The people with the giant (in stem length) roses claim to be organic - Organic Bouquet

Do you have a link for the story? Tried to find it on Yahoo but didn't see it. I got side tracked a few times reading about other things, and if this keeps up, won't remember what I went there to find lol

I wonder about that every time I pass the (usually gorgeous) bouquets at Wal Mart and Safeway, etc.

I always wonder if purchasing them would be the greater sin or if not purchasing them would be the greater sin.

On the one hand, someone might get sick from pesticide exposure. They might die and miss out on life. Then again, they might be just fine.

On the other hand, someone will definitely go hungry and miss out on life if they don't have work and can't afford opportunities. Simply being alive is not living, IMVHO. If I and a million others don't buy South American bouquets this Valentine's day, then will the people who produce them have other economic opportunities? What will become of them? I don't know.

I'm a nurse. I make six figures. Still, every time I go to work I risk, quite literally, being exposed to MRSA, VRSA, VRE, HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, C-Difficile, new strains of incurable Tuberculosis (on a seemingly ever greater basis) etc. --any one of which could literally kill me given the right set of circumstances.

Should I quit my job? Should all nurses quit their jobs?

We can also address the dirty little secret of undocumented workers participating in the American-based nursery business.

For all it's "woes" Jackson and Perkins has come to an agreement to treat its workers with an agreed upon equity.

Does the same apply to smaller, mom & pop, nurseries, many of which can't survive without undocumented workers? Or do we simply "trust" that those workers are being treated fairly and equitably as we make our online orders, blissfully unaware?

Was the last rose (live plant) you purchased online produced by someone making two dollars an hour without any benefits? It isn't talked about here on these forums and the silence is deafening.

In a similar way, I wonder do I buy a Ford or GM product since they're each struggling to support several hundred thousand retirees?

Or, do I buy a Toyota which has tons of cash to invest in better designs because they only have a couple of hundred retirees? (Really, Toyota may not even have that many in its North American operations according to a recent article.)

Do I shop at Albertson's because it's unionized and pay $7.99 for a pack of four Hebrew National hot dogs?

Or do I find my way over to Wal-Mart, which strongly supports gay rights, but isn't unionized and is considerably less expensive?

What to do?

I really don't know sometimes.

MichaelAT

It was in Yahoo's Finance section , Mon, Feb.12 "Colombia Flower Farms Rely on Pesticides" by Joshua Goodman