You Believe You Can Fly?
For some people the cruelty is the point. “Sure, it tastes the same, and it’s better for the environment, but how can I enjoy it when I know no animal has suffered for my pleasure?”
100% agree it’s not sustainable. A growing population isn’t either though. We would have to start using farm land for housing. Thus less food for everyone. People will always find a way to justify eating meat and reproduction though 
Foreign workers hunt pigeon and they fish in the local streams/sewers around here.
Probably sustainable, and maybe not too unhealthy unless you get say a pigeon thats just eaten treated seed from a freshly sown field.
Fish, i would suspect have massive contamknation, bacteria an.parrasites when.fished out of those ditches/canals. I would avoid them like the plague. Even when clean, taiwan is well known for some crazy parasites in fresh water. I wouldnt risk it.
Parasites are a normal feature of animal food sources, and I wouldn’t expect them to be particularly numerous in fish from Taiwan watercourses, fecal contamination notwithstanding. Even if they are, they should be destroyed by cooking.
The more significant concern would be chemical contamination by organics and heavy metals, which will depend on what the industrial waste contributions are in the catchment area. This risk is hard to assess.
I completely agree agree on your second paragraph. Fish from the mountians in streams ted to be far cleaner, though the environmental impact is more often than not a very real problem!
Parasites are normal everywhere, sure. however taiwan is different in having poor sanitary conditions and tghe ditches tend to have a lot of raw sewage seeping in. our ultra developed areas with very high density populations (not just people but swine and pultry) cause massive frcal loads in waterways. that is on top of the more natural parasites and bacteria that exists in the wild. Lets just say, i wouldnt east sushi from a freshwater species here…eg. tilapia from the canals in cities that are caught and sold by grandma and grangrandpa to markets and restaraunts. Precisely because they are not ever tested.
The problem is that this relies on other people doing the hard work, and that’s quite hard to achieve. Of course world governments gave us a masterclass in engineered compliance over these past few months, but I wouldn’t want to use that route.
It’s perfectly possible to undercut the big companies. Joel Salatin has been doing it for years; he sells pastured chicken and eggs at the same price as the supermarket. What’s missing is the kind of slick, integrated marketing that makes it painless for people to buy that sort of high-end product, and coordinated effort between small producers. If you can match the price and the convenience, people will buy your product in preference to the supermarket version (and they’ll continue to buy it when they taste the difference).
Big Ag wouldn’t be able to hold out for long. The capital-intensive nature of CAFOs and the like means that they’ll fall like a house of cards within a few months. The aim would be for the organic/natural cartel to adjust their prices juuuust so in order to soak up the new demand while ramping up capacity.
The key to maintaining supermarket-level prices would be to ensure that your farm has multiple streams of income - that meat isn’t a big driver of the bottom line. As big producers started to fail the market price would start to creep upwards anyway.
Frankly, I see farmers as the biggest part of the problem. A lot of them are ornery, stubborn types who are convinced that everything wrong with their farm is somebody else’s fault. It never seems to occur to them that if they’re not making profits, or if they’re weighted down by horrible loans and tasks that they hate, then maybe they made some bad business decisions.
Went to a wedding a while back in Taipei. Next day some relatives who were attending- Taitung aborigines, 50-60-70 years old- slipped out and recovered a fish net one left behind when they were working in Taipei during the construction boom, and camping in the hills to save money. They came back giggling, with a load of fish. This was a Sunday in Taipei, and they’s spread their net in a river running through a suburban park surrounded by high-rises.
This with a fridge jammed with leftovers from the wedding
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Ya. However, this type of over the top selfish retardation is not unique to aboriginal cultures…even in the exact same situation. I have seen many a race and cultures and religions doing the same thing. i dont think any of those points are the common denominator. I think something we as a species needs to accept is we are intelligent or morons based on situations and environments, not race. From there its very simple to move forward without such bullshit roadblocks like racism, sexism and other man made evolving retardations. Belief systems ought to be more fluid to really let our evolution shine.
I hear your point, in fact i hear it many times daily. What i would argue is that it is not everyone elses issues, we are all absolutely responsible. The finger pointing needs to stop unless truly deserved. When you see cheap lunchboxes half eaten or a bunch of food waste at mcdonalds…the fault is 100% on the consumer, not mcdonalds, regardless of the bullshit justifications people give for wasting food. Its gross how entitled people are becoming.
