YOU BUY FAIR TRADE COFFEE,
NOW CONSIDER FAIR TRADE MEAT

Fair Trade is a concept that many consumers have become aware of in recent years. Simply put, it means farmers make a living wage and can keep their family farms.

Like coffee and chocolate, you can buy fair trade meat -- Wholesome Harvest Organic Meats is a grass-roots project started by a farm wife to help organic farmers in the US reach metropolitan markets. Wholesome Harvest farmers have the ability to earn a livable wage. Wholesome Harvest lives up to their motto, “Eat Well. Save the Earth…And the Small Farms On It.”

Wholesome Harvest is one of the companies that is trying to help those small farmers out. Even though organic foods are booming, the number of U.S. acres converting to organic are stagnating because large organic brands are going overseas to find the cheapest organic ingredients they can find. By doing this, these larger companies are bypassing American organic family farmers and not contributing momentum to higher American environmental stewardship. That means US farms continue the trends towards larger corporate and chemically intensive farming and dependence on government subsidies as the only farm profits. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of people engaged in farming will decrease 13.2% from 1998 to 2008. The USDA reports that, on average, 16 farms a day were lost from 1995 to 2005.

Founding farmer Wende Elliott says, “What we see is a systematic, orderly dismantling of regional food systems by market forces underwritten by government policy and the resulting depopulation of rural America. Consumer concern for domestic fair trade can reverse this reality.”

Wholesome Harvest’s full line of organic meats includes chicken, beef, pork, lamb, duck and turkey. Wholesome Harvest Organic Meats can be found at local independent retailers throughout the US or order online at www.wholesomeharvest.com for home delivery.

Foreign raised organic meat does not help protect American drinking water or the US environment, or US citizens’ health the way that converting American meat production to organic would. Since organic meat is not raised with antibiotics, hormones or pesticide treated feed, choosing to eat US raised organic meat helps protect our drinking water from these substances. 80% of crops in the USA are raised to feed livestock. Converting to organic meat would protect the US population from adverse health effects of chemicals used on crops in non-organic farming and livestock production. Imagine if 80% of farm pesticide usage was stopped!

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