your protein sources.

If you need more inspiration, read the study by University of Chicago researchers, which found that eating vegetarian fare is more effective in reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions than replacing a gas-guzzler with a hybrid car.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~gidon/papers/nutri/nutriEI.pd ...

by amc89 at 9:57 AM on 12 Jun 2007

ADVERTISING POLICY

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