Thank you to everyone who has visited because of the Chick-fil-a post. Since I wrote that I have not eaten at Chick-fil-a, nor have I received an answer about their suppliers. That’s not to say I haven’t eaten any mass-produced chicken, because I must admit that I have a couple of times. I am just doing it very rarely, and trying to leave meat out of my diet as much as possible.
I think what really bothers me about the Chick-fil-a situation is that I feel like they lied to me. Their lie is a lie of omission. Instead of being honest, they tried to put a glossy coat over what is increasingly seemingly a dark truth. Given the fact that they bill themselves as being such a good Christian company, this sickens me. They try to make their food look healthy by placing it on wheat buns and not using trans fat, but when a group of people ask them a sincere question about the source of their chicken they answer us with a bunch of fluff. What is that?
I, for one, will no longer be eating at Chick-fil-a. I will not support a company who will not be honest when asked sincere questions. So, I guess I’m boycotting. If you feel the same way, you should leave a comment saying so. Maybe someone at Chick-fil-a will see it and give one of us the answer to the question we have been asking.
I still have not received an answer to my last email to Chick-fil-a. I just sent them the following message:
Jay,
I sent you an email on December 8, but have not yet received a reply. I posted our previous correspondence on my blog, and have had a few people ask me if I ever received an answer from you. The fact that I haven’t leads us to assume the worst. Could you please respond to my previous email so that I will have a valid answer to my question? Thank you.
I’m sorry, but this is a venting post. So, we have been trying to sell our house to these people who have wanted it since the beginning of the year. At first, they had some kind of family emergency happen, and so they couldn’t follow through.
In May they called us back and said they were ready to buy the house. I worked with them on a contract, and we finally worked something out. However, in July they emailed me and said their financing fell through. I was pretty upset because I was under the impression that they had already been pre-approved before we started working on the contract.
At the beginning of October, they contacted me again. They said that they had worked everything out with their lending, and were ready to buy. We had to re-write the contract again, but their lender had a final copy of it by October 19. We set our closing date for December 10, and I started looking for a new house. By December 10, their lender was not ready. They said they needed us to extend the contract to December 30. So, we did this. Now, they are not answering our buyer’s phone calls, and they won’t give us any information on what is happening.
On top of that, their lending agent flat out told me he did absolutely nothing on their loan for several weeks, and he provided them with legal advice even though he has no right to do so. Due to this incompetence, we’ve had our house off the market for two months for what seems to be a total waste of time. The punch in the stomach is that we found a home that is perfect for us, but now we are stuck.
I am getting my real estate license again right now, and I’m going to steer client far, far away from this bank because it is clear they are unable to accomplish anything. Plus, they have been rude to me on multiple occasions.
After 2004, my life changed dramatically. I moved to a new state, went back to school, and got married. But, one of the biggest changes I made was in my diet.
In November of 2004 I weighed 157 lbs. As a 5’3.5” woman, that isn’t a good thing. I went on the “white diet” for some health reasons, and I lost about 15 lbs in two weeks. I felt great, but soon found out I had high cholesterol. After that, I went mostly vegan for about 6 months, and stayed vegetarian for over two years. While doing this, I got down to 128 lbs.
Since moving back to Oklahoma, I have started eating meat again. However, I only eat beef about once every two months. I also do not eat pork, and I try to limit my chicken and turkey intake to one meal per day if that.
Oklahoma is not known for its healthy food, so it can be hard here. My standards have fallen quite a bit. However, I watched Food, Inc. the other day, and it reminded me of everything I already knew about the poultry and beef industries. I haven’t eaten meat since then.
You might want to watch this video before continuing.
This made me want to find out if one of my favorite quick stops for food is hiding anything. Chick-fil-a is just about the only fast food place I ever go to. However, I don’t want to support them if they are getting their meat from questionable sources. So, I sent them the following email:
I would like to know who supplies the chicken to your company.
Which chicken producer do you use? Thanks.
Tiffany
Chick-fil-a responded with this:
Dear Mrs. McClung:
Thank you for taking the time to contact Chick-fil-A. You are very important to us, and we appreciate your inquiry regarding our chicken supplier. We hope the following information will be helpful.
Chick-fil-A is proud to have many long-standing business relationships with our chicken suppliers. At this point-in-time, we have five suppliers. Our suppliers have plants in the South, Southeast, and Southwest from which we use product. All of these suppliers have continuous USDA inspections.
Chick-fil-A works diligently to keep the quality, cleanliness, and exact specifications of our products up to the level demanded by our customers. Therefore, we are continually visiting our chicken supplier’s facilities, making sure they are reaching our high level of quality requirements.
In addition, the National Chicken Council publishes a set of guidelines for the proper and humane raising and processing of chickens. All of our suppliers abide by these guidelines and some of them were instrumental in helping to develop these standards for the whole industry.
Again, thank you for your time and interest in Chick-fil-A.
Sincerely,
Jay
Chick-fil-A CARES
Chick-fil-A…We Didn’t Invent The Chicken,
Just The Chicken Sandwich.
On the Web at www.chick-fil-a.com
If you’ve seen Food, Inc., or read about the poultry industry at all, you know that you do not want the poultry industry setting guidelines for their products. What good does that do? These massive corporations do not have the consumer’s best interest in mind when they set up guidelines. Instead, they want to do the bare minimum they have to in order to give you food while maximizing their profits. That means giving the chickens antibiotics, stuffing them in an overcrowded area where they wallow around in their own feces and are subject to disease, etc. I want to know who Chick-fil-a’s suppliers are so that I can decide if the chicken is healthy. I don’t want the corporations who produce the chicken deciding that for me. So, I send them another email.
