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  • From: "Jill Taylor Bussiere" <jdt AT itol.com>
  • To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Being Patriotic and the Food Transport Story
  • Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 10:39:19 -0600

Science News, http://www.sciencenews.org/20021123/food.asp
The Short and Long of the Food Transport Story

Article begins:

Food is really getting around. One week before Thanksgiving, a new study by
the
Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., finds that food in the United
States
now travels 25 percent farther to reach the dinner table than it did just 2
decades ago. In the United Kingdom, food travels 50 percent farther than it
did.

Modern shipping and preservation now enable supermarkets to sell a wide
range
of fresh products at low cost any time of year. Consumers in Iowa, for
instance, can enjoy tropical kiwis and Atlantic lobsters this winter.

But Brian Halweil, the author of the new report, argues that there are
unseen
costs to well-traveled food, such as fossil fuel consumption by the trains
and
trucks that cart it, pollution produced during those trips, and risks of
food
contamination along the way. Dependence on fresh produce, meat, and other
foods
from afar also leaves a city vulnerable to terrorists disrupting its supply
chain, he suggests.

"It's almost unpatriotic not to buy as much local food as possible," he
says.









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