What boycotts/changes/discoveries have you made?

[Madissun]

Good point supersonyx! Condensed milk had me stumped as i knew that Nestle were the only company that made it!

[Trillian]

I can't believe that they are still the only company that makes it though even after all these years. Golden Circle is no longer australian, heinz brought it just recently.

[Madissun]

Trillian- It's a bit strange isn't? I wonder if they have some sort of copyright or something over it?

[Snowy Love]

Ah yes, but the Home Brand condensed milk isn't made in Australia so to make rum balls at Christmas I buy my Nestle products for the year - 2 tins.

[Kazbah]

The biggest thing for me was reading "the ethics of what we eat" - finding out that the "grain-fed beef" is so disgusting and makes cattle sick - and that pasture fed is the most ethical choice if you're eating beef.

I find the hardest thing is trying to get DH to buy ethically instead of cheaply.

[Trillian]

The biggest thing for me was reading "the ethics of what we eat" - finding out that the "grain-fed beef" is so disgusting and makes cattle sick - and that pasture fed is the most ethical choice if you're eating beef.

I find the hardest thing is trying to get DH to buy ethically instead of cheaply.

I'd just like to point out that that book was mostly based on US feedlotted beef and as taken from the book;

Many pages detail sickening beef feedlot (mass pens) conditions not present in Australia. The book acknowledges this, but reference to the Australian situation is piecemeal and uneven, with figures not always converted to metric and not applicable to our industry.
The authors acknowledge that Australia's feedlot industry is relatively small, mainly for "finishing" export beef. Their reckoning is 70-day confinement for 25 per cent of the beef industry. In fact, most of the 29 per cent of feedlot cattle here are "medium-fed" for 120 days, or "long-fed" for 200 days, according to the Australian Lot Feeders Association.

The bold type is mine

Very very little purely feedlotted, grain fed beef makes it's way onto your dinner plate. It is expensive to buy and grain is used purely to bulk up the animal for export because of the high protein content in the grain. Now I don't necessarily agree with feedlotting animals on a long term basis - mainly from an animal welfare perspective because there are no trees or shade and they are on bare dirt nearly the entire time they are in the feedlot. BUT feeding both grain and grass is the ideal because feeding cattle only on grass is not without it's evnironmental toll either simply because of the sheer volume that they need to eat in a day, hence why they are supplemented with grain. And Australia does NOT import beef or beef products at this stage but there are moves to open import markets for beef which is currently being fought against.

[Kazbah]

I went on a pub crawl around Glen Innes - and there is the largest feedlot in the southern hemisphere there (this was around '95). It was disgusting. Owned by a Japanese multi-national, all the meat is for export!

Ummm my choice however is to eat pasture-fed meat, and to stay away from the "finished on grain for 120days" steaks at pubs & restaurants. I buy free-range organic meat (lucky that's our only butcher up here!) and grow my own eggs. DH & I are in negotiation for our own chicken meat - I think it's better ethically to care and kill for our own meat, but DH is a bit of a soft touch when it comes to slaughter.

With McDonalds, for all their evilness, they are working across the world to increase the cage size of their producers.

Woolies got done for one of their primary producers having inhumane conditions for chooks (or was it pigs? can't remember exactly)

[christy]

Is Nestle made in Australia?

You can also make your own sweetened condensed milk. I use rice milk to make mine, as we are dairy free, but I have made it a few times & it works! It is involved, but if you are only making rum balls once a year you can do it.

Around 10 years ago, DH & I watched McLibel. We stopped going to McDonalds. Now, well we take the kids once every other month to McD's, but that is only for them once in a great while. We also took out chemicals and most preservatives in our diets, so that cut out alot of prepackaged foods, we even make our own rice milk some of the time.

I don't use proctor & gamble products or Nestle. We have occasionally bought something from Uncle Toby's. If we buy packaged foods, we buy homebrand or black n' gold. As we are a dairy free household we don't worry about milk products too much. We have our own chickens, as I couldn't trust where we bought our eggs from. and our butchers.... I love our butcher. I have made it a point to get a relationship with our butcher, our butcher knows where his meat comes from, his pigs and his chickens. I can ask him for certain cuts and he will tell me where it is from.

[Madissun]

christy- Whats McLibel? What sort of things did you find out?

[~me~]

Christy:

I remember this, it was huge! This is from wikepedia.If you got to wikepedia it will give you the full run down of the case.

McDonald's Restaurants v Morris & Steel (or the McLibel case) was an English lawsuit filed by McDonald's Corporation against environmental activists Helen Steel and David Morris (often referred to as "The McLibel Two") over a pamphlet critical of the company. The original case lasted ten years, making it the longest-running court action in English history

A feature-length documentary film, McLibel, was made about the case by Franny Armstrong.
Although McDonald's won two hearings of the case in English court, the partial nature of the victory, the David-vs-Goliath nature of the case, and the drawn-out litigation embarrassed the company. McDonald's announced that it did not plan to collect the £40,000[2] that it was awarded by the courts. Since then, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that the trial violated Articles 6 (right to a fair trial) and Article 10 (right to freedom of expression) of the Convention on Human Rights and awarded a judgment of £57,000 against the UK government.[3] McDonald's itself was not a party in this action as all petitions to the Strasbourg Court are fresh actions against a member state. On February 15, 2005, the pair's 20-year battle with McDonald's came to an end .

Another one to look at with Macca's is the Documentary Suyper Size Me by Morgan Spurlock, this healthy guy goes through 30days of eating Mcdonalds only and is under medical supervision while doing so to check his blood pressure and so on. He was documenting how many times Mcdonalds staff in the US asked the customer do you want to upsize this meal and also the effects of eating it over a long period of time.

All very interesting.