I’m sorry if I conveyed the impression to folks that Olympia was devoid of Organic food (including meat). Definitely not so. I just found it interesting that local markets did not have organic meat, especially in a town that is supposedly so forward looking.
When I threw a St. Patricks Day dinner at my place in Oly last March I called around and finally found some Organic Corned Beef in McKenna at Stewarts Meats. And good point about checking out how the beef was raised. This I did not do and I’m totally with you on that score.

On the upside the managers I talked to in the Oly local marekets regarding this subject are slowly (governed by the demand) going to introduce more organic meats in the near future.

Dagny, I agree that growing corn for fuel when we are facing a food shortage is not the best idea, but it’s also problematic for other reasons, including the fact that producing it requires more energy than the end product generates. Here are a couple of good links:

http://blog.eatwellguide.org/2008/05/guest-dish-food-vs-fuel-round-one/
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/july05/ethanol.toocostly.ssl.html

And Fred–

Have you tried searching the Eat Well Guide? Click on “Find Good Food” in the upper nav here. Funny that you’d have a tough time finding organic beef in Oly (I used to live there–Fred is a friend of mine) since it’s such a progressive town with a great market. Surely the farmers’ market has got it going on.

Another thing–organic is definitely not the end-all, be-all with beef. When I indulge, I’m much more concerned with whether my meat was raised on pasture than whether it was organic–factory farms can feed cattle organic corn, but it’s still not good for the cattle or you, because ruminants are not meant to digest corn and often develop E. coli as a result of a corn-based diet, and the meat contains an inverse relation of bad-to-good fats (too few Omega 3s, too many Omega 6s).

Anyway, before you leave Oly, you ought to get out to one of those pasture-raised farms in the area, get some nice lean beef and have a BBQ!

In the past three or four years I’ve been traveling from Olympia, WA to Houston, Texas where my two oldest sons are located.

While in Texas over the holidays last year I was surprised to learn how easy it was to obtain organic meat and wild fish as compared to Olympia. In the small town where my oldest son lives in Conroe, Texas (about 40 miles north of Houston) organic meat was available in two of the major stores in that area.

When I returned to Olympia, WA I found it was practically impossible to obtain local organic meat, other than chicken or turkey (and even that wasn’t very available), from the mainstream markets. I had a mindset that just because I lived in the northwest that such things would be readily available. Not so, in Olympia, WA at least.

In order to turn that around I did discuss the problem with local Olympia markets and maybe that will eventually make a difference.

Dagny McKinley
http://www.onnotextiles.com
organic appparel