It’s common knowledge that many consumer products come from China — shirts and shoes, furniture casters and computers, tools and party favors … but GREEN BEANS???
I had grabbed a bag of Nature’s Promise Organic Frozen Green Beans without giving it a second thought. Days later, when I happened to read the small print on the bag before tearing it open, I was very surprised to learn that these beans are “A PRODUCT OF CHINA. Quality guaranteed or your money back. CERTIFIED ORGANIC BY ORGANIC CROP IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONAL.”
You know those petitions you are always asked to sign? Change.org recently released a tool which makes it easy for anyone to create an online petition of their very own. I decided to give it a spin with a petition asking the Stop & Shop chain of supermarkets to stop using produce grown in China in their Nature's Promise line. In the petition I go on to say, “It makes no sense to be purchasing green beans from a half a world away. For reasons of food safety and security, as well as to lower the carbon footprint for transportation costs, American farmers should be the ones growing the majority of produce Americans consume.”
My widget appears below!
I do hope you will sign it. (Getting there is easy, just click on the image above.) And, if you do, please send the link to the petition (or better, yet the link to this post) to ten friends and ask them to do the same.
Change.org urges “Start, join, and win campaigns for social change.” Let's start with green beans and take it from there.
I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”
Elaine,
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome. I was glad to sign your petition! Now that my CSA is nearly over, I'm back to more frozen veggies. It's incredible how vigilant you have to be!
Cher
I also assumed the vegs were from the U.S. until I saw a tv report on vegs from China at Whole Foods. I check the label and sure enough in small print "china". I tell everyone I see in the "natural" foods isle in my local Giant store. They are very appreciative.
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