WARNING - Australian frozen vegetables
I don't usually copy and paste, but I think this is important enough to overcome my dislike of people who do this. The content has come from Alan Jones re the amount of imported frozen vegetables we eat.
Think about this:-
The ONLY Australian manufacturer of frozen Australian grown vegetables (Simplot Australia) is not far from closing because a number of the other well known Australian brands have moved their plants to New Zealand in order to capture the Chinese vegetable market where they market via New Zealand to Australian tables (without the food being labelled specifically as Chinese) and Simplot is finding it hard to compete. This was shown on the program Landline on the ABC (Sunday 15/9).
SHOULD SIMPLOT CLOSE, THIS MEANS THAT NO AUSTRALIAN GROWN FROZEN VEGETABLES WILL BE AVAILABLE AT ALL AND WE WILL BE RELYING ON FOOD GROWN TOTALLY OUTSIDE OF AUSTRALIA. For a number of reasons this is not a good situation.
1. As most people know, other countries do not necessarily have the strict guidelines for growing their vegetables that Australia has and by buying Australian we can be sure that lethal chemicals that may be used in other countries will not be used on Australian vegetables.
2. We would be keeping Australians in jobs. This means Australian Farmers and the people living in country towns would be assured of work. We have lost far too many jobs to other countries and it is time to fight back. There is no such thing as a level playing field. The level playing field is nothing more than political balderdash!
3. If ever the world became unstable during a war or because of terrorists, we would not be able to feed ourselves.
It is imperative that we all support these Australian brands selling good Australian vegetable products (via Simplot).
Birdseye
Edgell
Next time you shop, please think about the future of Australian food and our farmers! How long before Birdseye and Edgell move overseas if we don't support them?
Worth re-reading "good News Ladies for Buying Aussie Grown" in Hot Topics
Sandikay (SA)
20th Oct 2013
11:17pm
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Yes we have farmer's markets here too. I shop at them as well as I prefer fresh vegetables but when I do have to buy frozen I make sure they are Australian grown.
Hate it in the supermarkets when you have to read everything on the label and it's hard to find anything Australian at all. I also pay more to get Australian produced food.
Recently in SA there was a manufacturer going down the gurgler and big concerns from the people that the products of this firm on their shelves were nearly non existent. Coles responded first with an advertising campaign and made the goods more prominent on their shelves.
Result Spring Gully are now doing so well they are no longer in receivership. In fact they are paying their way and have put on an extra shift to cope with the sales.
I will certainly be looking out for Simplt and Spring Gully products in future.
The guy who started Birdseye was an American - Clarence Birdseye.
A potted history for you:
1920'sIn 1924, Clarence Birdseye patents the “Birdseye Plate Froster” and sets up the General Seafoods Corporation. In 1929, Birdseye’s company and patents are acquired by Postum Company and the Goldman-Sachs trading Corporation (later General Foods). They keep Birdseye’s name, but split into two words for use as a trade mark. Birdseye is paid $20 million USD for the patents and $2 million USD for the assets.
1930'sGeneral Foods launches the Birds Eye brand. In the 1930’s the introduction of a new freezing technology leads to the creation of a significant new food industry in the USA. In 1938, Frosted Foods, a subsidiary of General Foods, are the majority shareholder running the Birds Eye Foods Ltd in the UK, along with Chivers & Sons
1940'sUnilever becomes the majority shareholder in the UK company, acquiring the rights to the Birds Eye brand throughout the world outside of the USA. Processing operations are acquired and built in Great Yarmouth. The first products are peas and herrings. A dutch sister company unsuccessfully tests products in Netherlands, France, Belgium & Sweden.
Unilever sold out in 2006
It is a big problem in view that the Chinese use human excreta for fertilizer without any hygiene in place.
I stopped buying NZ quite a while back.