Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Beware the nut factory

This really got to me:


I bought a pack of peri-peri cashews from a local supermarket yesterday and made the unfortunate mistake of reading the packaging. Here's what it said>>>


"Nestled in the fertile valley of the Langeberg Mountains and refreshed by the waters of the Keisie and Kingna Rivers, lies the idyllic town of Montagu. It is here, in the this abundant green haven, that we've packed the tastiest dried fruits and nuts and brought them to you to enjoy time and again."


While reading that little story my imagination was taken on a journey through these amazing mountains, diving into cool clear mountain streams and... hay wait a sec, did they say "It is here that... we've packed the tastiest dried..."???


I must investigate, why would they say 'packed' when they could use awesome words like harvested, plucked, nurtured... that single word threw me off. So I picked up the packet and examined it more carefully before I noticed the horrific truth. There in font size 2 next to the bar code at the bottom corner of the pack "PRODUCT OF TANZANIA / VIETNAM"!


AHAAAAAAAA!


Deceiving Bastards! You've described the idyllic and pristine location of your FACTORY. The depot in Montagu where all the trucks carrying imported goods (from third world, war stricken, human rights abuser, child labour driven countries...) which arrive for repackaging and distribution in South Africa! An even bigger slap in the face is the fact that they confess they are running an industrial operation in such a naturally beautiful "haven". Why not stick your factory in a designated area within a city? It's rather suspicious... I could go on, instead I suggest printing this label:


"Chugging smoke and pollutants into the fertile valley of the Langeberg Mountains and poisoning the fresh waters of the Keisie and Kingna Rivers, lies our Nut packaging factory. It is here, in the this abundant green haven, that we've decided to build our evil empire by importing the tastiest dried fruits and nuts and selling them to you at ridiculously high prices to fund our weapons of mass destruction project."


So there...

4 comments:

Nes said...

That is so true! Brian was telling me that apparently because America has limits on the number of imports from countries like China,the chinese send stuff to Swaziland and a label gets sown on that says "Made in Swaziland" and then off to America etc. it goes. Sigh, the rich get richer and the poor, get poorer! Its sad and annoying.

EEbEE said...

That is quite insane nes. We need new laws that force buyers to pay a distance tax. The further away your supplier the heavier the tax. That way local industry will be given a boost and we get bonus points for protecting the environment by not wasting energy (transporting t-shirts from China to Swaziland for a sticker before being shipped again to USA for example)

Luke said...

LOL! I can't believe they wrote that! That's so funny!

While I think you suggested blurb was very much true, I somehow doubt that the bit about the factory churning out smoke and pollution would make the average consumer rush to raid the shelves of P'n'P for a bag of nuts. Then again, most consumers are completely complacent about this sorta thing...

EEbEE said...

agreed Luke. Consumers don't give a crap. They could sell Cashews "With 10% FREE cyanide" and people would buy them over the Plain flavour.

Tonight i'm reading the Ouma Rusk box. I saw a little essay on there i've been itching to get my hands on (plus eat some yummy rusks)