Dairy and Eggs and Meat (oh my!)

One of my new favorite tools to aid with sustainable choices is the Internet.  I love researching and learning of new events or people or subjects that regard sustainability but not everyone has the interest of the time or the resources to spend of such learning.... so I'll do some of the work for you and get you started...

Dairy, Eggs, Meat

• www.theforagers.com
• great list of foraged foods (esp meat)
• www.eatwild.com  
• love this cite as it is informative regarding education on ranch products 
• www.backyardchickens.com
• kinda' inspiring if you want to start your own
• also informative regarding reason's why you want to buy farm fresh eggs!

But lets be practical, this probably isn't the place to start if you are just now considering the transition to better/more sustainable/more local/more ethical dairy, egg and meat sources...

So here are some baby steps:

1) read the label on your dairy, eggs, and meat

• Dairy
• Where does your dairy come from? Some labels only post generic headquarters from where the milk or even grocery business is run.  If so, try this... to what temperature is your milk pasteurized? First, why is your milk pasteurized?  
• Milk is pasteurized for the purpose of killing potentially harmful bacteria and other potentially threatening organisms that corporations do not want to be blamed for in the event of illness.  So, to cover their bases, by law, milk is required to be pasteurized.  In some states one can purchase un-pasturized milk but most of the time it requires the purchase of a "share" of a cow or purchase through a certified third party.  
• Pasteurizing basically consists of heating the milk hot enough to kill harmful particles (and, unfortunately, to denature various enzymes and proteins, and kill helpful organisms).
• Naturally, milks that are "ultra-pasturized" are heated to high temperatures and have less nutritional value than those that are just "pasteurized." 
• So, to start, stop buying "ultra-pasturized" milk... rarely is it even a cost difference and as you look, you will find that both "pasteurized" and "ultra-pasteurized" milks are often sold side by side. 
• One of my favorite benefits in kicking "ultra-pasteurized" milk out of the grocery cart is that milk that is only "pasteurized" generally does not travel from as far.  "Ultra-pasteurization" only came about with the advent of long distance milk sales and such milk would never need to be produced/sold if milk was purchase within a couple hundred miles of production... or even better, if milk was traded through a milk share coop between neighbors.