This week’s environmental challenge is to research green companies and make at least one long term purchasing change.  One of the green purchasing decisions I had mentioned in a previous post was purchasing chicken and turkey from local small farms rather than the big box grocery store.  Ashley and I had talked about this previously, but it only went as far as that.  I don’t think we will end up following through on this for this week, but I did want to take a look into local poultry.  This is a brief look into the poultry industry and how I might we might be able to reduce our impact by choosing what kind of chicken/turkey we buy.

I know that some of you will suggest that we forego this altogether and just go vegan or vegetarian.  It could be something in our future, but I am not prepared to give up meat altogether at this time.  Our consumption has gone down dramatically over the past year, but it has not stopped.  A good chunk of the fish and birds we have eaten also are brought to the table through our own hands rather than a corporation.  I think this is a more responsible way to preserve our environment than corporate farming.

We do look at the packaging when we go to the store to find chickens that are free range and have fewer chemicals, but I think that it would be a better overall solution to find someone locally who can show us where our food comes from.  After watching Food, Inc., I became a little disgusted at the whole process, particularly the parts of the film that demonstrate breeding/chemicals that create chickens that cannot walk.  In addition, some of these chickens never see the light of day and are treated in a horrible manner.  I understand that they are just going to end up on a dinner table, but I don’t think there is a reason to treat animals in a horrific manner if it can be helped.  It is hard to fault the farmers for making a living, but I would like to see the corporate control loosened from the whole process and some ethics brought into it.  We need to make sure to take the final steps to change our purchasing habits and do our part to ‘vote’ on the kind of chicken/poultry we want to eat.

Not only will this be good for the environment, possibly I will help to keep money in this community and supporting local farming.  Although the grocery store we frequent does some really good things for the community, I think that spreading the wealth might be a good decision.   I personally would not purchase any sort of meat from WalMart, but I do like our local grocery store.

Ultimately, we decided that this was not going to be the purchasing change we make this week.  I suspect that this will be something that is a future task, but not this week.  I certainly recognize the health, environmental and economic benefits of purchasing local poultry, but it just is not in our cards this week.  If you have any experience with this or know of a place to find local poultry farmers, please let me know in the comment area below.