you are, ethically, what you eat

    Keeping up to date with food and groceries will have people checking out Dudley Does Right regularly.  In terms of environment, health, buy local and buy Canadian this is a bonanza of work.  Great for for doing Dudleys.  Great for making a difference.  

    The food sector is the largest of all Canadian manufacturing sectors. There are recent concerns about the job losses at multinationals like Kellog's and Heinz that eliminate Canadian production lines.   Good union jobs with good benefits and pensions, gone.   But think about it.  These companies haven't always produced the healthiest products — and hardly ever from ingredients grown with the most environmentally sound farming practices and non-wasteful packaging. Not to mention the added lumps of sugar and salt. 

    And even with growing automation in food production, there are more workers than ever in the food-processing sector in Canada — thanks mostly to the flourishing of independent food processors, many of them from families of new Canadians.  We'll follow closely the working conditions and the well being of workers, especially seasonal workers, in the ever expanding food industry, nationally and locally.  

    Food is also a section where we can expect retailers and producers to advertise. 

    Users might check off and download digital shopping lists and send us their criticisms. 

    Features would promote Canadian product — with features on subjects like the fast-growing availability of off-season green-house produce, freshness of apples stored in nitrogen, Great Lakes and East and West Coast sustainable fisheries, wide availability of humanely raised livestock and chickens, etc.  

    And we’ll also delve into the details — like asking why does Walmart have the best price on Quebec’s Yves brand of organic canned beans?  Or what’s the story behind the new, lower-priced Raincoast canned tuna from BC (conscientiously fished in Asia), or the newly widespread availability of Maison Orphee’s wonderful organic Dijon mustard from Quebec. 

    And we'll investigate the complaints — like why do supermarkets so often offer discounts on organic strawberries from California and Mexico in May and June, just when  the Canadian crop hits the shelves. Dumping? Ditto for potatoes in the fall. 

    There's no end to the stories behind the new local and national Canadian brands.  Just a walk around Toronto's Fiesta Farms or Carrot Common — or the equivalent in your town — will give us dozens of feature ideas.

    But the big fight in this area is still  to get the big corporate brands to clean up their supply chains 

    fair trade

    Of course people are still going to buy bananas, avocados, pineapples, citrus, almonds, dates, olives, etc. — but we’ll find the best Canadian, or non-American, distributers — and check out the fair-trade, labour and environmental records of their growers.  For example, a Friend Of Dudley (FOD) who's an avid birdwatcher recently toured some fair-trade coffee plantations.  He reports that they are havens for migrating birds compared to conventional plantations, which can be treeless expanses laced with pesticides.