Will get out there and watch the film and think over my priorities. Thanks for writing this, and including useful links.

growing your own is good if you have the room/time/water. we make jam when fruit is in season and have fig/nectarine/apricot/damson/seville orange and quince in the garden. and chooks for eggs, of course

other than that buying local and buying what’s in season, not stuff that has been flown in to cater for our whim for watermelon and strawberries in july…

i’ll keep thinking about this

The Food Labelling Review is interesting. I think it shows how close we are to becoming like the USA there are two main conflicts (I’ve taken these from http://www.madge.org.au/foodlabelling.php

* One of the five members of the review panel, Nick Goddard, is from the Australian Oilseeds Federation. This peak industry body has GM companies as members ie: Monsanto, Bayer Crop Science, Dow Agrosciences. Monsanto is the owner of the GM canola variety grown in Australia. Just over 50% of consumers say they would not buy GM if they could avoid it according to a 2007 Roy Morgan Research.

* Our food regulator, FSANZ, is expected to protect the health and safety of consumers AND promote an internationally competitive food industry (as stated in Section 10 of this report). Food regulators should ONLY be concerned with public health.

Still, when I went to the meeting in melbourne I was heartened when the lawyer on the panel took a book recommendation for David Kessler’s the End of Overeating and told me he had been reading Marion Nestle.

As far as things you can do, if you’re a mum you can join MADGE (Mothers Are Demystifying GE) madge.org and help campaign for the labelling of all GM, nano and irradiated food. Also, their weekly digest is a great way to keep informed.

Thanks again for the post.