Are you concerned?

Latchy

Boombastic wrote: »

We send millions(billions?) to the third world - most of which is spent by corrupt governments who prefer to buy weapons than to feed their own people.

Which is precisely why I'm careful as to which charity's I support and you put that to the charity collectors at you door who ask you to pay x amount of money by direct debit every month to support some African charity and they look puzzled .

Oxfam charges top price for clothes they have got for free yet it was discovered a few years ago that one of their top directors was living in a million £ mansion in the south of England from what he was skimming off for himself ...there's money in old rope for sure .

Pottler

The food situation is a very precarious balancing act at the moment, but water is where the future is at-Coke make more from the sale of water in the "third world" apparently than they do from cola etc and the corporate giants and wealthy individuals are piling into water resource ownership.
In South America there have been many riots about the cost of drinking water - if you earn very little but have to pay inflated prices for every drop of clean water you drink, there's trouble ahead. Water is where it's at, it is the new source of wealth. And it's damn hard to do without.

woodoo

donegal_road wrote: »

I recently asked a local butcher about this. We are tripping over sheep in our part of Ireland, yet we continue to import from NZ. He said he can get a cut of lamb from NZ a lot cheaper than he can get it here.

Similarly in our local Super Value, the garlic is from China, I bought carrots recently from Israel, and certain tomatoes are from Holland (they are usually the ones that have been frozen and are hard, pale and tasteless)

I'd love to hear a politician explain the reasons for this. I know they are not known for telling the truth but it should be explained.

Sulla Felix

donegal_road wrote: »

Alkaline and Acidic food chart.

cancer thrives in an acidic environment. People with cancer have a high acidic ph. You can neutralize the bodies ph level through diet.

I dont mean to drag this thread off topic, but seeing as food and diet is the topic, I thought this is an important point to mention.

Yeah... thought I'd read a bit more on that before just saying it was nonsense. Unfortunately the only sites I could find espousing that position were new age nonsense. Several of the articles cite a Oklahoma State University publication, presumably in the hopes of lending some kind of academic aura to their work. Unfortunately the document looks to be a study sheet on canned foods for a freshman level food science module which mentions nothing relevant to the arguements presented.
. Riveting stuff.

Tl;dr pseudoscientific nonsense. Kill it with fire.

Pottler

woodoo wrote: »

I'd love to hear a politician explain the reasons for this. I know they are not known for telling the truth but it should be explained.

The foreign Lambs fly in via Ryanair, they are very cute and always book the €1 fares - saves a fortune and allows them to arrive on our shelves at very low cost.

sheeper

NZ lamb is produced on a much bigger scale than the lamb here therefore it is much cheaper to produce! And that's what people them to buy now

Another one ne of the major problems in this country for every body is the Tescos and shops like it !! The mark up they are making on food is crazy !!! Take a litre of milk how much is one to buy off the shelf ? Compared to the price it's sold at !!!!!!

fishy fishy

Triangular wrote: »

I was in Turkey recently. A local restaurant had a big sign, DUBLIN BAY PRAWNS. I came home, went to Tesco...their Prawns are from Thailand.

Apparently 90% of deli chicken (Spar, O'Briens etc) is from Brazil and or Thailand.

I bought "Irish Grown Potatoes" in Tesco recently that had a "stamp of origin from France" Pics to prove also.

Sh1t is fcuked up

:D you do know that Dublin Bay prawns are not from Dublin bay, don't you????

Dublin Bay prawns are a specific TYPE of prawn. :D

bbam

Triangular wrote: »

I was in Turkey recently. A local restaurant had a big sign, DUBLIN BAY PRAWNS. I came home, went to Tesco...their Prawns are from Thailand.

Apparently 90% of deli chicken (Spar, O'Briens etc) is from Brazil and or Thailand.

I bought "Irish Grown Potatoes" in Tesco recently that had a "stamp of origin from France" Pics to prove also.

Sh1t is fcuked up

The branding of genuinely Irish produced goods is just awful in this country. Its a problem that's been known for years but not tackled properly at all...

I can buy cheap nasty sides of meat from well outside the EU, cut it up - package it and stick a shamrock & tri-colour on the pack and "produced in Ireland" all over it...

If meat hasn't been bred, lived and slaughtered in Ireland it should be illegal to have a shamrock a tri-colour or the words Irish or Ireland on the package anywhere.. Its not rocket science.

Similarly for veg, if it wasnt planted, grown, harvested and packaged here the same should apply.

fishy fishy

watched out for the "packaged in ireland" sign also. The contents could be from anywhere but the packaging is done in Ireland. lots of people read this as being the whole product is irish.

I would only purchase my meats at a butcher shop in any case, don't trust the supermarkets or other places for their meat. butcher is best. They can trace their meats back to the farms.

OldNotWIse

af_thefragile wrote: »

Its not that you can do anything to stop it because in reality none of us can do anything to stop it. But what we can do is help change it.

We need to become more educated about what we eat, where it comes from, how what we eat is having an impact on places in other parts on the earth and then do what we can to change the way we live in a way that's better than the wasteful way we do now.

