“If you’re eating organic turkey this weekend, savour it, because by next Thanksgiving it may be easier to buy crack cocaine in Ontario than a drug-free bird.” Margaret Web, Turkey Wars, Toronto Star, October 10, 2009.
WindsorEats is wanting to help the Organic Council of Ontario out any way it can, so, we decided to post about this article from the Toronto Star back on October 10, 2009, called Turkey Wars. Please read this article if you care anything about the future of your food and what you are putting in your body.
Apparently, the Turkey Farmers of Ontario, a marketing board of Ontario turkey producers that pretty much control half of Canada’s turkey quota, decided to create a rule that mandates all turkeys must now be confined indoors. The issue with this is, organic standards for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency mandate that organic birds must be raised outdoors. Do you see the problem?
In the Turkey Wars article in the Toronto Star, journalist Margaret Web writes “caught in this Catch-22 are turkey farmers Matthew and Janice Dick – organic farmers who wanted their birds to roam free outside. They recently took on the Turkey Farmers of Ontario at an appeals tribunal in what amounted to a battle between antibiotic-free, open-air, small-scale farming and drug-intensive, confinement, factory farming. The organic farmers lost.”
What this essentially does is make it almost impossible to find an “affordable” organic turkey as it restricts the amount of organic turkeys which leads to higher prices.
Ted Zettel, the chair of the Organic Council, is scared this ruling will now affect regulations for milk, eggs and poultry production.
By mandating these rules, in my honest opinion, they are securing profits for a very select few companies, while at the same time ensuring we are forced to eat products, in this case turkey, raised with chemicals, unnatural feed (pig fat, bone meal, etc.) and more.
Please visit the Organic Council of Ontario to learn more details and to sign their petition.
Please do some research on your own as well and spread this to your friends.
