If you enjoy bacon for breakfast, you may want to put some thought into the type of bacon you are eating. The premiere episode of the new season of Stuff Happens hosted by Bill Nye addresses the impact of many breakfast items, including bacon, on our environment. Since it is easier to pick up a package of bacon at the store, bring it home, and fry it up without a single thought about what it takes to get it to you....here is some food for thought to help you out and maybe motivate you to pick a healthier, more environmentally friendly version:
According to Bill Nye: There’s an old supply chain from the South American Western Coast to North American farmers. And what is supplied is fish feed made from anchovies. So, American bacon pigs are fed fish from South American oceans. And so many fish are fished so aggressively that penguins are going out of business. The penguin ecosystem has been devastated, and penguin populations have been decimated by this practice. So we encourage you – the listener, the viewer – to buy…organic, grain-fed bacon. That’s what we want you to do to reduce the market for this anchovy feed. And it’s just something that humans are kind of doing by accident, but on such an enormous scale that’s it’s screwing up an entire ecosystem in the south western Pacific. (from Lab Out Loud)
