I am always interested and intrigued when I receive an email that sparks an interest right from the gut and brings out my “passionate side”. Human interest/rights, child welfare, disability issues, politics, acceptance of diversity, environment, ethical farming and poverty issues are just a few topics that stir things up inside of me. Having a personality type that is highly reactionary and somewhat impulsive proves to be challenging however as these can be and are often highly explosive topics. In years past I would have simply jumped on the band wagon and clicked that forward button hoping to get the “very important” message out to many as quickly as possible and to put a stop to, or create action for the thing stirring up my internal passion/rage/interest.
I thankfully have learned to read such things, think about them from a critical thinkers point of view, research the issue and make sure it is verifiable before hitting that forward button (sorry mom <and others> I know that your forward was well intentioned lol).
Today I received (THREE times) an email about how McDonalds was basically no longer going to support their local Canadian farmers and were planning to import their beef from South Africa where the farming regulations are APPARENTLY (I haven’t researched their regs) loosely controlled. Of course this would be highly upsetting if it were in fact true. The beef MIGHT be sub-standard, full of hormones and other chemicals, Canadian Farmers would start loosing a huge amount of money, etc….. the ripple effect would go on from there.
Now, I personally am not a big supporter of McDonalds or fast food in general because of the health implications (although I will admit to the once in a blue moon craving) and in fact, am a big believer in knowing where my meat comes from (but again will admit I have a loooong way to go in putting my beliefs fully into action) but the critical thinker came out in me when the email requested a boycott of McDonalds (who by the way support wonderful charities such as http://rmhc.org/). In fact the email requested that I forward it on to 10 people and so on so that by the 6th generation of people three million people would have potentially received these so called facts. Even if only 1% of people fell for the email and took action that would be 30,000 people. I did a quick search on Snopes and quickly found that the majority of information was in fact a hoax, there is an American version of the email that has been circulating since 2002 (and infact incorrectly cited the Texas Cattle Feeders Association as the people who started the email) and a Canadian version that has been cirulating since February of this year (and the facts are that McD’s Canada supports over 100 top Cdn suppliers).
Of course the moral of this story isn’t really anything at all to do with McDonald’s but more about getting our facts straight before passing on information (be it verbally, via email, websites, social media, etc) that could in fact cause harm. This email is just one example and I wonder how many millions of people have acted in good faith and changed their habits because of ‘viral gossip’. My only hope is that in this one example we have a few more North Americans eating healthier and taking responsibility for their food sources.
