[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Solace

We can start with transparency. It's very difficult to find out what happens behind the scenes in a lot of cases. For example, the Food, Inc., movie crew had a very difficult time even finding people who were willing to talk about the industry. Without transparency it's hard to regulate, which is bad.

Second, with that transparency we need reform. There is no need to pump animals with antibiotics constantly from farm to grinder. It's one of the reasons antibiotics are becoming less effective. There needs to be less use of artificial ingredients, as well as a large reduction in sodium and corn syrup.

Third, better public education of the food system. The whole thing: from seed to store. People should know exactly how the system works. It's frightening how many people do not understand or value the things that keep them fed. For something so basic, people should know a lot more than they do. I'd say this about a lot of things - the more people know about how things work, the better off we all are.

Fourth, we need to put more emphasis on efficiency. Use new technologies to help reduce waste in the entire chain. Put more emphasis on local/regional growers. There's no need to be importing a crop from another area of the country/world if it can be grown closer.

These are just a few ideas. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, just improve it. Most importantly, the decision making process in the system can't be so tilted toward big companies and lobbies. A situation like Monsanto should never exist.

I don't like the money system much, but there isn't any replacement for it yet. Until then, there's a lot of room for improvement with the already existing system, and we should work with that until something better comes along.

Quote for that line. Absolutely.