Smart Certification


After being dismayed by the rules and regulations required by Farmers Markets Ontario I was ready to dismiss yet another organization that promoted a certification procedure to rate agricultural businesses conforming to a set of rules that hopefully identified local, sustainable, ecologically and economically responsible farmers. But the more I dug into the details, the more it made sense.

Local Flavour Plus, who recently were involved in the localizing of Il Fornello's menu, have a reasonable plan to help the best of our local farmers. Certification piggybacks on established programs for identifying organic farms along with other positive ecological and economic practices. The real focus is facilitating sales of local food to institutional kitchens such as universities, hospitals, and large corporations, providing long-term stable contracts for the producers.

This makes far more sense than the flash and smoke of the FMO. Farmers markets in Toronto are a resource drain for the participants who must individually drive their produce to multiple markets in different locations on different days and then hope to sell to whoever shows up.

Comments

Unknown said…
Hello, torontovore:

Your post on Chowhound was removed moments after I read it.
I have re-posted with something that fits their rules, i.e., no health issues. We'll see where that goes!

...James aka jayt90
Al said…
Thanks for getting back to me. I didn't realize that health issues were forbidden. As a former hunter I know that you can't sell the meat that you hunt, so I thought the post was being censored because of legal reasons.
Al said…
Just got an email from chow moderator with their explanation.
"Although it's a slightly different situation, the principles behind why we removed that thread are the same as discussed here: http://www.chowhound.com/topics/112367. Since the legality of these dinners are in question, we'd rather err on the side of caution and not expose them to authorities who may then decide to shut them down."