Food Inc

I have just watched Food Inc and thought I'd Spread the Word (yep I watched it via one of links to my favourite sites Sprword.org).  I do love watching those films and reading books such as Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation but live in my little bubble that tells me that surely in Australia we don't have the high level's of industrialised food production that happens in the US.  But the food we buy is still cheap... so are we industrialised?  I see the cattle that is farmed when we drive up to Howes Valley and they are grazing grass and not fed in feedlots... but then where are all these "grain fed" steaks coming from?  It scares me to think that they are marketing grain fed as a good thing when it's definitely unnatural for cows to be eating corn...  


So what actions am I taking as part of watching this?  (Especially since I've now watched many similar food related documentaries including the very disturbing Earthlings).  Well now I will insist on buying organic/free range chickens (even if it's $20) as well as free range and as organic as we can get it other meat as that way we may become more aware of the meat we're eating.  We are also challenged by our friend Nikki to eat more vegetarian foods where we can.  I'm sure we can do it even if it's more effort.. and even if Chinese food doesn't readily lend itself to vegetarian (well maybe it's just us use to eating the foods we have been!)


We'll also be ramping up our efforts at Howes Valley to get more of a food productive area going.  So in went some fruit trees this weekend with a few more to go.  We'll start planning out a vege garden and get that going too (as much as we can when we aren't there most days).  


Other than that we can only share what we now know about food and hope that Australia doesn't go the way of the US!