Made in the USA update

It's been a week, and what occurs to me most is "why the hell am I doing this"? I've (tried) to give up products not made in the United States and there have already been very frustrating moments.

Some of your comments, too, have me concerned: Chris in Seattle says that even if just one small component is US made, the entire product can be labeled thus. Randal brings up the whole travesty of the Marianas Islands- a scheme brought to life by Tom DeLay et. al. where products made in sweatshops by asian women (who may be forced to undergo abortions just to stay on the job-whassat? christian right?) are still able to be labeled Made in the USA.

Frankly, I think that no one is even trying that hard to deceive anymore because no one is paying attention.

And its so convoluted to try to figure out the place of origin on some things. Yesterday I went to spend a Barnes and Noble gift certificate. CDs and DVDs are marked 'printed in the US'. But does this mean that the package is printed here or are the CDs and DVDs printed here? No doubt the jewel cases are Chinese. Should I care? And another point-I wouldn't ordinarily buy from Barnes and Noble except for the gift certificate. I prefer to buy CDs from a locally owned store rather than to download (I'm probably 50/50 right now). Downloading is environmentally better, but buying locally is economically better. I havent' figured that out on the hierarchy yet.

I just came from the grocery store. Today I broke down and bought straws for my daughter. I don't buy them because she tends to spill when she uses one, she tips her glass toward her like she's drinking but still has the straw; also single use plastic items are just kind of a 'no'. So I bought them and Ben pulled them out of the bag. "Busted", said he. "China?" "China". Crap. They're probably 100% phthalate neon glow straws. I did find a face scrubbie thing since I can't buy Biore strips; those dandy little wonders that yank stuff out of your pores are made in Canada. I wonder if the lady in the HABA aisle thought the little "whoo hoo" I squeaked out was weird. 3M corp. Minnesota. Made in the USA.

Ben got stuck out of town one night last week. He needed clothes for work and stopped at Kohl's to get a dress shirt for the next day's meeting. You absolutely can't impulse-buy on this program.

I also had clothes to exchange at the Gap. I can't tell you how deflated I felt walking in to the mall knowing that there is probably not a single thing in those 5 acres of mall store product that was manufactured here.

And tomorrow is Ben's birthday. I also went to Kohls yesterday to see if I could find a kitchen gadget miraculously made in the USA. Wisconsin used to be home to three or four manufacturers, like the Mirro company who make small appliances and pots and pans. The closest I came to something for Ben was a product labeled 'Engineered in the USA. Made in China'. We'll be going out for dinner.

We won't order the Chilean Sea bass. (I knew better before this experiment anyway).

Made in the USA

Last night at dinner I cheerfully announced to the family that for the remainder of 2008 we are going to buy only products made in these United States of America. Ben didn't say much except 'why'? and I answered that I thought it might be important for us and the kids to pay more attention to where the things we buy come from, and that how we spend our money ought to help people here at home.

The motion passed - 1 enthusiastic vote and 3 here-she-goes-again votes.

Like Barbara Kingsolver, the author who wrote "Animal Vegetable Miracle" about spending a year eating only local food, we had to decide on some exceptions to the rule. Like Barbara we chose to exempt coffee (mom, dad) and unlike Barbara chose to exempt bananas (7yo, 4yo). Sorry, but there's only so much one can do with apples, applesauce, and frozen berries. Florida citrus is in. Colombian grapes are buh-bye. Maybe next year we'll ditch the bananas.

I think that our biggest challenge will be with clothes. We made a little subrule there too. If we cannot find clothing for the kids that was made in the USA, we'll allow second hand clothes from garage sales, re-stores or Goodwill/Savers/St. Vincent de Paul. Also allowed are what the 4yo calls "handy downs" from older cousins.

I wanted to get a new laptop this year. I'll have to ditch that idea. Waiting until next year isn't going to change the world, that's for certain, and I realize it is just a deferment, but a big part of this challenge is for us to stop and think about the things that we buy, rather than just gettin' and spendin' and layin' waste our powers.

We haven't decided how to handle gifts from others. I guess we'll just have to go with it and graciously accept something given to us, just as long as the kids don't use birthdays and christmas lists as an endo around the rule. We did decide that Ben's work supplies will have to be exempt. He may use that as his own endo. That would be cheating.

I will keep you posted throughout the year on what we find.

>>Before I could hit post, Ben called. He wanted to know if he should buy some Christmas lights he found on sale for 50 cents a string. "Where were they made?" I asked. He said he'd check. Bet we aren't getting cheap lights.

One more reason to be a locavore (or E. Coli is A.Ok with the USDA)

A locavore is a person who puts buying locally at the top of her priorities when shopping for anything. Barbara Kingsolver wrote a book about extreme locavory - her family spent a year eating nothing that was not produced within a few miles of her home, each family member claiming an exemption for something non-native to Virginia, coffee for one, chocolate for another.

Buying organic is good, but not so much if your organic bib lettuce had to be shipped in a petroleum- based plastic container the size of a baby bathtub across country on a diesel truck or train.

Thanks particularly to nationally centralized chains like Wal-Mart, it becomes more and more difficult by the day to purchase local meat. Yes, it can be done but it takes a lot of leg work and planning.

Today I read a report that the US Department of Agriculture allows millions of pounds of E.coli tainted beef to be sold in the US. The loophole allows pre-cooked meat with E.coli to be sold to the general public and to schools. USDA officials don't believe an E.coli outbreak will occur from the cooked meat, but some inspectors claim this year's rise in cases is due to the practice. In addition, it raises the possibility that allowing E.coli inside processing plants will also contaminate raw meat.

Pre-cooked hamburgers use the suspect meat. So too, does any of that convenience food busy moms and dads lean on--those crock pot dinners, pre-cooked stir fries and so on. Burritos, taquitos-any frozen food you buy with pre-cooked beef inside could be tainted.

From the Chicago Tribune: "

"The government keeps putting out that we've reduced E. coli by 50 percent and all of that," said an inspector. "And we haven't done nothing. We've just covered it up."

The reason that locavores are safer than others is that small, local processing plants are much, much less likely to be involved in meat recalls and tainted food. Like everything else in the free trade movement, meat that comes from processing plants that pay skilled workers decent wages are better on many, many levels. This is just one.