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Vote with your fork

Editorial

So you might be thinking: why a meat issue?

There are identities, ideologies, and politics involved in the food we choose, and meat is one we have a particularly complex relationship with. This year at The Daily, we decided to do some unpacking (get it!?), and chose meat for the ethical and political debates surrounding it.

The moral qualms around eating meat are many and varied, from concerns over climate change, to animal cruelty issues, to world hunger. As George Monbiot wrote in his summer Guardian column on the food crisis, “While 100M tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed cars [with bio-fuels], 760M tonnes will be snatched from the mouths of humans to feed animals. This could cover the global food deficit 14 times. If you care about hunger, eat less meat.”

On the other hand, Schwartz’s is at the heart of Montreal culture, and for many of us, potatoes and peas just seem lonely all by themselves.

We’re hardly of one mind about what to eat ourselves, and we’re not here to preach to you to become vegans on the spot.

The point is more that going to the grocery store seems like such an everyday chore – and the food industry so huge – it’s easy to forget that individual choices actually do count. Supermarkets are very sensitive to the turnover rate of different products. With computerized inventories, whether a product moves or not impacts if it will be re-ordered. Individual consumer actions could be much more decisive in determining what markets stock than we tend to think.

When you buy food, you’re supporting a specific agenda, and sending a message all the way down the supply chain. Be conscious of what you buy, and vote with your fork.