Would you fertilize your garden with human poop?
Neither would I. But in some countries, this is the done thing. They even have a name for it. They call it Night Soil. I first read about night soil a few months ago while reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.
Rice has to be fertilized repeatedly, which is another art. Traditionally, farmers used “night soil” (human manure) and a combination of burned compost, river mud, bean cake, and hemp and they had to be careful, because too much fertilizer, or the right amount applied at the wrong time, could be as bad as too little.
And unfortunately some of those countries are now importing foods into Australia, and we are eating these foods sometimes without being aware of it due to poor food labelling laws.. How many times have you seen something like “Packed in Australia using imported products” – imported from where?
They don’t tell us.
That picture above is from the label of my favourite salad dressing. Why do they need to import ingredients? Everything they use in this product is available right here in Australia.
How has this happened to this great country we live in? A country that grows almost everything and could supply almost everything we need without having to import one single item?
How is it, that I now cannot buy a tin of grown in Australia Champignons? I’ve tried all the supermarkets. There are no champignons grown here anymore, not that I can find.
Check the label, and you will see –
I grew up in a household where we always used champignons on our homemade pizza. I grew up eating champignons right out of the tin. I can tell you how they tasted when they were grown in Australia – like someone took a huge bunch of mushrooms and removed their essence, their flavour, and packed it into each and every champignon. I actually preferred them to fresh mushrooms.
These Chinese champignons taste like nothing. There is *no* flavour. You might as well eat the paper on the tin.
And now, several Australians have contracted hepatitis A from frozen berries.
Could this be due to night soil? Nobody knows as yet. But you better believe I’m not buying any more products which are grown overseas. Why would we allow products from countries you need to get vaccinations to visit?
And why on earth would we allow product labelling that does not tell us where the food originates from?
Go to your food pantry, right now.
And take a good look at the labels. Do you have any products which say Product of Australia? Or does everything originate from locations you personally would not travel to, let alone eat food from!
I’ve been trying to avoid foods from China (or any Asian country) for quite a while, i get much less for my dollar now that I buy mostly Australian, but I believe I’m safer. The latest scare here in Adelaide is a woman hospitalised after eating Tuna from Thailand in a restaurant meal.
my biggest worry, is how much of our good growing acreage is being bought up by Asian businessmen, to set up farms. If they then use the same disgusting and polluting growing methods as they do in China, then “Made In Australia” won’t be worth the paper it is printed on.
Interestingly there is something made in Australia in my fridge at the moment. It’s the Gourmet Garden squeezable herbs. And they’re organic…
Go figure ;)
I have a packet of the berries in my freezer, I need to take them back (or throw them out). Thankfully I found local berries at my greengrocers, which is good. I am actively seeking out Australian grown stuff now.