Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Mystery religion of marketing taken to the limit and beyond

Blueberry jam. You'd be forgiven for thinking it was a local product, from Abbotsford to be precise, as the wording on the jar suggests. Just an hour down the road from here, that town is full of berry farms.

But even though the blueberries are grown in Abbotsford, this jam is not produced locally. In fact, it was packed in The United Arab Emirates.

In time zones, that's 11 hours. Blueberries grown in the Fraser Valley were shipped halfway round the world, made into jam, and sent right back to where the berries grew.

This sort of thing is surprisingly common. Marketing, the international sacred mystery religion of our times, tells us it's okay to use our limited fossil fuel and pollute the atmosphere burning it to do this kind of nonsense.

There, I've ranted, and I feel a bit better. But I'm curious. Is it just me, or are others concerned about this sort of thing?

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