What To Do?

[poliphilo]

When things are cheap in the shops it generally means that someone- somewhere down the line- is being ripped off. A cheap tee shirt almost certainly comes from a sweat shop, a cheap chicken from a factory farm. I was reading about the Peruvian fishmeal industry last night and it's nasty, nasty nasty. Millions of tonnes of small fish are scooped out of the sea to make fishmeal to feed chickens to feed people in the West- and not only are local people being deprived of a nutritious food source, but the food chain in the sea is being disrupted- affecting supplies of larger fish- and the waste product- a fatty, oily slurry, is being pumped back into the sea where it kills everything it touches.

Make things right, farm things right- and it costs money. You have to be rich to afford things that have been made by a craftsman, or meat that's been raised ethically. When poor people demand a share of the fruits of capitalism it's always going to be at a cost to people who are even poorer- not to mention animals and the environment.  I don't have an answer- apart from the blindingly obvious one which most of us either ignore or laugh off.  Yes, we should all become Buddhists or Shakers or Tolstoyans and go and live in communes and whittle our own furniture and lovingly rear our own hens, but we're not going to, are we?

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I do what little I can. I buy free range eggs and chickens that don't come from battery farms. I buy Fairtrade tea and coffee and chocolate. I don't buy really cheap clothes and if you pay a bit more, it's actually good value for money because they stay looking good longer. But I know that whilst we are certainly not well off, we're much better off than many people who can't afford even these salves to their conscience.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We always buy free range eggs, otherwise we're not so careful. I gave up eating meat a few weeks ago.
I'm not saying I'll stick to it (because meat is so easy) but I'd like to.