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Title: Loblaw's price cut stirs hope of grocer's price war
Category: Business
Posted By: WDHIII
Date: 2009-08-12 08:51:37
Canadian

   

How about some savings out West?

   

MEH.

Just means more produce imported from the third world, more cheap, pesticide-saturated, genetically modified filler, more hormone and drug-laced meat, more multi-national factory farm garbage contaminating our diets and food supply, putting our family farmers into bankruptcy, causing the proliferation of antibiotic resistant bacteria and hormone-enhanced 12 year old girls with prematurely developed DD chests. Not to mention driving down the wages of retail workers. I could care less.

   

Then, buy "bio". If I don't care about cheap food, it's my choice to be able to buy it.

   

I never said it wasn't. It should just be clearly labeled so consumers are aware when they're buying it, which they're not. The wording I used above would be sufficient on the label.

Also, gov't should not be enouraging that type of food through its tax and trade policies which not only make that poison garbage cheaper, but make the alternative more expensive.

   

It's sure that better food will be more expensive. It has always been like that. When I buy 2 boxes of Kraft Dinner for 1$, I understand that it's cheap food and that eating whole grains pastas with home made sauce would be much better for my health.

And it's written on each food what's in it. The salt, trans fat, ingredients like MSG.

I don't see the problem at all. It's better for everyone because with more choice, all the prices drop. For the rich and for the poor.

   

.. out West, Loblaws buys B.C.'s T&T Supermarket for $225 million.
I'm guessing prices here won't change.

   

I'm not talking about a lack of nutritients, I'm talking about bad shit that's deliberately ADDED TO the food to make it cheap...much of which is not required to be labeled. For example, "ingredients" do not disclose whether the fruits were drenched in pesticide or whehter the pig farm your pork comes from dumps its manure full of antibiotics into the local waterways causing the spread of drug-resistant bacteria. It also does not say whether the chickens had their beaks broken off so they wouldn't peck eachother to deaths in over-crowded cages or were starved for 2 weeks so their bodies are shocked into another egg-laying cycle before they die.


The laws also allow you put "product of canada" on imported produce if Canadian investors are involved in the foreign farming operation or its import, so patriotic canadians who want to support their local economy buy produce thinking it was grown here when it wasnt. There is also no labelling law for genetically-modified food or animals that are fed gm food and/or growth hormones and/or drugs and/or their ground-up relatives (the latter is only banned for sheep and cattle due to mad cow but still legal for all other species).


Interestingly enough, 50% of the perishable food on North American supermarket shelves goes straight from the shelf into the store's dumpster so when we waste half the food we have and prices are still escalating, you know there's something really wrong with that market and there's more than just supply and demand going on. The food market is probably one of the most distorted markets in the world.

   

Just a little note for you people that have never been on a farm in your life's before.

Antibiotics are expensive, farmers don't give these animals antibiotics unless the animal is showing signs of a sickness. Lots of them go to market without ever getting shots. They get vaccinations to prevent disease, just like people do.

And no, farmer's don't dump their pig manure into water ways, at least not in Alberta. If they did, they would be shut down. It's held in lagoons and then spread on their fields and then worked in as fertilizer. You could say there may be runoff, but it would be minimal.

   

not family farmers, but large multinational factory farmers like the Taiwan Sugar Corporation do and they produce most of the food in the supermarket now. They are called "intensive livestock operations". The reason they ply their animals with antibiotics is because they have so many thousands of head of livestock in such close quarters -litteraly penned in nose-to-tail or cheek-to-cheek in some cases- that they pass germs and disease between them.

The run-off from spray-fields and lagoons is a known problem with factory pig farms, thats why Ontario and Alberta and New Brunswick received a sudden influx of intensive hog operators in the 90's and early 2000's who were run out of Europe and states like North Carolina. The waste they produce far exceeds what can be responsibly disposed of in spray fields and ends up in the local waterways, and the lagoons have seepage and flood in rainstorms. And those are the ones that are following the law, there are plenty that break the law and directly discharge the waste to ground water.

So I'm not talking about the last remaining Ol' Macdonalds and Farmer Browns struggling out there with a few dozen head, I'm talking major multinational corporations with a few thousand head packed in like sardines on a few acres.

   

Personnaly, I don't really care about animal rights and PETA-like conspiracies so if I want cheap chickens, I don't care how they are grown. If I want good chicken, I will take a better grade or Prime-type chicken.

   

Ya well, some people didn't care about slavery as long as they could get cheap cotton. At some point morality has to come into the equation, no?

   

You are trying to compare a human being to a chicken ?

   

Nope, I'm guessing prices will rise. Somebody has to pay that $225 million...

   

I knew you were going to say that. Ok, so let's say a human and a chicken aren't comparable and that humans are more valuable than chickens. Is that the only thing that matters? Human value =100, so animal value = 0? They feel pain and suffering too, doesn't that mean ANYTHING at all? Not even a little? It's not enough to kill them and eat them, we have torture them now too, just so you can save a couple pennies and Taiwan Sugar Corp can make an extra billion?

What does that mean, that its ok to abuse animals in any circumstance like the kids who beat that moose to death in the other thread? That animals have absolutely no more value whatsoever? That cockfights should be legal and if I want to torture a kitten to death just for kicks on a friday night there is nothing even slightly wrong or immoral about it? Follow me here on this....

I'm sure you think that there is SOME DEGREE immorality in torturing animals, like if you walked past a bunch of kids who were skinning a cat alive just for fun, you'd probably be disgusted and offended and intervene...at least most people would.

If I assume therefore that your postion is that since there is a benefit to YOU of cheaper food, the morality of animal torture commited by big agri-business is irrelevant, then essentially you are allowing your morals to be "bought off" or are being hypocrital.

My point is that if something is wrong, it is wrong whether you benefit from it or not. How can something be less wrong because you profit from it? If you oppose something, put your money where your mouth is and vote with your pocket-book. Supporting something you consider to be otherwise immoral simply because it interferes with your personal benefit is no different whether you're talking about slavery or animal cruelty or anything else. It's tolerating something that you know is otherwise wrong for your own self-interest.

   

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