Like for example if you seek out and buy local produce, you'll encourage local farmers to produce more and they won't have to compete with imports all the time. If you buy less food and eat more veg than meat, what you have will have less impact on the environment. You can grow food in your back garden so you won't have to buy them from a supermarket which have been shipped there from another part of the world. You can recycle the food you throw away into compost which will help you grow your kitchen garden better. There are many things you can do.

Only problem is people will label you a hippie and there's all the stigma that goes with it. Its easy to be lazy and continue living the way we do than to change our ways so that the little change each one of us makes can have a big impact on the large scale.


I would encourage you guys to watch the full documentary (all 3 parts of it) as it discusses all the different aspects to food production and the many ways we are trying to cope with this growing crisis. There's no one magic answer to the food problem. Its a combination of all the different answers which will help us tackle this. We all need to try and do what we can.

And I really see Ireland can build a huge economy out of this because there's so much empty land here. Ireland has perfect climate for growing food because we get plenty of rain here, the climate is perfect for grass (like in NZ), there are very few days it snows and the summers are relatively warm compared to rest of Europe. I really don't get it why Irish farmers can't stop moaning and start growing more food and build a whole industry on agriculture.

Irish food tends to be so expensive though, and a lot of families are already struggling to meet the food bill. Lidl/Aldi are getting busier...and its not because we want people in developing countries to starve- its because we do not want our own children to starve.

Also, how many people have time to grow vegetables? I dont even have time to watch tv anymore - work, college, study, some semblance of a personal life... Cultivating the balcony adjoining my apartment is quite low down on my list after life's other priorities

Aglomerado

UCDVet wrote: »

Let me get this straight.....

1.) We have overpopulation problems
2.) We have a food shortage

Hmmmm

If only there was some solution that could help with both problems.....too many people to feed.....but not enough food. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm

EDIT: EAT PEOPLE!

MMMM. Soylent Green.

dirtyghettokid

i grow my own veg, but they all come into season at the same time.. so what are you supposed to do the rest of the year? it's really hard to NOT buy imported food at some point

starbelgrade

dirtyghettokid wrote: »

i grow my own veg, but they all come into season at the same time.. so what are you supposed to do the rest of the year?

It's easy enough to grow vegetables through all four seasons though you need a polytunnel or greenhouse to do so. There's plenty of info on the internet / books on the subject.

Tom_Cruise

This is just one of those things that has been talked about for years but never seems to happen.

I think the world is slowly becoming a better place to live in, and will continue to do so. The media is obsessed with doom and gloom the world over so we see the worst of it.

sheeper

I would have to know the butcher very will before I would be sure his meat is irish ! A good few butchers get the strip loins delivered in vacuum packs and its opened in the back same with the chicken coming in those plastic boxes !!!

K-9

OldNotWIse wrote: »

Irish food tends to be so expensive though, and a lot of families are already struggling to meet the food bill. Lidl/Aldi are getting busier...and its not because we want people in developing countries to starve- its because we do not want our own children to starve.

Also, how many people have time to grow vegetables? I dont even have time to watch tv anymore - work, college, study, some semblance of a personal life... Cultivating the balcony adjoining my apartment is quite low down on my list after life's other priorities

Yet Aldi/Lidl stock a great range of Irish cheaply priced subjects. I don't think Irish products are over priced anymore, not in the last 5 years anyway as retailers and manufacturers have to deliver quality at cheap prices.

As for the OP, we live in the biggest trading block in the world with heavy subsidies, the likes of Greencore who make Siucra and Dairygold are the biggest recipients. Foreign Aid is a bit of a sop, a token jesture really. I don't think getting rid of aid is the answer though, trying to make sure it gets spent on education is the answer, hopefully they'll stop electing corrupt Governments or get rid of dictators.

Its a complicated problem I'm sure and just saying scrap aid is hardly going to play a big part in solving it.

nice_very

I am almost blue in the face from repeating and repeating that we can make billions from Tourism and Agriculture. World food crisis? we could feed europe if we did it right, a non nuclear state cleaned by westerly winds and frequent showers, we are the green machine!!

Senna

sheeper wrote: »

A good few butchers get the strip loins delivered in vacuum packs and its opened in the back same with the chicken coming in those plastic boxes !!!

Do you think the butcher shop on the main street processes all the meat they sell in the back of the shop?? Of course strips come in vacuum packs, its the most hygienic way to transport meat, its a requirement not a choice.

And of course chicken in plastic boxes, the sheer horror, if its not gold trays its just not good enough:rolleyes:

sheeper

But where is the meat coming from is my concern ! I have no problem with how it's transported but I have a problem when the strip loins are from brazil and the chicken from Thailand

bbam

sheeper wrote: »

But where is the meat coming from is my concern ! I have no problem with how it's transported but I have a problem when the strip loins are from brazil and the chicken from Thailand

You could just ask at the counter?
In our small town they show the traceability at the counter.
We shop in a butchers that kills the animals down the back of the shop.

We rear our own pigs for the table.