Boycott Coles & Woolworths and Drink *Real* Milk

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR LOCAL DAIRY INDUSTRY AND SAY NO TO PREDATORY PRICING BY BOYCOTTING ALL DISCOUNTED MILK

IN FACT, YOU MIGHT LIKE TO BOYCOTT COLES AND WOOLWORTHS ENTIRELY, AS I HAVE FOR OVER TWO YEARS.

See Flavour Crusader’s developing list of dairies selling milk you might like to try instead. 🙂

Happy (Ethical/Sustainable) Bacon Week

It’s Australian Bacon Week, an initiative of Australian Pork, which is a producers’ owned company promoting the interests of the pork industry in Australia. As a pretty committed bacon eater, I, like many others, read about this with some level of Pavlovian response. But then my mouth went dry as I considered how much pork is likely to be consumed in a mere week, and how much of it will be from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). My reservations grew when @SimonThomsen tweeted:

Roughly 1 million pigs were imported, mostly from Europe, for more than 70% of bacon consumed in Australia #AustBaconWeek

That’s a lot of imported bacon, and at a guess I’d say not much of it comes from free range pigs. Our family has been eating only free range or ‘bred free range’ pork for a number of years now, and yet I know many people find it difficult to source.

On the question of ‘bred free range’ (or as the industry has agreed to call it, ‘outdoor bred’), just quickly, I think there’s a fair bit of diversity in what that means on different farms, but it’s defined by the RSPCA to mean that sows give birth outside instead of in sow stalls (which are now banned in Tasmania), and the grower pigs are subsequently moved inside upon weaning. There was an excellent article on SBS Food last year about the distinction, which also covers the growing movement to raise rare breeds as well as an overview of the different cuts.

(NB The list below no longer includes outdoor bred farms. 26/3/2013)

For home, I only buy certified free range (or ‘happy pigs’), but when out, I will occasionally eat outdoor bred pork as well. Does this mean we eat less pork? Well, yes and no. We try to limit our meat intake so that on any given day we’re unlikely to have meat in two meals and we enjoy meat-free days three or four times a week. However, because where we live we have good access to free range pork, our pork intake has surpassed chicken, beef and lamb (and in fact fish as well, as we run the minefield of unsustainable fish available).

We basically follow Peter Singer’s argument that if everyone simply ate less meat and only ate that which is ethically, sustainably grown, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are with agro-industry and impending major food security issues. @evcricket has also written on Chooks, Ethics and Animal Stewardship that you might like to check out.

Some folks over on the twitterz were asking where to source free range pork, so I thought I’d compile a list of those I know. If you know of others, or want to let me know I got the classification wrong on free v bred free range, please add them in the comments and I’ll make corrections. Some of these are farms, some retailers:

Victoria

Tasmania

South Australia

New South Wales

ACT

Queensland

Western Australia

mEatDrinkBlog Melbourne!

Michael over at My Aching Head has come up with a brilliant plan to bring the Melbourne food blogging community together on a regular basis to a) eat, b) drink, c) talk all things food blogging. You can read about the details, including our first venue & date, on his blog.

I’ll be the Mistress of Ceremonies, collating expressions of interest to give a presentation and facilitating discussion on the night(s). This will be a great opportunity to ask those tricky Word Press questions, discuss the ethical responsibilities of food reviewing, debate whether to monetise your blog, and argue the relative merits of good food photography. 🙂 Those interested in presenting (10 minutes followed by discussion, fairly informal) can email me at tammois@gmail.com

I look forward to seeing many of you on the 31st of March!