when i was in school, i took a couple of courses that talked about sustainability and global supply chains related to food/agriculture. the take home message was basically, the farther away from something you are, the less likely you are to have any clue what is going on in its production/provision. certainly, there are certifications and audits and whatnot, but if at any point these gain enough clout external to the food packing industry, they will be dismantled as "illegal barriers to trade" by the major players of globalization and co-opted by them.... usually to neuter any worker-empowering language from a certification or label. so far "ecological neocolonialism" gets kind of a pass, but let's just say certifiers don't get paid to flunk people during 3rd party audits anyway.
unless you or a trusted member of your cohort can take a ride to the place where the magic happens to peek over the fence unannounced or casually hang out with the blabbermouth laborers that work there to get the straight scoop, you are probably eating a mixed bag of environmental degradation and slave labor. you would think that cheap food trends positively with screwing the environment and slavery, but high-end eaters are just as clueless about what they are eating too... so sometimes, they're eating the cheap food just churched-up and marked up a lot higher.
there's probably a lesson there about how highly developed places within the metropole, having "graduated" from an agrarian existence, have lost an understanding of food production that might be important in its consumption. a sort of "out of sight, out of mind" type of thing.
i remember the topic of fish came up once and research indicated it was even more of a wild west type of scenario than terrestrial animal and plant products. international waters be like that.
when i was in school, i took a couple of courses that talked about sustainability and global supply chains related to food/agriculture. the take home message was basically, the farther away from something you are, the less likely you are to have any clue what is going on in its production/provision. certainly, there are certifications and audits and whatnot, but if at any point these gain enough clout external to the food packing industry, they will be dismantled as "illegal barriers to trade" by the major players of globalization and co-opted by them.... usually to neuter any worker-empowering language from a certification or label. so far "ecological neocolonialism" gets kind of a pass, but let's just say certifiers don't get paid to flunk people during 3rd party audits anyway.
unless you or a trusted member of your cohort can take a ride to the place where the magic happens to peek over the fence unannounced or casually hang out with the blabbermouth laborers that work there to get the straight scoop, you are probably eating a mixed bag of environmental degradation and slave labor. you would think that cheap food trends positively with screwing the environment and slavery, but high-end eaters are just as clueless about what they are eating too... so sometimes, they're eating the cheap food just churched-up and marked up a lot higher.
there's probably a lesson there about how highly developed places within the metropole, having "graduated" from an agrarian existence, have lost an understanding of food production that might be important in its consumption. a sort of "out of sight, out of mind" type of thing.
i remember the topic of fish came up once and research indicated it was even more of a wild west type of scenario than terrestrial animal and plant products. international waters be like that.