With the increased scrutiny on global food imports into the United States, it got me wondering where TFPers get their food from. Do you prefer to shop at a traditional grocery store? Do you care where your produce comes from? Or are you a fan of farmer's markets? Or perhaps you only shop at Costco or Sam's Club. There are so many choices for consumers these days.
The fact is, WHERE the food on our table comes from is increasingly complicated, because consumers want the choice of apples in April. Produce in most traditional grocery stores can come from as far away as Chile or New Zealand.
This is the article that brought about my interest in the matter:
Quote:
Black pepper with salmonella from India. Crabmeat from Mexico that is too filthy to eat. Candy from Denmark that is mislabeled.
At a time when Chinese imports are under fire for being contaminated or defective, federal records suggest that China is not the only country that has problems with its exports.
In fact, federal inspectors have stopped more food shipments from India and Mexico in the last year than they have from China, an analysis of data maintained by the Food and Drug Administration shows.
China has had much-publicized problems with contaminated seafood — including a temporary ban late last month on imports of five species of farm-raised seafood from China — but federal inspectors refused produce from the Dominican Republic and candy from Denmark more often.
For instance, produce from the Dominican Republic was stopped 817 times last year, usually for containing traces of illegal pesticides. Candy from Denmark was impounded 520 times.
By comparison, Chinese seafood was stopped at the border 391 times during the last year.
“The reality is, this is not a single-country issue at all,” said Carl R. Nielsen, who resigned from the Food and Drug Administration in 2005, after 28 years. His last job was director of the division of import operations and policy in the agency’s Office of Regulatory Affairs. “What we are experiencing is massive globalization,” he said.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/bu...rssnyt&emc=rss
So if we have produce and other foodstuffs from these countries coming in to our country, certainly not all of them are getting caught. Does your food come from foreign sources? Do you know? Does where you shop determine how much you pay attention to the source of your food?
As for my own answers to my questions, I try to shop at a variety of places--one is a traditional grocery store that stocks local produce, the other is the local food co-op with only local, organic produce, and the third is the weekly farmer's market. In summer we buy almost all of our produce from the farmer's market, and I generally only buy what's in season, as if it's out of season it's more likely to come from a foreign source. Our local food co-op has a campaign called the Local Six in which they label products that come from our county and the five counties surrounding it. I can get everything from goat cheese to lambchops to wine to bagels to strawberries grown or produced within the Local 6 (though since my significant other is vegetarian, we usually just stick with buying Local 6 tempeh or tofu). I think it's an interesting concept.
Does the new global food network concern you at all?