Jay,
I would like to know who the specific suppliers are for the Oklahoma City area.
You said, “All of our suppliers abide by these guidelines and some of them were instrumental in helping to develop these standards for the whole industry”. This statement in particular concerns me because I do not trust the people who are making money off of my food to have my best interest in mind. Chicken suppliers are mostly enormous corporations who are interest in profit alone. Your suppliers may meet legal guidelines, but that doesn’t mean much when the legal guidelines are geared toward protecting the corporations instead of the consumer.
I would like the names of the suppliers so that I can decide if they meet my standards for what I am willing to put in my body. If you cannot provide me with this information, I will refrain from eating your food until you offer some kind of organic chicken options.
Thank you for your time.
Tiffany
I will post an update when/if they reply.
You might also want to watch this:
**UPDATE** 12/18/2009
I never received a reply from Chick-fil-a after my second email. This is not comforting to me, and I will not be eating there anymore.
One of my twitter friends was talking about going to the beach today, and it brought back memories of one of the great adventures we had while living in DC. We decided to take a weekend trip down to North Carolina. While looking for beaches, I happened to stumble upon a beautiful national park called Cape Lookout National Seashore. In order to visit the park, you had to hire someone to take you there by boat, so we found a local fishing center that ran boats back and forth. I booked the cheapest hotel I could find, which turned out to be horrible, but upon seeing the island none of that mattered.
The first day we were there, the boat dropped us off at the visitors center, and we hung out near there. The beach was relatively uncrowded, very clean, and pretty. However, the highlight of our trip came the second day. We asked the fishing center if there was anywhere good to snorkel, and they told us about a jetty on the south side of the island. It cost a little more, but we had them drop us off there the second day.
It was heaven. We were there all day long, and only saw three people- one beachcomber and a couple who anchored their boat near us for a bit. At one point it started raining for about 20 minutes. The sight of the rain-shower over that remote beach is something I will never forget as long as I live. It was such a rare and beautiful experience, and I hope that one day I will be lucky enough to go back there and revisit the spot where we spent a whole day snorkeling, beach-combing, and relaxing alone in paradise.
My sister and her husband decided that since there aren’t any children in our family, we should have an Easter egg hunt for our family’s dogs. We had a quick family lunch, and then hid all the eggs for the dogs to hunt. Here is some photo documentation of the event.
The last couple of days have been very hectic. My hubby and I decided to take a couple of days to drive around Oklahoma, and see some new places we have never been.
First, we decided to take a trip up Route 66 to visit some Oklahoma Wineries and Vineyards. On the way, we made a few stops at Route 66 sites.
A soda I got at Pops in Arcadia
Round Barn in Arcadia, OK
After a few detours, we stopped at three wineries. The first, Tres Suenos, was in Luther, OK. I was not impressed with their wine. They weren’t very friendly, and seemed to be more concerned about planning weddings than running their tasting room. Their property was pretty, but the staff made it seem uninviting. We asked if they grew the grapes used in any of their wines, but the woman who helped us skirted answering the question by simply saying all of their wines are made from Oklahoma grapes.
Tres Suenos
Second, we stopped at Greenfield Vineyard in Chandler, OK. Their building is located on the top of a hill that overlooks their vineyard and a pond. Several of their wines were made from grapes they grew at their vineyard. We enjoyed the tasting, and also sat out on their upstairs patio for awhile. The staff was friendly, and enjoyed talking about their wine and other Oklahoma wineries.
Greenfield Vineyard
Third, we visited Stable Ridge in Stoud, OK. By this time I wasn’t too concerned with taking pictures, which is unfortunate because this place was really cute. The tasting room was located inside of a really old Catholic church. They had a ton of wines, including two different frozen ones which would be very nice on a warm day. They had a front and back patio for enjoying glasses. The staff here was also very friendly.
Our next Oklahoma adventure involved driving down to Meers. We wanted to spend the day at the refuge, but we had some tire problems, and were only able to go to dinner. We got both got a Meersburger and shared some cherry cobble. As I write this, I am so full I can barely stand it. All this running around has made me tired, and I need some sleep now. Goodnight!
Although the Westboro Baptist Church came to Moore High School to protest today, it looked as if the whole city of Moore had shown up to protest the WBC. Most of the streets around MHS had been blocked off, but students, parents, and community members showed up to protest the WBC’s message of hate. The protest groups were separated, with WBC on the east side of Toby Keith Ave., and those against WBC on the west. A few minutes before the protest’s designated ending time, the police escorted the WBC members (who were driving a minivan) away from the protest site. It appeared this was for the safety of the WBC members.
If you look at the images of the WBC members, you can see that they are walking on Gay Pride and American flags.
I was watching the local news, and a story came on about how families are eating off of fast food value menus because of the recession. A woman with five kids said she couldn’t afford to feed her family healthy meals with veggies because it was too expensive. I have a really hard time figuring out why people say that. Frozen veggies are dirt cheap. Go buy some, and keep your kids off the trans-fat. It will cost you a lot less in health care.
My recession meal solution:
Bag of Great Value Chicken $8, bag of frozen broccoli $2, two boxes of flavored rice $3. See that? You can have a relatively healthy meal for 6 for $13. Hell, if you want to splurge, spend an extra $2 and buy a bag of lettuce to make a salad.
I’m trying to save you from killing yourselves with hydrogenated oils. You’re welcome.
