We often think of most food labels as being decreed from on high, either via national legislation or a new corporate policy. While this can be true, labeling requirements can be issued on all sorts of levels, and one notable example supported by the Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council (CFPAC) will reportedly be in effect soon. According to a recent article in Grist, it’s one of many initiatives to encourage business on a local scale that has been seen throughout the country, from Nantucket to North Carolina, although this may perhaps be the first for a major urban area.
The “Chicago Grown” sticker will be applied to items that hail specifically from farms based in the city, and the CFPAC website posted a contest looking for a design for a label earlier this year. The focus of such a label is allegedly to both aid local fruit and vegetable producers as well as raise a greater sense of awareness on the larger, community-wide effects of being a “localvore.” It’s a distinction that seems to have even greater importance in the context of other pieces of the current natural foods zeitgeist, like independent food trucks and roof farming.
CFPAC’s Megan Klein touched upon these points when she spoke to Grist about the Chicago Grown campaign’s purpose.
“We want people to be able to identify who is growing the food around them and to let them know where they can get it,” she said.
Local producers most likely don’t have the resources to hire the service of a sophisticated marketing team, but they can benefit just as much by obtaining a color label printer for their own uses.
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