Thursday, 20 February 2014

The Importance of Bees

Many people believe that bees are just useless stinging insects, however these little creatures hold enormous importance in our food industry. The honey bees are the reason we can buy nutritious foods at the shops, as they pollinate 70% of agricultural crops, allowing fruit to grow. Just some of the delicious foods brought to us by the bees include:
  • blueberries
  • apples
  • cherries
  • melons
  • grapefruit
  • avocados
  • broccoli
  • carrots
Native bees pollinate more than one third of California’s pollinator-dependent crops. Creating and maintaining habitats for native bees is vital to sustaining our food supply.

The process involves bee keepers tending to the needs of their bees. These bee hives are then rented out to farmers to use bee pollination to fertilise crops and grow food for the world. These little bees contribute $15-20 billion dollars worth of crops each year to our economy, with their value being approximately $200 billion dollars.



There are afew reasons as to why experts believe the bee population is declining so quickly. Colony collapse disorder is the main reason, this is due to the rise in pesticides worldwide, affecting the bees and killing them due to the toxins and chemicals. Other possible reasons for bee decline is malnutrition (from lack of variety of crops to feed on), toxins from genetically modified crops and climate change.


Some results of bees going extinct:


  • food prices would rise

  • farming would decline dramatically
  • the agricultral industry would collapse
  • have a small variety of fresh food limited to corn, bananas and pineapples
  • not have cotton to make clothing or coffee beans for our favourite beverages
  • it would be a pretty boring and unnutritious world to live in
Close-up photograph of bee covered in pumpkin flower pollen.
<Image from: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Bees/bees3.php>

So, it is important to bring awareness to this important issue as we cannot live without bees. Some solutions are to minimise use of pesticides on plants and crops, plant our own vegies, fruits and flowers to encourage bees in our own backyards and even write to our government bodies in support of researching bees.

Until next time,
Keep loving the green life

Thursday, 6 February 2014

The 5-Step Animal Welfare Rating Standards

Have you ever wondered how the chicken on your plate was raised or treated during its lifetime? Well I recently came across this amazing idea to encourage consumers to become more educated on the meat that we ingest. It is becoming more important for people to know where their meat has come from. Therefore, the American supermarket chain Whole Foods Market has partnered with the Global Animal Partnership to introduce a rating system for its meat depending on animal welfare. This allows people to understand the quality of life their product has had before we purchase it.


<Image from: http://blogs.citypages.com/food/2011/02/whole_foods_let.php>

As most of you know, the better the environment an animal is in during its life, less stressed the animal is, the less toxins it has in its system and the better tasting the meat. Therefore the higher the rating, the better the meat is. The rating system starts from 1, which Whole Foods still classifies as a breakthrough because it eliminates all crates and cages from the animals, up to 5+ where the animals have the same life of those that are on a farm.

I personally think Australia should introduce this sort of system at major supermarkets like Coles and Woolworths rather than just their regular meat and free range meat. It will bring more attention to the caged meat industry and hopefully increase the animal welfare globally. So next time you are buying chicken, turkey, beef or pork, if it does't have any information about its welfare, it is most likely from a crammed cage or shed environment. 

Until next time,
Keep loving the green life