Using Your Vote

A few months ago I watched the movie Food, Inc. - which is an absolute MUST see. The movie explores the ins and outs of the food industry- from mass meat production to the overuse of corn in every product in the supermarket. But there was something that I heard in this movie that really stood out to me: "Every time you purchase something, you are voting for that product. You are saying 'I approve of this product and it is worth my money.'" So let me ask you this: what are you voting for?

I recently had a little bit of a revelation (it was more like a breakdown and I thought I was going crazy- but we will call it a revelation.) I went to Walmart with a list of ten things. I went to the first thing on my list- a carton of eggs. When I first got to the egg section I began to look at all of the different brands of eggs and I began to think of all of the kinds that I had bought in the past. But due to a lot of research, I now knew where a lot of those eggs were coming from. They were coming from chickens who had never seen daylight and were crammed 6 or 8 chickens in a coop built for one chicken. And so I looked at the organic and cage free and they just didn't seem good enough. I wanted eggs from a local farmer who I know fed them grain (not corn) and that their living depended on selling these cartons of eggs. So I could not, in my right mind, purchase any other kind of eggs, even if that meant making a separate trip.

So- without eggs in-tow- I moved on to the next item, bread. And after reading the ingredients set it back down and moved on to the next, and the next. And before I knew it- I was leaving Walmart with one item on my list: a box of trash bags that were made of recycled plastic. I thought to myself, "Am I going crazy? I used to buy every single thing I ever needed at Walmart." So I drove to Whole Foods and continued my shopping there- where I found products that I approved of, and I felt were "worth my vote."

I used to think to myself, "oh they don't have the kind of bread (or whatever product) that I want, but I will just get this for now and hopefully they will have something different next time." But then I realized, if I am buying the product, they don't know that I was looking for something different- all they know is that their product is selling, so they just continue to produce more of it and not try other products in its place.

One example used in the movie was the use of growth hormones in dairy cows. Enough people refused to buy milk that was from diary cows who had been injected with growth hormones that WalMart eventually took it off the shelf and now only carries non-growth hormone milk. So for those of you that were skeptical- look what our "votes" can do.

So my advice to you is use your vote wisely. Use your voice (your money) by choosing products that are good for animals, good for our bodies, and good for the planet. No one will ever know that you are unhappy with products unless you stop buying them. If enough people stand up for what they believe in anything can happen. So stand up for what is right- what is right for you- the animals- and the planet and use your vote to make this happen!