Know Your Food: Is this American or Foreign or Both?

I read a lot of the NYTimes...let me just put that out there now. This evening as is normal for me, I have been catching up on the weekend long-form articles online. I found myself pulled in by this article "Why Are We Importing Our Own Fish?" This article tells the convoluted story of the American Seafood industry's practice of importing seafood that is native to North Atlantic water.

One of the things that I am learning, now that I work in a grocery store, is how convoluted the idea of food is in America. Growing up in Nigeria, I felt like I was better connected to the food. Of course, perception is different from reality and I am sure Nigeria has issues in its food chain. The more I learn about food, the more I realize that I have allowed myself to become disconnected from food. The whole idea of being able to identify the source of food and how food is created is something that I am slowly losing. It has become so easy to go the grocery store and buy food year round. The idea of eating seasonally and the excitement of the first appearance of seasonal food is something that I miss. I feel lik I can taste the difference in the food as well.

This issue of food is something that I will be talking about regularly as I come to terms with it. I hope you choose to read the article. It can't hurt to understand just a little more about your food.

Know Your Food: Slavery and Shrimp

Earlier this week the Guardian released one of their massive investigative articles and this one focused on Thailand. In particular, the story exposes the use of slavery in the Thailand seafood industry. The use of slavery in Thailand is global issue, not just because of the humanity involved, but because one of the country big exports is shrimps or prawns. Many global food retailers including Walmart source shrimps from Thailand. This implicates them in this case of modern slavery because they are an essential part of the supply chain.

The big retailers, both in the United States and other countries have the power to demand better in the supply chain. They can use their economic clout to demand that the supply chain be cleaned. They can set up realistic safe-guards to ensure that they are not supporting slavery by buying tainted seafood.

I know the article is long but I do hope you take some time to read this article.