Then God said, ??Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.?? God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, ??Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.?? Then God said, ??Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food??; and it was so. God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
–Genesis 1:26-31 (NASB)
It’s a joke within my family (my parents, evil twin brother, and I) that food needs to be properly sourced. Part of it comes from me working at an import brokerage and seeing all the Chinese dumping that goes on in our economy, part of it has to do with all the health recalls of foods and such that have tainted ingredients from China, and part of it is the whole idea of yuppies who shop at Whole Foods to get “organic” fruits and vegetables and cruelty-free products. (I have “organic” in quotation marks because the simple definition of the word is “carbon-based”. In theory, you could grow a plant in a vat of pesticide and it would still be carbon-based and therefore “organic”.) All three things have merit — China does dump a lot of cheaply-made goods into our economy at various points along the supply chain and a lot of their goods (*cough* iPads *cough* iPhones) are made in ways that are unhealthy for the workers and the food unsafe for us to consume. Due to this, a lot of people look for organic foods from places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s because they maintain a standard of quality that places like Wal-Mart don’t. It is a definite problem in our society that people pay through the nose for quality in food that should be there in the first place because GMO and processed foods are cheaper.
Looking up at our portion of Genesis, God gives us dominion over the plants and animals. Some people look at this as license to pillage the environment as much as they please because hey… God told us to rule over the earth, right? (Nice try but no.) A better reading of this is that God calls us to be stewards of the earth and make responsible decisions regarding Creation. This ideally means that we kill animals in an ethical fashion and grow our food in the same way. (*glares at Monsanto*) Unfortunately, we’re sinful beings and as such, we have an annoying tendency to cut corners to make a quick buck. It costs more to make things ethically in the U.S. so we send our industries overseas where there is cheap labor and suddenly when people (or pets) start getting sick, we act completely surprised that our bad decision-making had consequences.
So how exactly can we be good stewards of our environment and our food supply (among other things)? Well…
[+] Support your local farmers. I know that in California, even WIC gives checks for fruits and vegetables from farmer’s markets during the summer. Get to know your producers and how they grow their food. If you have ranchers in the area, buy your beef through them. If you know people who raise chickens, buy your eggs and meat from them as well. I know that in Montana, I could have been almost a complete locavore if I had really put my mind to it because I had parishioners who were ranchers, parishioners who sold eggs to supplement their income, the Hutterites sold meat and vegetables, etc. This was in a rural area 25 miles between the two towns with grocery stores. In California, I could do this with vegetables during the summer and possibly even into the winter.
[+] Know the supply chain for your grocery store of choice. This takes some research but it’s worth it. Find out where they buy their meat and their dairy. In Montana, I found out from a parishioner who was part of Farmer’s Union that certain brands of milk at Albertsons were from Montana dairies.
[+] If you take vitamins, look into where they are produced. My mom discovered that the generic supplement she took from Costco was made in China. Yeah… not a good thing, especially with China’s track record. You want to read labels.
[+] Pay attention to where your seafood and meat are from. As much as people whined about country-of-origin-labeling (COOL) in Montana, it’s essential from my perspective, especially as we dealt with cows imported from Alberta where there had been Mad Cow disease. This is also imperative with seafood because there have been problems with restaurants and grocery stores claiming that their fish/seafood was a fish that it wasn’t or that it came from a place where it didn’t. There should be something on each sign in the seafood display saying “Product of [insert country]”. Don’t buy fish unless it states it clearly.
[+] Be aware of where your honey comes from. They actually did tests and a majority of honey bought from the grocery store and labeled as a U.S. product did in fact contain honey from China. Some of that Chinese honey wasn’t honey which truthfully unnerves me greatly. (I can’t remember who was bad and who was good other than Wal-Mart being bad and Trader Joe’s being good. It was on CNN.Com.)
As strange as this sounds, the whole issue of our food supply and sourcing really is a spiritual issue. We are called to take care of each other throughout the Bible (i.e. more verses than I care to quote) and making sure that we are all fed and that our food is safe is a part of that. A clean food supply chain also increases jobs as it allows U.S. farmers to stay on their land longer and to make an honest living.