On the farmer side, i would say you are generally right however there are lots of us that are not like that. In fact most farmers like that are indeed just company employees (great example being banana farmers in taiwan when Dole came and fixed the mess that was taiwans banana calamity. And i am NOT a fan of Dole!). Most small farmers are working the land independantly, but they get sucked ino easy money, albiet less and to great consequence.to our health. Here its mostly sold to a few companies, some. government owned.
Our company sells at prices more or less with a +/- 10% range of say PX mart here. We intentionally sell our products cheaper because our moral goals are to allow people that arent rich to eat quality at reasonable prices. I have heard untold amounts of shit with people telling us how stupid we are, especially with products we grow certified organic without advertising being organic. I view organic as a baseline, a " no duh" situation, so advertising it is as organic just plays into the many thousands of marketing middlemen games to cheat people into paying more.
the issue is we need to all work together because none of us grow everything…and a supermarket needs to carry a lot of variety. Making a coop, or getting together is good. Though the government has laws against it to avoid price fixing etc so it must be done legitimately and with too much government influence…which many farmers, justifiably, have concerns about.
Ultimately, the consumer needs to put more effort in, be less lazy, less entitled and start giving a fuck about their bodies health. After all, “YOU” are the one eating pesticides, not “us”. If you are ok with kidney and liver failures, cancers or ulcers…more power to you. But ultimately people need to start caring more about their own lives rather than always expect someone else (that normally doesnt care at all about you) dictate your future and health. Its amazingly short sighted!!
I also have a bit of a negative feeling towards these food fashion trends such as natural farmers in taiwan that mine government money and sell their stuff at absurd prices. Its greed, not morals. some are good, but overwhelmingly it is essentially a wellfare state for those that dont need wellfare. With an ever debt producing medicare system and a total lack of meaningful retirement/pension system, i just cant accept taking money like this while able bodied and young while charging outlandish prices for simple products…I have as much use for that psychology as i do for mcdonalds CEOs.
Quinoa is grown island wide, but is a smaller, more labor intensive species. In recent years it has unfortunately been the victim of mass marketing schemes and advertised as an aboriginal specialty product. Its not only smaller and harder to use, but very expensive.
One day we’ll be enjoying some locally farmed roaches of the highest fibre and protein!
The environment and animals will celebrate!
Er…Don’t get you. They caught some fish, using a skill-set and kit that I don’t have and might be too squeamish or lazy to develop.
Quite hard for me to derive any feeling of superiority from that, so I’d be interested to know how you manage it.
If you are assuming the fish were wasted, fair enough, but there’s nothing in your account to justify that assumption.
Fishing in an illegal manner without a license in a public park in a heavily built up area? Not to mention that I would imagine that both the stream and the fish were heavily polluted. And just a reminder- these were all my relatives and friends.
As I mentioned in another post above, if its an area likely to be subject to industrial pollution, then that would be a concern. Domestic pollution, as implied by “high rises” and “residential” isn’t.
The only other concern I can think of would be if there was a significant impact on the river ecology by this catch, and that is highly unlikely.
Cockroaches, to be fair, are far higher in chitin than many other decent candidates for insect protein. Their chiten to protein/carbs/fat ratio is terrible. Their only advantage is that certain species are highly communal and tollerant of crowded situations. In fact many species nearly require such crowded to be able to develop bbaies properly. However they are pickier eaters than crickets and that alone disqualfies them.
Crickets are far better, but far more agressive, so requires more space an labor than various cockroach species. There are countless species being researched and developed, but trust me when sayuing cockroaches wont make the cut. Usually they are jsut reared in china for TCM purposes.
Also note people with shellfish/shrimp allergies should be extremely cautious! With any insects.
An additional note, before people go off the rails in cockroaches being gross. These are all cockroaches, they are a huge group. And many are insanely picky eaters, unlike us humans which are like dogs and eat nearly anything.
Random google inages, not mine.
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I am coming from the aspect of conservation (many endnagered species) and protecting the environment. I can fish, and i have gone fishing many times with many groups, including aboriginals. netting, battery and chemical poisoning is a selfiah retarded way to get food because it is indescriminate. Thats what i am saying, speaking nothing of thweir ability to walk up a river and set the net. To which i care little about. I have respect for those that protect and sustain their environment, not those that are so common here that put everything that moves into a pot (not saying his wedding was that type of person).
There is a term here that literally translates to “mountain rat”. This describes any of the assholes that take animals, trees, mushrooms etc etc illegally and/or immorally.