If you missed the attached article that appeared in the Bulletin , 12/29, we hope you’ll take a few minutes to read it at your leisure. The rise in antibiotic use in animals and animal feed is one of the many reasons we wanted to raise our chickens, turkeys and pigs in a chemical free environment. In an effort to grow animals faster, bigger and cheaper and to keep food prices deceivingly low, the use of these chemicals has become ‘best practice” with a huge price attached for the consumer. One of the farmers interviewed for the article defended this practice on his 150,000/year hog farm saying, “They’re (the public) only concerned about resistance and they don’t care about economics because, ‘As long as I can buy a pork chop for a buck 69 a pound, I really don’t care.’ ” Yeesh. Think about buying a car….is the only feature you look at price? Of course not, however, when it comes to pork chops- price is about the only thing you have to evaluate (maybe Country of origin). Aside from the barcode label you get no other information. There may be some meaningless phrase of the day (natural, free range, inspected, organic, etc), and a cartoon farm animal but you really don’t know how that animal was rasied and if the claim is true. The point is if we were to buy eggs at the store (the horror!!) we would buy the cheapest, super sale, discount egg in the rack – why? Because we know nothing about the product except for price! Ridiculous isn’t it!! We all know the solution – know your farmer, know your animals when they are alive, know what they are fed, know how they are processed and know the price – then make a decision.
We just wanted to thank you for supporting us as you see the big pig picture clearly. We couldn’t raise these animals as we do without our customers who DO think about drug resistance and economics and the way animals are raised and treated and the origin of their food.
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