Way we shop hits food security
RESPONSES to the imminent closure of Castel Farm Eggs, following the agreement reached between the owners and Environment Health officers on court proceedings, have tended to go one of three ways.
Blessed relief from neighbours that they hope the pestilence of flies will soon be at an end.
Sadness over the numbers of chickens facing culling, and a call going out to save them.
Or disappointment over the loss of another source of ‘food security’.
Every time we lose a local industry which has been serving islanders for years, decades, we lose something else about ourselves as a community too.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the way egg production was managed in St Andrew’s, it means that almost all the eggs we consume locally will be imported.
One day, soon, we might be left with just milk and dairy products available on a commercial scale. And if that were not supported and defended by government and law, we’d probably lose that too.
We bemoan the losses but it is the way we do our shopping today which contributes to this continuing decline. When we proudly buy our daily essentials online, and people boast about how they don’t shop in Town, we do so to our mutual detriment.
Self-sufficiency was once a Guernsey trait. We’re losing that day-by-day.