Recent Comments

Hi Rob, Nothing yet, but I have a feeling we'll hear more soon. Great questions! Hang in there. -Lee

Thanks KristenM, for continuing to get out the word on your awesome food site, and for weighing in on Just BARE Chicken and the larger issues around "Big O Organics," local food, and how to walk the fine line between supporting the little folks and encouraging the big folks to do the right thing. As always, thoughtful and well-said! -Lee

Thanks you Suzanne and EcoYogini - for reading the post and for your thoughtful, passionate comments. There's a lot of excitement in the local food community around the idea of bringing new people into the fold, increasing awareness, and putting economic pressure on companies that are not willing to serve consumer needs. That excitement is tempered by an enormous helping of wariness, frustration, and the reality that new packaging alone does not equate to new farming practices. It can be hard for part-timers to sort out what's what. I appreciate your feedback, and the fact that you're willing to share your own views about this important stuff. Bring on the bad dinner guests. :-)

Hey! Great post. Years ago, I produced The Eat Well Guide (www.eatwellguide.org) for IATP, a great organization with great work on food. I learned to be a really bad dinner guest ("Did you know...") and I learned that the corporate food system has some inherent flaws. You've hit on one of them here. The profit motive drives some people and their companies to overlook ethical considerations in order to produce more-more-more. On one hand, supporting BARE products does help create an even greater (mainstream) demand (perhaps) but it also continues an investment in companies who have done well by doing badly. I think that's wrong, from an ethical standpoint. I guess I would rather source my meat, when I eat it, from a directory like The Eat Well Guide (I just used it last weekend to find grassfed beef in Saint Paul!), which tends toward a local economy AND healthful pickin's. I want farmers to know that they don't have to sign up with the Gold'n Plumps of the world to make it as a food provider. Finally, on the arsenic issue: this is one of those 'bad dinner guest' moments, but arsenic (yes, let's just call it what it is) is used to decontaminate food, whose contamination mostly results from inhumane containment systems for the animals. It's the same reason antibiotics are used so heavily. The arsenic mostly doesn't accrue in the animal, but it is released in their feces, which them provides a direct environmental problem. In the southeast, a chicken company (I forget which one) used the guano from their arsenic operation to fertilize nearby cropland. Guess what? Arsenic is a persistent pollutant. Duh. In my opinion, it's best to just stay away from these companies until they change their evil ways entirely. They know the market is shifting, in this country at least, among those of us who can afford it, or they wouldn't be introducing these kinds of products. Plenty of people will buy their BARE chicken. It doesn't have to be you. Or me. Hopefully that's not too much of an elitest reply. Suzanne